The 17%

Google recently released data on the demographics of their staff in an effort to be more transparent and to be held accountable for their diversity. They certainly have a long way to go to achieve equality, but it's good that they're trying. One of the numbers caught my attention immediately. When I saw it, I was struck with that weird mixture of disappointment and lack of surprise that is becoming all too familiar.

Google's tech force is made up of 17% women. Why did that number catch my eye? It was brought up in an NPR program that got a lot of attention about a year ago. The transcript can be found here. The take away is that that number - 17% - is an unsettlingly common number. It is, by and large, the number of professional women currently working in traditionally male-dominated fields.

17% of Hollywood film directors are women. 17% of US Senators are women. 17% of engineers, surgeons, professors, etc are women. Do a bit of digging, and you'll see this number everywhere.

More interestingly, 17% of people in crowd scenes in movies or television shows are women.

Recent psychological studies have found that most men perceive this as equality. When a group's ratio is 83 men to 17 women, the men are likely to say that there are as many women present as men. When women speak 17% of the time, men are likely to say that the women talked just as much as the men. And a worrying fact: when women speak 30% of the time, men start to complain that they were dominating the conversation. We have been conditioned to view 17% as good enough, to view anything approaching true equality as greed.

I should acknowledge that this is better than it was a generation ago. We have made great strides since my mom and my aunt were the only women in their respective offices. But I'm one of only five women in my office. We each get our own private stall in the bathroom, a perk I would gladly trade in to have some more female faces around me.

It actually feels like it's gotten worse the farther I've gone in my career. My college class was 25% female. Not great, but a good sight better than the 17% (or less) I deal with now. In fact, six years after I graduated, my alma mater achieved a 50-50 student body, and even graduated three more female engineers than male engineers. But they aren't making it into the workplace. At least not yet.

There are a number of reasons for this. Partly it's that they aren't being hired. Not through overt sexism, but because of a more insidious variant. A resume with a male name is likely to be seen as representing a more qualified individual than a resume with a female name, even if the two resumes are identical. A man being interviewed seems like a better fit for a company than his female counterpart, for some undefinable reason. Let's call it "culture".

There's also evidence that women aren't applying for as many jobs as men because of one of the sneakier aspects of sexism that I've only recently become aware of. Apparently women are likely to apply to a job only if they feel that they meet 100% of the requirements in the job description, whereas men will take a chance if they meet 60% of the requirements. This speaks to issues with self-esteem, confidence, and even arrogance. Of course, many companies are satisfied with that 60%, and they hire one of the men who applied as opposed to one of the women who didn't.

Then there are the cultural elements, something President Klawe identified and worked really hard to overcome at Harvey Mudd. Even if you're qualified to go to a school or take a job, many women will be put off by a student body or staff that is overwhelmingly male. Even if there's a lot of support for women, and a genuine effort to provide opportunities. My company is great about this, and I feel wholly supported there. It doesn't change the fact that when I interviewed I met with four men, and the only woman I saw the entire day was the head of HR. That leaves a distinct impression, and if there's an option to go somewhere more egalitarian, even if it's less prestigious or offers less money, the environment might make that trade off worth it.

Finally, there's the drop off effect. Women dropping out of college or PhD programs because the constant sexism becomes too grating. Women leaving careers in technical fields because they're sick of all the extra work that goes into being one of only a few women. Being constantly surrounded by men is exhausting. You're always on guard for them to make a sexist joke, wondering how to respond to one when it happens. Is it better to be a meek pushover or a feminist killjoy? Better to network and be on good terms with your coworkers or focus on your work and seek promotion based solely on your own merit? And what happens when you see man after unqualified man promoted ahead of you for a slew of reasons that are difficult to untangle and articulate?

Half of the things that happen to me in office barely even register as strange or uncalled-for. Until I share a story with my female friends and see the look of horror on their faces.

What's to be done? In college, we made a concerted effort to unite the women living in our dorm. And in our time there we saw a huge shift in the culture of our dorm, one that resulted in more women willingly moving into our dorm. But these were people I lived with, people I saw every day. An effort like that at my day job, where I really am supposed to be working instead of socializing, feels daunting. As does specifically recruiting more women, which by the way is not in my job description.

At the same time doing nothing feels cowardly. Like I'm betraying my gender, my future children. Watching that number stagnate is disheartening, though I can always hope that things will get better. But how long will that take? Will my (hypothetical) daughter be struggling with these same issues thirty years from now? Will we have merely jumped from 17% to 30%? Or will we be able, in that time, to actually create a diverse corporate world that reflects the realities of the world we spend the rest of our lives in?

There aren't any easy answers. It's hard to know where to start. At the moment I'm so exhausted (by this, by the recent Isla Vista shooting, by the prospect of another summer dominated by male action heroes) that I hardly want to do anything. But the pendulum will swing, I'll befriend the new woman on my team at work, and things will get easier again. They say it's best to attack these things from a place of strength. Until I get there I'll just rant on my blog.

Honeymoon 8: There's No Place Like Home

Travel is always a weird experience. Especially when you travel really long distances. Between the weird time warp that takes place on planes and the shifting of time zones outside of those planes, it's hard to keep track of what time it actually is.  And if you go far enough, your internal clock gets so scrambled that you can more or less reset it as you like.

We landed in DC around 3:30. Kevin's mom picked us up at the airport, and by the time we'd gotten our bags and grabbed Kina from her house, it was after five before we made it home. Then I had to run to the grocery store because after two weeks away, there wasn't much food in the house that we trusted. But it was too long before we were able to crash on the couch with Chinese food, beers, and our trusty DVR.

Sadly, our trusty DVR proved to be somewhat less than trusty. It faithfully recorded all of our shows the first week we were gone. Then it turned off completely and missed everything that aired the second week we were gone. On the bright side, all of those shows were on OnDemand, it just meant we couldn't fast forward through the commercials while we were watching.

Not that we watched much that first night anyway. I think we made it through one episode of TV before it was definitely time for bed.

The next morning, we woke up around 5:30. By six we had agreed that it was definitely not too early for mimosas. So equipped with four bottles of Andre left over from the wedding, a fresh bottle of orange juice, and an extra cheesy scramble, we once more planted ourselves on the couch to watch some TV.

We only made it a few hours before the champagne was gone and it was time to actually do other stuff. Because no matter what happens, it seems that we are no longer capable of simply sitting on the couch in front of the TV for a full day. I choose to see this as a sign of maturity.

