I packed it in for the holidays- hightailed it out to America and didn’t write a damn word the whole time, not even anything as substantial as a damn MySpace comment. Trying to get my head clear.

Not sure how it went, but I made it through, two weeks without anything peeling off my fingers. Felt all right, like that sort of break usually does. I took 2007 off from poetry entirely - I think I scrawled one out on a table at Spiderhouse in the first week or so of January, but that was mostly for old time’s sake. 2007 is gone now, and I have not added at all to that particular body of work. There’ll be another time for it, later on. I’m not sure when.

At any rate- it’s nice to be back typing, even if it’s just right here, right now. Gotta retrain muscles, get my fingers used to clicking the keys of this new computer I picked up while I was back in the States. Europeans never refer to America as the states, incidentally. It’s a pet-name for home that marks one as American as readily as an East Texas twang or white socks and sandals and a fanny pack while waiting in line for the Tower of London.

The new computer’s fine, incidentally. Cost about a quarter of what it would have taken to get a new Dell in the UK, what with tarrifs and VAT and all that. My old one’s corpse sits now on the top shelf of a bookcase in Indianapolis, waiting for its chance to rise again in someone else’s possession, beaten nearly to death but with a little life left in it for someone on a budget who just needs one to see ‘em through- like Vinny Testeverde, maybe. They tell me the classics never go out of style.

I’m three days out of America now.

We flew out of Chicago on 30 December, a 5:00pm flight on Delta connecting to an 8:45pm flight, also on Delta, to Dublin. The whole affair allowed us fifty minutes to transfer for an international flight at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which has too many names, too many concourses, and too few trains between them. We got to our gate a few minutes after the plane left, after running there on the advice of a gate attendant. Wouldn’t have mattered if we’d made it earlier, we were to learn much, much later, as international flights close the gate fifteen minutes prior to takeoff, and weather delays were such that we touched ground after they had already closed the flight.

This meant two and a half hours of fighting a losing battle on the phone with Delta customer service- airport employees are given no authority to offer you anything except for a coupon to save few bucks on your hotel for the night- which ended with me sighing, giving up, and handing the phone to Kat, so she could offer to the customer service supervisor of Delta’s Salt Lake City office a steady stream of invective that culminated in five minutes of her repeating to the representative tell me again what you can’t do for me- go on, tell me something else you can’t do! until she threatened her job and slammed the receiver down, while the cleaning lady in that section of concourse T looked on in a mixture of trauma and admiration. The ball’s in my court, now, because that’s how we fight these things. She’s got the better temper, and I’ve got the patience to endure months of customer service emails until I get apologies from every level of employee at the company and much more in benefits and/or cash than I deserve. Hell, it got me a convertible last year. So we’ll see how it goes- I’m shooting for one of those ‘golden tickets’ Jack tells Kate about in the season finale of lost.

At any rate, that left us with 24 hours to kill in Hotlanta. We were checked into a Holiday Inn just north of the airport, with our plans to spend New Year’s Eve in Dublin replaced with new plans to spend the night high above the Atlantic Ocean, which the pilot would eventually remind us was one of the safest places on earth to celebrate the holiday.

The day would have been a bust, but my wife is clever and cunning and so we used the money we saved on the hotel room we’d reserved for the night in Dublin to instead rent a car for the day. It ended up being the best day of the entire trip, largely because it was unexpected. The night before I had expected we would spend 24 hours in the Atlanta airport, sleeping on the floor with our bag straps wrapped around our legs for safe-keeping. Instead, for less money than we’d have spent on a room in Ireland, we stayed at a mediocre hotel, took a car out in the morning and had pancakes at the Majestic, saw juno, wandered around Little Five Points, and generally turned something unexpectedly crappy into something unexpectedly cool.

This is good, because Dublin was a bust. We arrived jetlagged and cranky on New Year’s Day, stunned to learn that the prices were even worse than London (average sandwich at an average crappy restaurant- €13, or £10, or $16), with everything closed anyway because of the holiday. If we’d arrived the day before, as scheduled, we’d have had New Year’s Eve as our cranky jetlag day and been well-rested to enjoy the sight of closed-up shops and pubs throughout Ireland’s largest city. Instead, we spent our day in Ireland conquering jetlag, walking a few miles at twilight to check out the half-empty sights of Grafton Street, eating fish and chips, and finally watching the great debaters in our hotel room.

