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| Here I am, trying out my snuggie for the first time at my parents' house over the break. Aaron's a huge fan of it, because it's actually long enough to go over his feet (he's so tall)! |
Lately, however, I've taken to a new kind of "reading"--that is, audio books! I've found a website that provides audio books to download for free, since all the books that they're recording are way out of copyright. I think the rule is that a book doesn't go out of copy right and become available to the public until the author has been dead for 80 years. Looks like I learned something from that research methods class! So authors like Charles Dickens will have his works all over the internet in textual or audio form, but James Joyce's works (who passed away in 1941, thanks wikipedia) won't be available to us to get for free (legally) until 2021.
Audio books are great because I can get a lot of stuff done around the apartment while still doing homework. I've listened to audio books while doing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, baking goodies, and my personal favorite: while doing crafts! I've been crocheting an afghan during our time here, and working on a hexagon quilt. Both have made a lot of progress since the discovery of audio books. The other thing that's great about them is that I can put them on my iphone and listen to them while walking into town or on the bus. I love being a literature major--I can do my homework anywhere!
In other news, Aaron and I were happily able to watch the Super Bowl here in Ireland after some dramatic finagling in city center. We made plans with a group of friends to watch it at a restaurant on Grafton Street called "Captain America's!" They are, you guessed it, an American themed restaurant with all the good stuff--burgers, fries, quesadillas, ginormous brownies and ice cream, etc. They were going to be playing the game and serving hot dogs at halftime! How American! Aaron and I got there first to hold our table and unfortunately found out that there was a ten euro cover charge per person. And that that hot dogs cost five euro at halftime. We definitely could not afford that, since we were hoping to eat dinner there and did not want to end up spending around 40 euro on one evening to watch a football game and some awesome commercials. We headed over to our friends', the Bees, apartment to use their internet and find a plan B. Plan B ended up being that we found a live stream of the game and were able to hang out in a cozy apartment with our friends, rather than sitting in a noisy restaurant or pub, and we saved a lot of money getting cheap takeout. We only stayed for half the game, since it was airing live, which meant that it started at 11 for us. We did get to catch a lot of funny commercials, Christiana Augelera forgetting the words to the National Anthem, and the crazy lead the Packers got in the first half. We heard it got pretty close in the second, but since Aaron had work the next day, we hailed a cab around 1 am and headed home.
Aaron's work is going really well. He really loves working at game and today he has his favorite shift: 8:30-3:00! He had to wake up early to get there on time, but he gets to come home early and relax for the whole afternoon! His boss and his wife had us over Monday night to watch a UFC match he had recorded, and we had a great time with them eating pizza and chatting. They're a really fun couple to hang out with, and I'm so looking forward to spending four days with them in Rome!
Enjoy the snow days, friends and family and stay safe! We love you all and we hope to talk with you soon :)