So Kevin took the dog to the park and went for a bike ride and bought food. Meanwhile I started updating my blog (which I missed dearly during my time away from computers) and read. Because I didn't do enough reading on my honeymoon, obviously. Once we'd cooked dinner and walked Kina, it was once again time to make a dent in the backlog of television.

But once again, we didn't make it very far before we were once again falling asleep. Over the weekend we managed to catch up on SHIELD, Elementary, and Orphan Black. But that still left Game of Thrones, The Americans, and a documentary I'd been watching. Still, it was a nice, relaxing way to transition back into the real world. And since most of those shows were actually over, this meant that we still had some stuff to watch during the week, when we were still too tired to do much of anything.

On Monday it was back to work. I'm really glad we came back from Europe a little early and had some time to just sit in the house and re-acclimate to being home. It was nice to have a truly lazy day after all the running around that comes with being a tourist. And it's always more relaxing to be surrounded by your own stuff.

Honeymoon 7: We Get to Cook Our Own Steaks!

There's a big lake between Donegal and Belfast, which means you can't drive straight from one to the other. You have to go either north or south around the lake. We elected to go north and extend the drive a bit so we could visit the walled city of Derry.

Derry actually wasn't that far out of our way, and it was around this time that I began to understand how small Ireland actually is. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and realized that you can fit three Irelands in the state of Colorado. (Later, better calculations confirmed this conclusion). I always knew Colorado was big, but that really put things in perspective for me.

Derry was a neat little city that reminded us strongly of a sort of miniature Pittsburgh. It was built in a really hilly area next to a river that was beginning to be crossed by lots of cool bridges (we only saw three, but the city seems to be expanding, so I'm sure there will be more before long). Upon arriving in Derry, we left Ireland for the UK which meant it was time for some changes. Currency switched from Euros to Pounds, signs switched from kilometers to miles, and the perspective of history altered sharply. In Donegal, we learned about the old kings who were raised up as heroes who had been unfairly driven off their land. Here they were rebels who were victoriously defeated.

There was one detail presented in both cities that I found particularly interesting. Back when England was conquering Ireland (in the 1600s, under the rules of Elizabeth, Charles I, and Charles II), one of the things they needed was accurate maps. Ireland quickly became one of the most accurately mapped areas in the world, but only the eastern half. On the maps, the western coast is essentially a straight line with almost no detail. The old kings knew the dangers these maps posed and beheaded any cartographers they came across. Which also means that these cartographers are alternately presented as traitors or heroes, depending on the perspective. Seeing the two sides so close to each other was really fun.

In Derry we visited the Guild Hall (which had an exhibit on all this information) and St Columb's Cathedral. Like all the other cathedrals we toured, this one had awesome stained glass windows. With one key difference. Here, all of the windows were dedicated to various men who had died in the 1860s. It seems that a bishop arrived around that time who was put out by the plainness of the cathedral. He convinced the widows and families of deceased men to sponsor elaborate stained glass windows in their honor. It was an interesting way of getting the job done.

When we were done in Derry, we headed to our hotel in Belfast, which we had some trouble finding. It was hidden away downtown and instead of saying Fitzwilliam Hotel anywhere, there was just a big stylized F on the building. On the opposite side of the way we were driving. But we did eventually make it.

I'll be honest, by the time we got to Belfast, I was pretty much ready to go home. I was missing my cat and dog, and I longed to just lounge around and do nothing for a bit. When you're in a new city, there's a pressure to go out and explore and see new things, and it was starting to get to me. I was tired. It didn't help that the hotel staff didn't have any useful suggestions for things to do. When we asked them where we should go, they pointed us to the mall. The mall was cool, but it wasn't at all what we were in the mood for.

This is partly because Belfast is more of an industry town that isn't really set up four tourists. There aren't all that many sites to see, though they are actively working on that. We also arrived on the wrong weekend. While there were festivals and shows and things to do throughout the Spring and Summer, we managed to hit the weekend when none of that was happening.

Well, that's not entirely true. There was a really cool international food festival.  Everything smelled good, but we weren't hungry enough to eat, and the beer was mostly overpriced.

After we'd exhausted the food festival, we wandered through the shopping district. The mall was cool, sort of a hybrid between indoor and outdoor shopping centers. But we were so wary of weight limits at that point that we didn't want to buy anything. Instead we found a place with burgers and craft beer and had an early dinner. Then we headed into the cathedral district. We got to St Anne's, a military themed cathedral, shortly before it closed and saw some cool stained glass. But we didn't make it to St Patrick's.

After that we decided to find some music. But once again, nothing started until 9, and I just didn't have the energy to stay out that long. We bought a bottle of wine and went back to the hotel room, where I turned on the TV and found re-runs of How I Met Your Mother and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?

The next morning we headed over to the Titanic Quarter, which is one of the more interesting things to do in Belfast. The city used to be the center of ship-building, along with a lot of other, related industries, and it's biggest claim to fame is that it build Titanic, along with her sister ships. The old dockyards are in the process of being transformed from a place of industry to something more like an entertainment district, with apartments, restaurants, and shops. But it's just at the beginning of the construction project.

The big thing that is open is the Titanic museum, which was actually really cool. It takes you through the early industrial boom of Belfast (The US Civil War actually helped them a lot because the shortage of cotton put their linen in high demand). The decision to build a cruise ship like the Titanic is put into historical context, and then you walk through every stage of building it. They have displays of the original drawings of the ship (in a nifty interactive computer interface). You get to see the special scaffolding they had to build before they could even begin to build the ship. Then they walk you through the laying of the deck, the building of the sides, the launch into the sea (which they have actual video of) and the outfitting of all the cabins and spaces on board the ship. Start to finish, the Titanic took three years to build, and that's just the ship. From conception to the maiden voyage it took even longer.

And then it sank, three days later. I've seen the movie countless times and went through a phase where I watched every documentary I could get my hands on. But having the information presented to me this way made it hit me like never before. They put so much work into this ship. The loss of life is, of course, tragic. But the loss of all the time and money spent engineering and building the ship was pretty awful, too. I can't imagine dedicating so much of my life to something, only to have it fail so quickly and decisively.

After we walked through the museum, it was still early afternoon, and we could think of nothing else to do. I was cranky and tired, so we bought another bottle of wine and went back to the hotel room to read and nap and take it easy for a while. Like I said, I was pretty honeymooned out at this point.

