and you don't stop

I'm about to stop; I'm rather tired, and I intend to get up early tomorrow morning to get cracking at work. Given how my late-night intentions are often revisited upon awakening (in the form of hitting snooze repeatedly), we'll see how that goes, but it's worth a try.

Today was rather exhausting; as you know from last night, I got v. little sleep. I did succeed in waking up, getting out of the hotel by around 7:15am, dragging my stuff up to the roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe, and boarding a couple of trains that took me to Charles de Gaulle airport. Everything at the airport went amazingly well, except for the ridiculous Aer Lingus bag check procedure; since I didn't pay for my checked bag online, they sent me to a different company about 200 feet away to pay them, and then I had to bring the voucher back to Aer Lingus so that they could send my bag on its way. Luckily there were no lines at either counter, or I might have been seriously perturbed instead of just mildly irritated.

I made it to Dublin on schedule, had a nice conversation about the annihilation of the Dublin housing market (and therefore, the economy) with my cab driver, and checked into my hotel. I intended to go to the office this afternoon, but since I couldn't sleep on the plane (too much attempting to choke down my coughs so that the woman next to me wouldn't think that I was patient zero in the upcoming consumptive-zombie outbreak), I ended up taking a nap in the hotel, and then working from the hotel for a few hours (where I could cough in relative peace and comfort). Then, I broke away from the laptop and wandered down to Grafton Street, where I procured a lovely coat and a Dublin mug from Starbucks, and had dinner at a cheap Italian restaurant while reading a book. I continued reading the book over after-dinner coffee, then came back to the hotel and finished it; there are so many lovely treasures sitting on my Kindle, and I'm trying to make my way through them.

Now, though, it's time for bed. My other shopping stop was at Boots (a drugstore), where I spoke to yet another pharmacist and got yet another option for treating my cold -- this, a combo of what feels like a mentholated nasal spray to stop my congestion, and some sort of orange-tasting liquid to break up the mucus currently setting up shop in my throat. So far so good, but the ultimate test will be whether I can finally sleep tonight. Wish me luck (if only so that I can eventually stop behaving like an octogenarian and insisting on talking only of my health). Goodnight!