A Series of Fortunate Events

Before I begin this post, which (to spoil the surprise) is just going to be a very run-of-the-mill post about How My Life Is Going In Ireland, I need to have a small rant about the 2004 film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. 

For those of you who have forgotten or may not know, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of the worst films ever made. For starters, the book author's name is included in the already verbose title, in the great tradition of such movies as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook. A Series of Unfortunate Events was and is completely flawless as a book series, and the casting of the film was and is completely flawless (Jim Carrey as Count Olaf? Meryl Streep as a paranoid elderly woman in Victorian mourning dress? Cedric the Entertainer as an old-timey police officer? THIS?!), so, by all accounts, this movie should have just rocked, relentlessly. But, as I was reminded upon finding it on Irish network television yesterday afternoon, this movie is terrible, and that just makes me a little sad. I needed to get that out there. Forgive me.

What does not make me sad, however, is how fantastic my last week was. It began at a hotel in Wexford where I returned from lunch to find this in my room.

My friends, no week can be bad when it starts with strawberries and a sundae flute full of melted chocolate. The first part of the week went by with a very busy work schedule and not a lot of things as exciting as the above chocolate, but then on Tuesday night, my friends appeared!! 

FRIENDS! 

From there, the week continued to be (despite a 24-hour flu pestilence descending on everyone at O'Connell House, myself included) almost ceaselessly fantastic. On Wednesday, we went to see the new Nicholas Sparks movie. There were mullets and cornrows. There was teen pregnancy. There was angst. There was a lot of James Marsden working as a mechanic. It made for a good afternoon. On Thursday, I ate an artisan grilled cheese culled before my eyes from a block of coolea so large that a bystander asked if it was a loaf of bread. And then I went to a playground with my friends and did a lot of swinging and stuff. 

And then there was Friday. Friday was one of those rare and glorious city days where, all day long, you know your way around, you know all the Cool Stuff To Do, and you feel as if you are the quirky-cute heroine of a charming rom-com in which Daniel Radcliffe could be hiding around any nearby corner waiting to love you unconditionally until death do you part. First, I took my visiting friends to the National Gallery, like a hip young urbanite would do. I looked at art. I created some funny art+caption Snapchats. I lived. After this Living and Art, I took my friends to the eclectic little restaurant I'd been eyeing, where we sat next to a life-sized gold sequined statue of a horse and ate sun-dried tomato tapenade and a pasta made out of pears. From there, we lucked into a free guided tour of the grounds of Dublin Castle and spent an hour coloring at a children's art display at the Chester Beatty Library. We went to Penneys (aka PRIMARK, Y'ALL), and I bought polka dotted dress pants for less than five euro. The sun set. 

And for these reasons, I am happy to say, The Domerberry was very fortunate indeed.