For dinner, we had initially hoped to go to a place that does a 9-course recreation of the final dinner served (to first class passengers) on board the Titanic. But it turns out that's not something you can just book for two people. You need a much bigger group. Instead, we found a restaurant that had just opened the previous week called Stix and Stone. It was a steakhouse whose gimmick was that you cook your own steak to your liking. The kitchen sears it, then places it on a hot stone with some garnish and a sauce of your choosing. You leave it on the stone until the steak is cooked to your liking.

It was a really neat concept, and we had a lot of fun with it. The waiter recommended that we remove the streak immediately and then place strips on the stone to experiment a bit. That was a neat idea, but I think it's mostly meant for people who don't cook steaks very often. I knew exactly how I wanted my steak, and I managed to cook it perfectly.

After dinner we went back to the food festival to get dessert, then decided to head back to the bar and see if we could catch some live music. And to our amazement, there were a couple of ladies performing when we got there! They played a mix of traditional Irish music and contemporary American country music. They also, by request, played Brown-Eyed Girl and this time everyone knew how the "sha la la"s went. There was a guy sitting next to me who looked like a scruffy Ryan Gosling - not Hollywood scruffy, but actually scruffy. So all in all, the night was pretty perfect.

The next morning we had to get up super early to catch our flight. We ended up getting to the airport way earlier than we needed to. Even after we'd returned the car, gone through security, gone through the second, US security (where they make you take off your shoes), and gone through customs, we still had an hour to kill at the gate. But the way our travel experiences had been going, this was way better than the alternative.

The whole trip was a lot of fun, and it was nice to be able to take two full weeks. As I said, by the time we were heading home I was more than ready to be on my way. I missed my things and my animals and being able to just lounge on the couch without having to worry about exploring or finding food or anything. But the honeymoon wasn't entirely over yet. Once we got home, we still had a day and a half before we had to go back to work.

Honeymoon 6: Are We Classy Enough For This Place?

When the other people staying at the Bed and Breakfast with us in Galway heard we were traveling to Donegal next, they all had a bunch of suggestions for things we should do there. But we had decided that we were going to use the opportunity to relax and just hang out. Once we got to the castle, we weren't going to leave until it was time to check out. And that's exactly what we did. And it was perfect.

It took a while to drive from Galway to Donegal. At almost three hours, this was definitely the longest stretch of the journey. We passed the time on the lookout for sheep and cows and fiddled with the radio. Irish radio differs from American radio in a key way. While we have different stations broadcasting on, say, 100.1, 100.3, and 100.5, Ireland's stations take up a much broader range of bands. So the same station with be broadcasting all across 100.x. This makes for an interesting experience while flipping through the stations, as you keep catching bits of the same commercial or talk show. But Clear Channel is also over there, so for all that, the content of the broadcasts is basically the same as in America.

We decided to stop in the town of Donegal before heading to the castle. When we came in, it actually reminded me a lot of my hometown, Evergreen. There was a road next to a river with shops and restaurants. But once we got in a bit, it proved to be a lot bigger than Evergreen - Donegal has three roads and a castle (still only one intersection, though). We got lunch and then toured the castle, which I found to be disappointingly small for all that it was a really cool castle. It just didn't feel that much bigger than the house Kevin and I currently live in. But people used to live in much smaller spaces than they do now.

After the castle we wandered through some shops, and we found a book store. It even had a whole section of Irish biographies, which I'd hoping to find. I still needed a biography for the Monopoly genre reading challenge I'm doing this year, and since I'd previously read books that took place in Barcelona and Paris, I also wanted one that was set in Ireland. I found one called Roise Rua to read at the castle. We also found a restaurant that we considered coming back to for dinner, but we ended up just staying at the castle instead.

The castle we stayed in (Solis Lough Eske) was very cool and very private. It was in the center of about 40 acres of land, and not too far from a lake. Since it was our honeymoon and they didn't have many bookings in the middle of the week, they upgraded us to a Castle Suite in what turned out to be a section of the Presidential Suite. They also left chocolates and shortbread out for us to enjoy on arrival. We spent some time wandering the grounds and walked down to see the lake. Then we scheduled massages for the next day and a dinner reservation for the fancy restaurant the next night. We also went to sit in the hot tub for a while, but all we found was a pool. But, since the pool was inside a greenhouse, it was nice and warm, so we spent some time sitting there and reading before dinner.

The next day we just hung out. I read my biography and Kevin made a dent in The Wise Man's Fear. We got massages and actually found the hot tub, which was hidden in a different corner of the greenhouse than the pool. We had a very fancy dinner, which has the distinction of being the only meal I ate in Ireland that did not include potatoes in some form (there were lentils instead). Basically, it was a lazy, perfect day. The castle had all sorts of living rooms scattered through it. So we could read in leather chairs in the library or on comfy couches next to a fire or in a chair way up in the tower. It was fantastic.

By the end of our time in the castle, I was starting to feel ready to come home. But there was still one city left on the itinerary. The next day we drove over to Belfast to wrap up our amazing vacation.

Honeymoon 5: Do You Like Drinking Beer?

We got on the road and out of Dublin around noon, which was a little later than we'd been hoping for. We'd been planning to stop at a distillery, then head down to the Cliffs of Moher before checking in at our B&B in Galway. But it took so long to rent the car that we decided to scrap the Cliffs of Moher. It was about an hour out of our way, which would put us in Galway way too late.

It was nice to finally get on the road and away from the headaches of travel. Now that we finally had the car, we were much more on our own schedule. No more security nightmares or waiting around at a station. At least, no more of that until we headed home in a week. In the meantime driving through the Irish countryside was really nice. The clouds were a lot lower to the ground than I'm used to, something I've only experienced before at 10,000 feet, so it reminded me of home. It was also incredibly green, and there were cows and sheep and stone fences everywhere.

We got a bit lost while looking for the distillery - the road we needed had two exits, and we took the wrong one. But we did get there eventually. It was much lower-key than the Jameson tour. We got a packet of information that guided us through the distillery and provided fun facts. For example: originally, one of the perks of working there was a hot bath in the mash tubs at the end of the day. Also fish tended to be knocked unconscious by the alcohol in the water when they swam past the distillery, but they were always alright once they'd floated downstream to fresh water.

