Michael Barry, University of Limerick, Ireland

Thank God for Cigarettes and Alcohol

I think my PC monitor is giving me headaches, especially when I am using Linux, leading to tiredness and grumpiness and all of the personality traits you all know and love. Stealing an LCD panel from the lab hasn't helped much -- now I am getting headaches from Windows as well. Must explore a glare guard or something. Maybe I can sue someone. Dad had a checkup with the doctor this week, and he is fine. I more or less knew that already -- my mother has started to bitch about him not doing anything around the house and expecting to be waited on hand-and-foot.

Bought a body board in Castlegregory last week and was in the water a bit. Hope I get a couple more chances to use it before the beginning of October, when it gets too cold to be in the water without a wetsuit.

HURRAH, MATH! Cheers to Ben for sitting down for a few hours and walking through some of my math work. He even paid for his own coffee, although after 90 minutes of graph theory and set theory and Markov chains and annealing solutions, I think I'll be paying for coffee next time.

I used to be good at math!

BEER FOR BEN Ben is playing in The Precient (formerly Baker Place) on Saturday night, after the France vs. Ireland match.

The plan is to listen to Ben sing and buy beer so that the pub owner can give money to Ben for singing.

Why we don't give Ben a fiver each and drink beer at home, I don't know.

* * *

Yesterday's repeat lecture to the part-timers went well. They seemed more focused and more determined to write down everything I said or scribbled. It's an odd experience trying to repeat a lecture, even with notes from earlier in the day, and I was constantly second guessing myself.

Afterwards I went to aerobics, where I put in a good performance until my adrenalin rush wore off and my blood sugar started to plummet. Tired, hyper, and hungry I went for beer with Mike, which was a bit of a disaster because the bar wasn't recognizing the PSA drink vouchers for anything other than draft beer -- cheap draft beer. No shorts, no cocktails, no Erdinger, no soft drinks! So much for "One free drink."

Got to bed early but managed to rouse myself when Ben, Joanne, and Katia came back to the flat and deliberately made a lot of noise so that I would rouse myself and drink whisky with them. We ended up in Dolan's Warehouse, where we danced to da toons with da bitches.

Alright, alright, we swayed arrythmically with everybody else (some more arrythmical than others) to a monotonous beat that went on for ages and got boring after 30 minutes. Thank God for cigarettes and alcohol.

BEER, BEER, BEER,

BED, BED, BED

One lecture down. Slightly hyper -- coffee and chocolate immediately after may have been a bad idea. Think it went well. A couple of questions, and few if any vacant stares.

Have to repeat it at 18:00 today. Maybe I need some sleep in between.

Must think about notes.

ASHTANGA This week's yoga post is a sonnet. Ashtanga has only eight letters, which as the first letter of eight lines makes for a short sonnet. But it does give an octet for abba abba structure. Add the word Yoga (with an extra ga) to get six letters to start the cc dd ee sestet. Still, writing in iambic pentameter is difficult.

Acting for now to stretch in pain we place

Such hope in push and pull decline to bring

Heroes to strive 'gainst god and all the thing

To breathe both in and out in time and space

About back with claw reach right and left now face

Near far reach up and down in time and sing

Grab this and that up now and hold trembling

And down relax release for now the race

Yet who so far and wide on sea and land

O.K.s no more this place on which we stand

Grimmer and bleaker older not younger

Alone afraid full of doubts and hunger

Go forth and try for now in spite of this

Achieve for now some maybe state of bliss.

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