Oh, cat, don't fly away again. My head's killing me.

Didn't post last night because I was up late on the phone with American Express. I seem to have mislaid my card in the Dublin airport, and when I first spoke to Amex they were wonderful -- "we'll get a replacement card sent to your hotel tomorrow before 5pm!" Sounded too good to be true, and nothing showed up at the hotel. When I called back, the agent at first refused to believe I was telling the truth until I testily asked him to review the notes. "Well, yes, they did the replacement card," he came back, "but it's gone out. It should have arrived at the hotel." Hotel says no. Says no the next morning. Probably still says no a day later but I'm too tired to call and find out tonight.

Eh, whatever, the account's sealed now, and I have other funds. So two exciting days! Wednesday we visited one of those grotesquely huge estates that rich people used to maintain to prove their superiority to rest of us (what do they use for that now?) and its gardens -- Japanese garden, Italian garden, English garden, one garden for each salad dressing. There was even a pet cemetery, with many horses, chow dogs and cows. The inscriptions on the stones seemed sincere.

More importantly yesterday, we visited Glendalough, a beautiful vale with a pristine lake overlooked by the ruins of an ancient monastery. As I was drinking in the natural vistas, it struck me -- this was where they didn't film Zardoz. It looks a lot like Zardoz, and I did some research -- the real shooting location was at Lough Tay, only a few miles over in County Wicklow. As we were not on the Zardoz Filming Locations tour, we didn't get to see it. DAMMIT.

Today, also, dominated by places Zardoz wasn't filmed. A stud farm was a fascinating glimpse into a subculture, and also wasn't the horse barn where the Apathetics lived, and the Rock of Cashel, which is a hill with a ruined Gothic cathedral on top, and would look a lot like where the Exterminators gathered to greet the giant floating stone head, if the ruined Gothic cathedral wasn't there. Then on to County Cork, and we're staying in the town of Blarney tonight, getting ready for tomorrow's ritual of being dangled by a stranger over an abyss so you can put your lips on a flithy piece of granite that's got everybody else's germs on it in case you don't die.

Also I'm still terrible at uploading the pictures from the camera, but I hope I will have that figured out by tomorrow.

Now at the Maldron Parnell hotel in Dublin, which seems to be staffed almost exclusively by beautiful young French women. My brother found a brochure in the lobby for a "Leprechaun Tour," but he must have grabbed the last one, because I couldn't find it when I went to look. On the other hand, Riverdance is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

I got here yesterday afternoon after a blissfully uneventful Aer Lingus non-stop from SFO (good: the seats next to me were occupied by two petite girls who used the other aisle and never bothered me; bad: the most intriguing movie in the entertainment system was Mortdecai). We got to walk around a bit, it's a nice, compact town and has the world's largest flagpole with no flag on it (google "Millennium Spire Dublin," I haven't broken the camera out yet). Today is our city tour, so some real pix I hope. Leprechauns if I see any.