Kilbeggan had both the historic equipment, run by the water wheel, and newer equipment that was being actively used. We got to see a few barrels in various stages of fermentation, which was neat. Then we had lunch in the attached restaurant. I ordered the salmon and mushroom pasta off the healthy menu, which must have been written by someone who doesn't really understand what it means. It was swimming in a heavy cream sauce. Very tasty, though.

Then it was back on the road and looking at the scenery. Seeing all the different road signs was one of my favorite things, especially since so many of them were different. There was one series of signs that I couldn't figure out and finally had to look up when I got home. There were three signs that always had the pattern: \\\, \\, \. Apparently the number of slashes indicates the number of meters to the next exit.

We pulled into Galway around 4 and got a bit lost looking for our B&B. The check-in process there blew my mind in how much it basically did not exist. Kevin gave his name and the man just took us to our room. No IDs, no verification, nothing. When we went into town, they even let us borrow their umbrella in case of rain. I became very protective of it and got worried anytime Kevin started using it as a cane or a sword.

Even though we were staying outside of town in a small suburb, it only took us about 10 minutes to walk to City Center. Galway is really small, barely a city at all. There are several blocks of pedestrian mall between the Spanish Arch and Eyre Square which have pubs, restaurants, and shops all along them. We wandered over to Eyre Square to book a tour to the Aran Islands the following day, but we arrived about 15 minutes after they'd closed. So we headed back to see what else there was to do.

We found a tourist office that seemed to be unaffiliated with anything in particular. They had an Aran Island package, though it was a bit more expensive than Kevin had been anticipating. But we decided it was worth it. We were even able to arrange for pickup at the B&B the next morning, since the 8:30 breakfast meant we'd have trouble getting to Eyre Square for the 9:20 bus departure. The man at the tourist office also gave us suggestions for restaurants and pubs with live music. But when we noted that it was supposed to rain all day Monday and asked him for suggestions, his only response was "Do you like drinking beer?" Galway doesn't have a ton of indoors tourist attractions.

We went to a good seafood restaurant where I got fish and chips for the third night in a row. This place at least served cod, but I finally decided that my palate had just been ruined by the deep-fried, double-battered, American version. Kevin, meanwhile, ate a stingray fin for dinner. Then we picked a pub at random so get some more drinks at and were pleasantly surprised when a band started playing not long after we got there. Their music was more contemporary than traditional, but it was still fun. On the way back to the room we stopped at a supermarket to pick up a bottle of cider and some chips, but we didn't end up drinking much of it.

The next morning we got up bright and early to eat breakfast and head out to the Aran Islands. This involved an hour-long bus ride and a 45 minute ferry ride across really choppy water. Once on the island, we boarded a bus and set out along the narrow roads listening to our awesome tour guide tell us about the island. He pointed out the island's bank, which is the smallest in the country and only opens for 4 hours a week. When you only serve 800 people, there's not much need to be open more than that.

We stopped near the base of a medieval fort called Dun Aonghasa (pronounced Angus) for a couple of hours. That gave us time to walk up and explore the fort, grab some lunch, and peruse the shops. The fort was really cool, and in surprisingly good shape considering it was basically constructed of rocks piled up together. There was some restoration work done a century or so ago, but I was still impressed. The fort was on some cliffs, so we spent some time exploring those before heading back to the cafe, where I discovered that soda bread may not taste very good, but it is excellent for sopping up soup.

A storm had taken out the coastal road on the island in February, so we did a bit of a modified tour that skipped the seals. But we still got to see a bunch of cool things, and learn about the economy of the island. Basically, if you were playing Settlers of Catan there, all you would have was sheep and stone and you'd have to trade for everything else. It's definitely not an easy life.

After seeing a few more sites, we got some time at another set of gift shops and the local pub before it was time to head back to the mainland. The ferry ride was a bit easier this time, whether it's because I was braced for it or because we sat closer to the middle of the boat, I'm not sure, but the sea definitely wasn't any calmer. At least I remembered to wait until we'd reached the relatively calm bay before attempting to use the bathroom on the ride back. It kept me from bouncing all over the room while I was pulling up my pants and washing my hands.

We got back, found a small place for dinner, and decided to check out one of the pubs that was reported to have good music. But the music didn't start until ten and, as previously noted, we are old beyond our years (or I am, at least). Instead we enjoyed our beers for a bit, played more cribbage, and I played fetch with an old dog who was wandering around the bar. Then it was back to the B&B to finish the cider and read.

The next day it was supposed to be really rainy, so we decided to go for a drive to stay out of it. We figured the Cliffs of Moher would be cool, even if the weather was crappy, and headed off in that direction. The drive was most along narrow, windy country roads that inexplicably had speed limits of 100 km/hour. Kevin was only going 80, and I was still fearing for my life. Even after I made him slow down, I felt like we were going to crash into the hedge every time we passed another car. To be fair to Kevin, we only did once, and it was mostly the other car's fault.

We were surprised that the weather remained sunny and perfect for the entire drive and our visit to the cliffs. It was a bit windy, but it could have been way worse. We walked along the cliffs for a while until I lost my nerve and we had to go back. The cliffs were beautiful, but they were also completely terrifying. And Kevin's carefree attitude did nothing to help my own anxiety. We stopped for lunch in a small town on the way back to Galway and toyed with the idea of visiting some caves but ultimately decided not to. Back at the B&B Kevin took a nap, and I finished my book.

A fellow traveler staying at the B&B had mentioned a microbrewery in Galway that sounded cool, so we decided to check it out that afternoon. These same travelers were rather condescending about the fact that we only got two weeks of vacation time a year. But I don't understand how Australia ever produces anything if their employees are allowed to take an eight-month leave of absence to sail halfway around the world.

Anyway, we went to Galway Bay Brewery, and I'm really glad we did. It was one of the highlights of the trip. They had seven beers on tap, and provided flights of 3 1/3 pints for the same price as a pint. We tried everything except the chocolate milk stout, and it was all really good. Their peanut butter porter was definitely different, and their double IPA was the smoothest double IPA I have ever tasted. It was actually less hoppy than their regular IPA, which was also very good.

Since there weren't very many people there (and probably because we stayed and drank for a while and were generally interested in beer) they offered to give us a tour of the brewery. This was really cool, particularly because it was still such a small operation. We got to handle and smell the different flavored malts. And the guys were actively bottling when we went back. I'd never been able to tour a brewery that was actively working before, and it was a really cool experience.