Movies were a big part of the past two weeks. I don’t watch many here, since the nearest cinema wants £11 ($22) a ticket for a first-run picture, and I’ve missed it. From the first day in Chicago until the last night in Dublin, I saw no country for old men, i am legend, charlie wilson’s war, walk hard, juno, the bucket list, and the great debaters.

The only ones I’d fully endorse would be charlie wilson’s war and juno, though I enjoyed most of no country for old men a great deal, and am convinced that on the second printing of sometimes you gotta fight the bear the cover blurb will be attributed to academy award winner Dan Bern for “It’s A Beautiful Ride” from walk hard. the bucket list was crappy, and the great debaters had a surprisingly great performance from Denzel Whitaker and not much else that you wouldn’t expect. And i am legend was exactly what I thought it would be, but with crappier CGI.

But those first two movies- hot damn! There aren’t a lot of pictures like ‘em. juno was really beautiful and strange, the sort of quirky picture with substance that I had hoped garden state or something would be. charlie wilson’s war flipped on its head everything I dislike about Tom Hanks movies and elegantly summed up the same themes I’ve been trying to wrap my head around for a few months now.

It’s been a while since I wrote about movies ’round here, but check it- I’m about to make a New Year’s resolution. These are rare, y’all, but I always keep them. I think the last one I made was in 2004, when I resolved not to go to Mojo’s on Guadalupe St in Austin anymore. Well, that shit closed down by 2005, so you know you better take me seriously.

2008- I’m keeping this blog active again. Been too long, you know, since I made a habit of it. My brother makes fun of the updated daily button on dansolomon.com, and I can’t have that. But I’m not going to claim a daily update- instead, it’ll be three times a week, mostly on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, probably. It’s nearly two AM, GMT, right now, which makes this Friday’s entry, incidentally. I figure I could use the consistency, and keeping was a pretty useful experience for me- time to try it again. If you’re interested for any reason, I’ll be simulcasting them over on MySpace, too, so you can read the exact same shit on another site if, I dunno, you like ugly fonts and blue-and-white design a bunch. The focus’ll be pretty much the same as it has been, but since I don’t want to be boring, expect more about politics, football, books, maybe movies. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m feeling good.

And enough of that. Who’s all that interested in anyone’s New Year’s Resolution? It’s somewhere between telling someone about the dream they had the night before and a three year old explaining to you what each character in cars is named.

So now, London. Round two. first blood? I don’t know- something that sounds tough. I’m determined to make it new, to see the city in a different light. I may have skirted around the issue before, but the past three months were a bit uninspiring. I know, I know- dan, you’re in one of the world’s great cities! i would kill to be living in london, not working a job, with all the free time you have! But there’s a downside, y’all, and I’d let myself wallow in it a bit. It’s weird to be alone so much of the time, and to have most of the people you do meet know you as your wife’s husband, instead of, you know, the mighty poet-warrior whose travels throughout the land and renowned frog-saving escapades have enabled him to sell a hundred copies of a poetry book. It’s easy to become what other people see you as, and it’s hard to overcome patterns that you fall into.

On the other hand, it was only three months, and there was a two-week buffer period between now and then. Tonight I’m confident that the past was prologue. I’m listening to amerikkka’s most wanted and feeling like the voices are calling fuck you, dan solomon on track two- let ‘em, I feel good tonight. This is a new game. electric boogaloo? Let’s go with seventh inning fetch.

This is sprawling- most, if not all, of you stopped reading back when I mentioned Denzel Whitaker because you thought I was confused. I’ll wind it down. At the moment, I’m watching the Iowa Caucus results come in in real time on http://www.iowacaucusresults.com/, which is wild. Tonight at the pub I wrote down my gambling figures and had Edwards, Clinton, and Obama finishing in that order. With over half the precincts reporting, it looks like I had it wrong- Obama, easily my favorite, leads the pack, with Edwards and Clinton in a dead-heat for second (Edwards has the edge at the moment). Well, shit- sometimes it pays to bet your heart, instead of your head. The Republican results are broken at the moment, but that’s like watching an AFC playoff game- interesting for a fan of the sport, but without much emotional connection. At the moment, with 1100 of 1800 precincts reporting, my home team’s up by 3.5%. It’s an interesting day.