This morning, I made reservations for a trip to Ireland for our first anniversary. Originally, having fallen in love with the laid-back, Dolce Vita atmosphere of Italy, we talked about returning there, but plane fare and other considerations ruled out that idea. Other exotic locales beckoned: we talked about Barcelona, Tahiti (one of our honeymoon picks, sidelined due to the exorbitant cost and lengthy flight) and Paris. Gradually most of these fell aside and we seriously discussed Ireland. I’ve always wanted to see the country of my ancestry, and a self-guided tour seemed to be the way to go. We found a preplanned package online through AAA, including lodging and car rental, and signed up for it this morning. We will be driving a compact automatic over hill and dale on the wrong side of the road in search of blarney, real beer, and bland food for nine days in June.

Plane fare was shaping up to be the expensive part of the trip, but I found some dirt-cheap fares from American using Kayak.com, and got us a one-hop flight to Shannon thru Boston for less than the cost of the tour package. There are some more things to be ironed out (we need a place to stay in Dublin and Shannon for a night each and a lift across the country to our return flight, for example) but the major part is done. I’m absolutely thrilled to be going—it’s been a dream of mine for years. The fact that I get to go with my wife and best friend for our anniversary makes it that much better.

In other news, we broke down and ordered $80 worth of groceries from Peapod last night. I figure $6 is worth the hour it would take to go and pick all this stuff up ourselves, and we have better things to be doing with our time right now. Besides, we are lazy consumerist yuppies. Now, to arrange for Starbucks to deliver to our door…

Actually, this is the first time the conveniences of the dot-com days have reached our leafy door; while hipsters in San Francisco and Manhattan could call Webvan back in ’99 for a Penthouse, Coke and candy bar to be delivered to their door free of charge, we never got the option here in Mobtown. It’s (relatively) cheap, it’s available, and we’re taking advantage of it at least once.