For dinner that night we decided to take a break from the local cuisine and found a cute Italian restaurant. I had a fantastic lamb ravioli, Kevin has a pizza covered in meat, and we even took a break from the beer to have a bottle of wine. Afterwards we went back to the bar where we'd found the live music on the first night, but no one was playing that night. So we eventually decided to head back to the B&B and get some sleep before heading north the next morning.

Honeymoon 4: It's Like Willy Wonka's Candy Factory for Adults

While we were waiting for our bags in the Dublin airport, we spent some time trying to figure out how to get to the hotel. Kevin connected his phone to the airport wifi, and a map let us know that we definitely would not be walking to the hotel. The buses and trains seemed overly complicated, like they would require several transfers. We decided that it would be easier to just take a cab, even though it would cost more. Then, as we were heading to the taxi stand with our bags, I saw a map for the Airlift's bus route which went from the airport to a point about a block away from the hotel we were staying at. Score one for me.

Our hotel was the last stop on the bus, which gave us a chance to see some of Dublin as we came in and wound around the city. I was impressed with how modern it is near the docks. There were a lot of new buildings and construction all over the place. Apparently joining the EU has been a real boon to Dublin's economy. Farther inland, the buildings are a lot older, though certainly not rundown. For the most part.

Our hotel was in a perfect location. We were at the end of downtown, on the river right next to the train station and park and across from the Guinness Brewery and Storehouse. The view out of our window was a field full of kegs, which was definitely unique. And our travel agent had arranged for us to have breakfast at all of the hotels in Ireland, which gave us one less thing to worry about every morning.

After stowing our stuff in the room we went out to The Brazen Head, Ireland's oldest pub. It was founded in 1198, making it over three times as old as The USA. That's a long time. Then we went across the street for dinner at a place called O'Shea's. After that the plan was to hit every pub between there and our hotel, but we only came across one that was open. So we stopped in for beers and talked to some locals for a bit. Then we stationed ourselves at the hotel bar for a while to read and play cribbage.

The next morning we got up ready to explore Dublin. We had a huge breakfast at the hotel buffet (this became a theme, breakfast seems to be a big meal in Ireland), then set off to get tickets for the tram and head downtown.

The first stop was Trinity College, where the library had the Book of Kells on display. The Book of Kells is this fantastic, intricately decorated manuscript of the New Testament. There was an exhibit on the coming of Catholicism and, more importantly, written language to Ireland and the development of these books. The best part of the display was the timeline of the church was originally held, which was leveled, burned, pillaged, and destroyed so many times that it eventually stopped listing individual instances. On the second floor of the library there was a temporary exhibit about Brian Boru, who styled himself the Emperor of Ireland back in ~1040.

After that we went to check out the Dublin Castle, walking through the rain and down wrong streets to find it. We ducked into a market for a bit to avoid the worst of the rain, and eventually we came across the back gate of the castle. We walked around it, but we decided that it probably wasn't worth the money to go inside. Kevin remembered being underwhelmed by it the last time he was in Ireland, and I didn't care that much. So we got lunch instead. Then it was off to the City Cathedral and St Patrick's Cathedral, neither of which was allowing visitors inside. We must have arrived during Mass.

Unable to see the churches, we opted for beer instead and went to tour the Guinness Storehouse. They've set up a really cool museum that takes you through the process of making beer, the history of Arthur Guinness and his family and legacy (he had 21 children, which meant that his wife spent 16 years of her life pregnant, as one exhibit pointed out). There was information about the building of oak casks, the transportation of Guinness around the world, and the history of their advertising campaign. There was a lot of cool information here, like the fact that Guinness was the first company to institute paid vacations and that they buy 2/3 of the barley grown in Ireland each year. We also got to learn how to taste Guinness in a rather silly exhibit that had us walk down a dark hallway into a white room to awaken our senses. Then it was time to redeem our tickets for a couple of pints in the circular bar at the top of the storehouse. It was really crowded, but the views were pretty incredible.

Since we had day passes for the tram, we decided to ride it out to the end of the line and see some of the suburbs surrounding Dublin. It gave us a better sense of the size of the city and was the first time I got to see the gas prices over there. Gas cost about 1.55 Euro/liter, which works out to over $8/gallon, which really puts things in perspective for America.

That night we decided to get dinner in the Temple Bar part of Dublin and find some live, traditional music. The place we went to for dinner had live music, but it was all classic rock. The guy was playing songs like The Boxer, All ALong the Watchtower, and Brown-Eyed Girl, and I was the only one in the place who knew the sha-la-la's for Brown-Eyed Girl. We both got fish and chips for dinner, which I was a little underwhelmed by. It's mostly that I'm used to cod instead of haddock, but it just didn't taste the way I was expecting. Also it was served with a green sauce that was so bland I couldn't tell if it was trying to be avocado or wasabi.

The place we stopped for dinner advertised a free comedy show that night, which we decided to stick around for. This was a colossal mistake. Not only did the show start a full half hour after advertised, the comedy was horrible and offensive. We ended up leaving halfway through, but it left a sour taste in my mouth for the rest of the evening. We wandered down the street until we found a pub where we could get seats and caught the tail end of a set of music. The next band wasn't starting until 10:30 and, deciding we couldn't stay up that late, we opted to just go back to the hotel. Where I promptly fell asleep, thus beginning my trend of sleeping about 10 hours a night for the rest of our vacation.

The next day Kevin wanted to go for a bike ride, so I made plans to entertain myself until he got back around 2. I was going to spend some time exploring and reading the park next to our hotel, then check out the museum on the other side of our hotel, and finish with a late lunch somewhere. Unfortunately, the wind and rain drove me out of the park pretty quickly, and the museum proved to be centered on military history which bores me to tears. So I decided to not worry so much about doing something and just relax. I figured out how to hook my table up to the hotel's wi-fi and wiled away the morning browsing the internet, reading in the bath, and enjoying a leisurely lunch. It ended up working out perfectly.

When Kevin got back from his bike ride, we went over to tour the Jameson Distillery. But the first open tour wasn't for two hours, so after buying our tickets we found a bar where we could drink cider and play cribbage. You've probably noticed at this point that we spent a significant part of the honeymoon playing cribbage. We probably played 5 or 6 games a day. It's a pretty excellent way to kill time in a bar.

