Ireland

Yeah, so, my fiancee tells me that keeping a journal can help people keep their head on straight. Sounds like something worth giving a try, so here goes.

I arrived in Ireland six days ago.
Today I'm flying to Berkeley, California out of O'Hare.
In the time between those two I've set an ambush, helped kill a giant, rescued my mother from a kidnapping, consulted with Tolkien-esque dwarves, visited a world of undying people, helped them in their fight against an unending horde of titanic opponents, caused two avalanches, activated--then been made the personal guardian of--a ancient, magical weapon of mass destruction, witnessed the death of a god, and strong-armed a customs official.

Not in that order, mind you, but it's been a long fucking week.

Chronological order seems the most sensible, so that's how I'll go.
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So we came to Ireland--my group of god-sired world-saving compatriots and I--chasing this giant. Fomorian really. They're like Irish giants, and of a particularly disgusting kind. Anyways, so we're chasing this Fomorian named Caleb. We're trying to beat him to this lake where the Eye of Balor is supposedly being hidden. The Eye of Balor is the afore-mentioned weapon of mass destruction.

So we beat Caleb there and lay a trap for him, and when he shows up we spring it. The trap was pretty useless, but teamwork wasn't. Nate and I managed to keep him disarmed long enough for the big bruiser of our group, Jack, to get in close and start really messing Caleb up. He kept Caleb in place--which involved breaking his hands at one point--while the rest of us kept shooting the big prick. But we didn't do shit. All the real stopping power came from Jack. Our bullets just bounced off of him. I shot almost 30 rounds at this guy from an M16 at a distance of less than 10 yards, and not one of those rounds stayed in him.

Frustrating as hell.

Finally I got the bright idea to look Caleb's pockets while he was too busy to stop me, and made off with the magical key to the Eye of Balor as well as Caleb's journal. Turns out I probably didn't need to. They finished Caleb off before too much longer.

In any case, when I showed back up Brendan flipped through the journal really quick, and from its contents and just a bit of digging we found the entrance to what I've determined was supposed to be the tomb of the eye. I managed to convince them to help me open it--bad idea. Once it was open I decided to go inside--bad idea. And before I went inside I totally didn't hand the key off to someone else--stupid fucking mistake. So naturally, when I got inside, the key turned the damn thing on just because it was near-by. I mean, who does that? Makes a safety feature that can be disabled on accident by simply passing by the damn thing? Some asshole could have unwittingly put this key back together and turned it on while going for a swim for all I can tell.

Ugh.

Anyways, once the thing was on I couldn't just LEAVE IT there, so we brought the weapon that is said to obliterate armies in a single attack with us. We took it to these cliffs on the western side of Ireland that, based on a map in Caleb's journal, looked like where he'd be headed next. It was a tourist site--the Cliffs of Moher. There was even a little staff of gruff Irish dudes to try to tell everyone off about how it was closing time. At least that's what I hear. All I know is that I was sitting in the car while the rest of the group was trying to talk to these guys. Finally Laurel--my fiancee--went over, and with little more than a few words got one of the guys to take her in.

A minute later he comes back out and tells the other guys off. Apparently he's a son of Lugh, and is charged with guarding this place because it's the entrance to Mag Mel--the aforementioned realm of undying people. We happen to have learned from Caleb's journal that there's going to be another attack by the Fomorians on Mag Mel within the week and convince this guy to tell us how to get in. It's simple, right? Just jump off the cliff.

So off I go.