Dear Spider Gods...

...Please don't smite us for killing your spider young."  Maura, one of my housemates, in the kitchen as Rhiannon killed a full-grown spider on the ceiling.  We've had a minor spider infestation in the kitchen.  At first there were just four adult spiders and we let it go and then the next day, this was on Friday I think, they'd laid eggs that hatched and there were hundreds of baby spiders. So now we kill the big ones when we see them.

Outside my window 20 minutes ago:

Also it was a double rainbow, though Maura said she saw it where it was almost a quadruple rainbow.


So it rained again today, but not as much as it did yesterday.  Yesterday I went to Penney's a bought a disposable pair of boots while personally refusing to get rain boots.  I don't think I did anything else other than procrastinate a lot.

Today we went to St Patrick's Cathedral and Christchurch after lectures.  Lectures today were pretty good.  They were about Irish history in the 17th century, the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, and Jonathan Swift.  Yesterday's were about ancient stone and metalwork, Irish history in the 16th century, and historiography in the 19th century.  Of yesterdays, the latter two were taught by the same professor who was the archetype of what you'd expect: white haired old Brit with entertaining inflection.  While the first of his lectures was really interesting, the second was awful.  Metalwork was very intriguing.

Inside St Patrick's Cathedral.  These are some of the flags I mentioned.

The cathedrals were both Anglican and very nice, but there was definitely something lacking about the trips.  We were handed one-page write ups about each, but I felt like I wasn't getting much out of them other than thinking they were beautiful.  Certainly not enough information to write a paper about the architecture of either.  St Patrick's Cathedral has so many off shoots with lots of statues and memorials, it's overwhelming and seems disorganized.  There's a pretty cool place with the actual battle flags brought back by Irish battalions who'd fought in British wars and are kind of rotting on the ceiling.  But both were very rah-rah England which was strange.  Especially since St Patrick's had the chair William III sat in while attending a service praying in thanks for the English victory in the Battle of the Boyne, not a bright spot in Irish nationalist history.

Christchurch

The crypt of Christchurch was really cool, but oddly had a coffee shop in it.  But again it contained a huge commemorative set of gold dishes given by William III in celebration of the victory.  It was weird to be in two giant medieval cathedrals that had been re-purposed for the Anglican Church of Ireland.