The Jameson tour was a lot of fun. It started off with a really silly video - a historical reenactment of a NYC journalist interviewing Mr. Jameson about his business. Then we went through the process of making whiskey. The original site of the distillery is just a museum at this point, so everything was a recreation of the original method. It was pretty cool to see, though. Especially when it came to maturing and blending the whiskey. They use three different types of barrels to mature the whiskey, barrels that have previously held bourbon, sherry, or port. Each gives the whiskey its own flavor and they're all blended together at the end. Also, a truly absurd amount of whiskey evaporates in the maturation process. Historically this is referred to as the "angel's share", but functionally it means that the barrels that have been maturing for 18 years are only 2/3 full.

We decided to give the Temple Bar another try for dinner and music, but once again we just didn't have the energy to wait for music to start. Instead we ended up at a pub by our hotel, drinking cider and whiskey and watching trivia game shows with the locals.

On Saturday morning, with the honeymoon approaching the halfway point, it was time to head back to the airport to pick up our rental car and head out to explore the rest of Ireland. Picking up the car was a long and tedious process, but we eventually got it and got on the road to Galway.

Honeymoon 3: I'm Inclined to Like Anyone Who Gets Me Free Champagne

Our train arrived in Paris a little before 11 in the morning. We spent some time trying to figure out whether we could actually get reimbursed for the train ticket we had to exchange (fingers crossed it all works out), then got a taxi to the hotel. The taxi ride was a little terrifying. I'm not convinced Parisian motorists respect lanes. Our cabbie was weaving in and out of traffic and even went up on the curb a few times. But we made it to the hotel in one piece and got settled there.

We'd known this would be a cheapish hotel, since we'd splurged a bit in Barcelona and would mostly be staying in nice places in Ireland. But it was practically a hostel. We weren't allowed to have food in our room. We're still not sure the door to our room even locked, though thankfully nothing was stolen. The elevator wasn't big enough for both of us plus our suitcases. And the staircases were uneven and each contained a different number of stairs (ranging from 17 to 22) But it did have a bed and a shower, and that's ultimately all we needed. At least the toilet wasn't down the hall.

Once we'd deposited our bags and cleaned away the grime of travel, we headed out to enjoy Paris. Our hotel was near the Gare du Nord train station, pretty far north of the interesting stuff in the city, and definitely not the station we'd arrived at earlier that day. But walking is good for you and way simpler than trying to figure out a subway system in a foreign language. Of course, after walking about 10 miles a day every day in Barcelona in flip flops, my back was beginning to complain mightily about all this walking. But more about that later.

We stopped in a little cafe for lunch where I got the best pasta carbonara I've ever had in my life and Kevin got a rather mediocre chicken fried steak. Then we continued walking down to the river, stopping to take a picture of the Opera House and check out a couple of shops. We wandered down the Champs-Elysees and found a bench to sit on. There was an adorable dog who was so small his belly grazed the top of the grass. He was playing fetch and every time he took off running after the ball, it looked like he was just skimming along on top of the grass. Then we headed back to take a look at the river and walk up to the Lourve.

Guys, the Lourve is massive. It's roughly the size of the National Mall in DC. This place just keeps going and going and however close you think you're getting to it you still have so much farther to go. Along the way we saw a trampoline park, a statue of a tree that looked exactly like a tree that had just fallen over, a couple of goats, and a strangely disproportional statue of a woman. We stopped next to the last one to play cards for a bit and were accosted by a couple of ducks. They walked up to us, one on each side and stood begging for food. They had that same look in their eyes Kina gets, except a bit more insistent. And they refused to go away. It was honestly a little scary.

When my back was feeling better we continued on our trek to the Lourve. We finally made it to the plaza where everyone is selling cheap Eiffel Tower keychains. We kept walking until we finally came to the glass pyramid and I sat in awe at the massiveness of this building. Neither words nor pictures can really capture how truly huge it is - you'll just have to go there for yourself.

After we had properly admired the Lourve (without going inside because we didn't want to spend the time or money) we found a little cafe for Kevin to get a fruit tart. Then we found a different cafe where we split half a liter of wine and played more cribbage while we waited for the rain to stop. Then it was time to head over to Notre Dame, another hugely impressive building. Between the height and the stained glass, it's no wonder people used to fear God as much as they did. Also, does anyone know the interior ceiling height of Notre Dame? We were guessing maybe 100 or 150 feet, but had no way of checking this. The internet mostly concerns itself with the height of the building and it's spires.

We had a couple of hours to kill before our dinner reservation at this point, but that wasn't enough time to find another monument or anything. So instead we found a bench to sit on, and I read while Kevin napped. While we were sitting there I saw two couples in wedding dress arrive to take pictures outside Notre Dame. I guess it's a pretty popular spot for wedding pictures, even on a Tuesday afternoon.

Kevin woke up and we decided to wander a bit more. I'm really glad we did, because right by Notre Dame we came across a memorial that I had no idea was there. The Deportation Memorial is at the tip of the island that Notre Dame is on. You go down a narrow staircase to a white courtyard. Then when you turn around there's this dark crypt that has hundreds of lights representing the Jews who were sent to concentration camps under Nazi rule. It was incredibly powerful.

We still had an hour and half until our dinner reservation at this point, but we figured that it would behoove us to at least figure out where the restaurant was, and maybe get some drinks in the meantime. We found the restaurant, which didn't look open, and retraced our steps to get some wine in a cafe at the end of the street while we waited.

Dinner itself was pretty amazing. Kevin got escargot, which he'd been hoping to find since we got to France. I had this weird avocado thing that contained the same ingredients as guacamole but tasted absolutely nothing like it. Then we had lamb and duck while talking to a woman who was sitting by herself at the table next to ours. She was spending a month in Paris to celebrate her 75th birthday. When we told her we were celebrating our honeymoon, she got the wait staff to bring us complimentary champagne with our desserts. She was a pretty excellent lady, and I'm glad we were able to talk to her a bit.

After dinner my back was still killing me. The chair was wedged against the wall in a way that required me to sit crookedly which did not help things. We briefly tried to figure out the subway system, but I decided that I could power through and walk back to the hotel. We only had to stop once for me to rest while we drank beers in a bar district we stumbled across.

The next morning the plan was to get up, get breakfast and head to the airport. Our flight to Dublin wasn't until 1, but we figured that we might as well sit and read at the airport as anywhere else. So after finding some crepes, we headed out to the Charles de Gaulle airport, which is officially my least favorite airport in the world.

