My head is killing me, my throat feels like the Rub’ al Khali and my gut aches like someone has been kicking it all night. And I get to go to work in two hours. Happy joy feelings suffuse me!

Back to the weekend. The Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin are truly beautfiul, all I could think was that dad would have loved them. Never mind photography, I took a bunch of shots in one glasshouse and then pretty much put the camera away as I was enjoying the smells and textures too much. There was one room with flowers and trees of the Americas and I will swear to my dying day that it smelled just like San Diego. We went baiting squirrels as well, although the only big lens I currently have is the 70-300mm for the Minolta and (so I thought) I had no film on me, feh. Trust me to find two rolls in my bag after I got to the hostel. I had a few wide angle shots as I was borrowing Ryan’s 10-20, but they wound up corrupted for some reason.

But yeah, lots of wonderful flower photos. I think flowers are awesome as they seem so simple to start with, but the closer you get the more intricate they before.

It started yesterday with stomach cramps, moving on to diarrhea and worse cramps by today. It wasn’t the proudest moment of my life, but it all wound up with me having to sneak into the ladies bathroom in Bewley’s cafe on O’Connell Street at 8 o’clock this morning as the men’s were closed for cleaning.

The second trip to the embassy went about as well as the last. It mostly consisted of shouting at the head of the immigrant visa department. She rejected the affidavits from Mariah and her family because they used the I-864 form, instead of the I-134. One is an “affidavit of support” and the other is an “affidavit of support for a visa applicant.” Confused? The two forms are near enough to identical to make no difference, both are approved by the Department of Homeland Security, and indeed there is no specific prescribed form in the papers I have from the embassy. But no, they won’t accept the standard I-864, and the administrator refused to expand on why this is so until I had threatened to lodge a formal complaint with her superior - Mariah and I have paid hundreds of dollars on this application, and I expect some sort of show from them.

Moving backward, it all started when she rejected the police certificate because they put my date of birth in as “11981.” To mine self, it’s incredibly petty and beureaucratic, amplified by the fact they refused to help me until I threatened to tattle to their bosses.

So yeah, another fucking setback. The only good thing that came out of this was I forced them to return my passport - the immigrant visa section tried (unintentionally, I think) to put me in a bind where I had to get documents that required my passport, but they had my passport. Half the time I want to climb into a plane and just go, I miss you both every day and it’s never going to get any easier.

It’s not much of a consolation, but at least the boardies side of things went a little better. First off, a huge thanks to DarrenG for putting me up on Saturday night, and for the long-term loan of the Sigma 70-300mm lens. I had an interesting time, I learned a few new things to do, both with my camera and Photoshop, and it was interesting to see everyone’s photos of the same subject.

Since this is a photo blog, I supposed I’m required to deliver a photo as compensation for all my rantings. This is a non-tone mapped HDR photo from three exposures, composed in Photoshop. I took it the snaps during the boards.ie trip to Kilmainham, but I’ve had it sitting on my hard drive since then. So eh, here it is:

Kilmainham

I was in Athenry with mum and Jenn this morning, and had them drop me off by the cemetary so I could get a few photos. It’s a beautiful village, and I really wish I had had more time to get in shots.

Pegasus

Decay