And it begins

After years of avoiding the creation of a livejournal/xanga/blog, I'm caving. But let it be known that this is a matter of necessity, not a breakdown of will. Phone calls from Madrid are going to be expensive. I love you all, but not that much. The mass email is the traditional study abroad update, but I'll feel like I need to say something worthwhile if I'm clogging inboxes. Here, I can be pointless, because everybody can choose whether or not to look at it. End result: I will (hopefully) update more often, so you'll be more informed. And let's be honest, I want a record of the experience and this is better than a bunch of emails.
I leave in 10 days. I have a visa, after a road trip to Chicago that involved mostly good things like pizza, seeing Wicked (best. musical. ever.), playing w/ chris lee/kurzer/ang, drinking for three consecutive nights, staying up all night to ride the El at 5:30 in the morning when it started back up , realizing that Carol Stream, IL looks like Frantz Rd in Dublin (just missing the concrete corn), going to Hooters for the wings, and wandering around the city. It also involved some bad things like having the transmission in my car die on I-80 during rush hour, waiting 5 hours for a tow truck while having to pee and getting honked at by gross truckers, yelling obscenities at the top of my lungs at nobody in particular in frustration, and airport security hassles on the way home. I think at this point we should just scrap the car, but it was my dad's midlife crisis and he is unwilling to give it up. So somebody is flying to Chicago sometime this week and driving home with the car, plus new transmission. Yay.
That was originally related to Madrid, with the visa part. In more Madrid news, I need to pack. I don't want to. I'm kind of scared of it, because I have no idea how I am going to fit four months of stuff in two suitcases, while leaving room so I can take back all the souveneirs/random stuff I'm going to get. We'll see how it goes.
Despite packing concerns, I am super excited about this trip. Madrid won't know what hit it when Lauren and I show up.

Until I run out of other, more worthwhile things to do,
MRoy in Dblin