Getting to the airport proved pretty easy. The subway ran from the train station right by our hotel all the way out, and we managed to get on an express line that didn't stop anywhere else. I was surprised that not only does Paris allow food on their subway, they actually sell it there. It made me miss DC's relatively clean metro.

We were at the airport by 11, at which point we entered hell. We were flying on Aer Lingus, which only had one flight out of the airport that day, so there was only one person manning the check-in desk. A second person came at one point, but only stayed for half an hour. We stood in that line for over an hour. When we finally got to the front, we discovered that we had to go somewhere else to pay for our checked bags. There, we discovered that the weight limit was lower than we'd expected - 20 kg as opposed to 23 kg (50 lbs). We ended up paying 80 Euro to check our bags, which we hadn't been expecting. And they didn't even give us a chance to repack things into our carry-ons and get the weight down or anything.

With tickets in hand, we wandered through the massive airport, found the right security line, stood in that for another eternity, and finally made it to our gates minutes before the plane started boarding. It's a good thing we got there as early as we did. While we sat at the gate (Kevin was engrossed by Kvothe earning his talent pipes), a little old lady who reminded me immensely of my grandmother struck up a conversation with me and we spent some time complaining about the airport and the French in general. It was nice to gripe a bit after the ridiculous ordeal. Then it was finally time to get on the plane and head to Ireland.

Honestly, the food in Paris was excellent, and it was fun to see the sights. But given the stress of the train and the airport, and my general impression of the city (dirty, smelly, crowded, not unlike NYC except no one spoke English), I think we would have been better served to spend an extra day or two exploring Barcelona and cut France out of the trip altogether. Oh well, next time we'll know not to try and cram an entire city into  single day.

Honeymoon 2: It'll Be an Adventure!

I was really excited to take the train from Barcelona to Paris. I have excellent memories of taking an overnight train from Paris to Rome when I was younger, and I was hoping to replicate the experience. I was looking forward to a fun adventure, one that might not be reproducible with the advent of high speed trains. What I forgot is that adventures tend to be a lot less fun when you're actually living them. They make for good stories after the fact, though.

We got to the train station at around 4:00 for our 6:30 train. The first train took us to Perpignan, about an hour and a half away. The second, overnight train left from Perpignan at about 9:40 and would get us to Paris at 7:30 the next morning. We'd bought a bottle of wine for the journey and getting to the train station so early gave us time to get the lay of the land and find sandwiches for dinner. It also gave us a ton of time to sit and read, which we did until the train started boarding.

At abut 6:10, when the line had died down a bit, we went up to the counter to present our tickets and board the train. We were not allowed to board the train. Our tickets were for the following day.

I'm fairly certain that at this point my heart stopped beating as it plunged into my stomach. I couldn't believe I'd made such a stupid mistake when booking the tickets.

I proceeded to panic, barely holding it together enough to follow Kevin around as we tried to first exchange our tickets, then scrap them and buy new ones. I'm not lying when I say that I was barely holding it together. I was beginning to hyperventilate, and was having trouble thinking clearly enough to figure out a next step. But Kevin is completely cool under stress and was able to follow everyone's directions and get us into the correct line.

I should also mention that it's a damn good thing he trained me like a dog. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time with us will have noticed that Kevin has a specific, two-toned whistle that I respond to almost subconsciously. (He trained me to do this without my knowledge.) Like a dog, I can even hear it when almost no one else can, because I'm so attuned to it. But it's especially useful when, for example, we get separated in a crowded French train station. I can always find him almost instantly and with very little conscious thought. Handy when I'm panicking.

We made it to the counter with about seven minutes to spare. The man helping us was old and cranky and didn't speak a word of English. He got really mad at us for not understanding the credit card machine when it came time to pay. But we got the tickets, ran back through security and up to the counter. The man who'd rejected us before recognized us, waved us forward, and called down to ask them to hold the train for another minute. We made it on right in the nick of time.

At this point I began to calm down, but we still needed to figure out the second leg of the journey. Luckily we'd have about an hour and a half at the next train station. We figured that would give us plenty of time to work everything out.

But the train station in Perpignan was closed. There was a lady at information, but she couldn't really help us. Not for lack of trying, I should note; she just didn't have the power to exchange our tickets. We figured out the electronic ticket counter after several tries, but it claimed that the train for that night was fully booked. The lady at information said that it was worth waiting for the train to arrive and talking to the conductor. Sometimes there were cancellations or no shows that meant we still had a chance of getting on the train.

So we waited.

Finally the train pulled up and we found someone official looking. He seemed optimistic about our situation and directed us to the front of the train. The man there also seemed optimistic and sent us back along the train a bit. We talked to a couple of more people before we finally found the correct person in charge. He immediately shut down our request. We didn't have the right tickets, nothing he could do. The train left without us.

On the bright side, Europe is introducing high speed trains all around the continent. There was one leaving at 5:30 the next morning that we could get on and that would put us in Paris around 10:30, just a few hours later than we'd planned. We exchanged our tickets and even got vouchers for the price difference. We're hoping we filled out all the paperwork correctly to actually get that money back, it will help offset the cost of extra tickets we had to buy.

With the tickets exchanged we went in search of a place to spend the night. There was a hotel right across the street from the station - it was literally closer to the train tracks than the bathroom. They had rooms for 50 Euro so we booked one. Actually, they had rooms for 40 Euro, but that extra 10 Euro got you a shower. The toilet was still down the hall, though.

The room was tiny, the shower was absurd, and Kevin saw a bug early on that made us super paranoid about bed bugs. But we had a bottle of wine, so it wasn't a total loss. We drank it, went to bed, and got up at 5 the next morning to make it on the train.

Thankfully there was food for sale on that train, so I didn't have to go without breakfast which would not have been pretty. I went to buy a pain au chocolat, but ended up with a hot chocolate instead. Then I got made fun of for not knowing French, but the man did, thankfully, give me my chocolate croissant. Back in my seat I read some and slept some and watched the countryside go by while the train slowly filled up. Everything worked out in the end, but I'm still mad at myself for messing up the train tickets. At least we got that adventure I'd been hoping for. Sort of.

Honeymoon 1: I Thought You Didn't Like Sangria

Our honeymoon got off to a great start when I managed to tear my toenail off while carrying my bag from the house to the car. I picked the bag up while I was twisted out of the door and hit my foot at exactly the wrong angle. This in no way set the tone for the rest of the trip, but it did mean I had to wear a bandage for a few days and be extra careful while walking around.

The honeymoon really started when we got on the red eye plane that was taking us to Europe. I hadn't traveled across the Atlantic Ocean for six years, so getting free food on the plane - both dinner and breakfast - was a nice surprise. It was less nice, and really should have been a sign of things to come, when they weighed our carry on luggage in addition to our checked luggage. Thankfully everything was under the weight limit and there were no problems getting on the plane. We didn't even have to go through customs, which was surprising. We'd even allowed for extra time for that, which meant we ended up with a bunch of time to kill in the airport.

After a seven hour flight, during which I watched The Book Thief and largely failed to get any sleep, we landed in Brussels, where we got our passports stamped and awaited the second leg of our journey to Barcelona. The Brussels airport was under construction, which meant that we had to take a surprisingly long bus ride from our gate to the plane, which we hadn't expected. But that was made up for by the fact that we somehow got bumped into Economy Plus on the second flight. Not only did we get extra legroom, we got free hot pockets and free soft drinks on the second flight. (nothing is free on planes in Europe, including water. This became a theme.)

We finally landed in Barcelona around 3 in the afternoon, got some currency (pro-tip - try not to do this at airports) and took a taxi to the hotel. The hotel room had a number of surprises that we didn't expect. A room key was required to turn on the lights in the room, which appears to be part of a Green initiative in the EU. It took us a while to figure out why the lights weren't turning on. We were also surprised by the lack of shower curtain (how do Europeans manage to not get water ALL OVER the bathroom?) and Kevin was endlessly confused by the bidet.

Once we'd settled into the hotel, there was plenty of daylight left, so we went out to explore the city. Our hotel was just north of downtown, which made it really easy to walk everywhere we wanted to go. We headed over to the Plaza Catalunya and wandered down La Rambla towards the ocean.

We'd been really excited about La Rambla, hearing that it was one of the must-sees in Barcelona with lots of shops. And while we'd been expecting local artisan crafts, something like a street fair, what we got was stores like H&M and Gucci. On top of that, the street was as crowded as Times Square, so the entire thing was a bit of a let down. Luckily, Kevin had remembered that there was a local meat market near La Rambla and we managed to spot it. Wandering through that was a lot of fun, especially seeing all the pig and goat legs and whole rabbits and fish. It would be nice if there was such an extensive meat market closer to home, and it was a shame that we couldn't buy anything there, not having any way to cook it.

Eventually we reached the ocean, which we sat by and admired for a while. Then we decided to head back to the hotel through the winding alleys of the Gothic Quarter. I could spend forever in the Gothic Quarter. The buildings are all stone and incredibly old. The streets are largely too narrow for cars. And there are random cafes and shops everywhere you turn. We eventually picked a restaurant that was nothing more than a few tables (well, barrels with stools) in an alley and got some tapas and half a liter of wine. Then we wandered back to the hotel, stopping for some sangria on the way, and finally made it up to the rooftop, pool side bar of the hotel, where the cheapest thing on the menu was a bottle of champagne. We drank it and played cribbage, trying to stay awake as long as possible.

Unfortunately, we still woke up around 6 the next morning, which was rough, since nothing even opened, let alone served breakfast, until 8. It didn't help that it was Sunday.

For our only full day in Barcelona, the plan was to wander around the Cituadella Park, get some lunch, hang out at the beach in the afternoon, and finish with a seafood dinner at the park. But we greatly overestimated how long all of this would take. After finding breakfast, we wandered through the park, got lost on a random, smelly street next to the train tracks, and still made it to the beach by 9:30. Once there we spread out a towel and Kevin read while I took a nap - I still hadn't had any caffeine by this point. 

When I woke up we wandered over to the pier to get pizza, then Kevin rented a bike for a few hours and I found a cafe to sit in with my book and a pot of tea. After that we got a liter of sangria, which is practically cheaper than water in Barcelona, and by the way I hated having to pay for water everywhere we went. It's interesting the things you take for granted, like freely available drinking water everywhere. Also I'm used to sangria being super sweet in the states, so I tend not to like it. But in Barcelona it had a sharpness that made it much more palatable. Then we decided to go to the zoo, couldn't find it, and ended up finding a patch of grass to play cribbage and nap in until dinner.

Dinner was mostly fantastic. We got a bunch of seafood appetizers: mussels, prawns, salmon, and calamari. Kevin ordered a fantastic lobster dish, which made up for my less-than-stellar tuna. It was probably fine, but I usually eat my tuna rare, if not barely seared, and this steak came out well done. On the way home we stopped for cheap mojitos, then we stopped for cheaper mojitos, and finally got back to our hotel room.

On Monday we packed up and stored our suitcases at the front desk. Breakfast was a lot easier to find that morning - I had a ham sandwich. Ham sandwiches are infinitely more delicious in Spain than they are in America. Both the bread and the pigs are superior. Then we headed north to check out the fancy shopping district and La Sagrada Familia. Sadly the line to get into La Sagrada Familia wrapped around the block. We should have been expecting that, but we didn't, and we decided that we didn't want to stand in it. It was still cool to see the cathedral from the outside, though.

We decided to get paella for lunch, because I was convinced Kevin would love it (he did), but it was weirdly hard to find. All morning long there was a paella shop on every street corner, but as soon as we decided to get some all we could find were sandwich shops. I guess we were walking in the wrong direction. We did eventually find a place with paella and sangria, and it was all delicious.

We'd scheduled massages at a spa around the corner from our hotel for the early afternoon, but when we arrived it became apparent that the place was not what we'd had in mind. There was a bit of a communication barrier, but after the words "erotic" and "happy ending" we pretty much hightailed it out of there. Instead we went back to the Gothic Quarter to wander a bit. This time I was more properly dressed (a dress instead of shorts) and they let me into the cathedral. After that it was time to say good bye to Barcelona and head to the train station.

All in all Barcelona was a wonderful city. I fell in love with it a little bit. It was nice to be so close to both the ocean and the mountains. It was an incredibly clean city, the way DC is clean, with people out sweeping and picking up litter all over the place. There were also these grand avenues every few blocks that intersected at these great plazas. Each avenue had three lanes of traffic surrounded by walking and biking paths, with bus and taxi lanes outside those and then the sidewalks. Once you'd figured those out, getting around the city was a breeze. I wish we'd had more time in Barcelona, and we'll definitely have to go back some day. We didn't come close to seeing everything I wanted to see.