...and then it hit the fan.

Wednesday was a bit better at the NLI. I was able to get through more films, I talked to the librarians and they cleared the hogs off the printing machines, and I met Diarmaid Ferriter. He wrote The Transformation of Ireland, a mammoth tome that's basically a survey of twentieth century Ireland through a social and cultural lens rather than the standard political narrative. So I got to speak with him briefly and tell him that I really enjoyed his book. He gave me his email and told me to keep in touch in regards to my project. Very cool. I ended up leaving the NLI about an hour earlier than I planned because I was dying after looking at microfilm for 3 days straight. I came home and went through the Irish Times online to make up for the time lost.

Thursday I spent at the UCD archive, just a short jaunt across campus. The bonus was that I got to sleep in an extra hour. In terms of how the archive is setup and run, it was hands-down the best archive I've been to over here. Unfortunately, they don't have much material that is useful for my project. So I went through what I could, which took up the bulk of the day, and decided I'd work on a gameplan for Friday later in the evening. On my way back I stopped at one of the bookstores on campus to pick up something. This is where things started to go downhill. I knew that two productive days wouldn't come without repercussions, at least with the way this trip is going.

So I get what I want and go to the register to pay. The guy runs my card twice and it's not going through. One of the other folks there says maybe the credit card company (USAA) saw a bunch of charges in Ireland, figured it was stolen, and turned it off. That sounds feasible so I ask them to hold the materials so I can come back and get them once I get credit card this straightened out. I came back to my room and went about trying to contact USAA. The toll-free number they listed on their website for folks calling from Ireland did not work and wasn't toll-free. Since my credit card is my primary form of financial support here, I decided to bit the bullet and use my cell phone. To my surprise, the call won't go through. So I send them an email and get a response a few hours later. Here's what happened: In May I signed up for new card in an effort to upgrade my current credit card. I called USAA before I left and told them I only wanted one card and they said they wanted me to cancel the one I already had and use the new one. I told them that was fine, but I was leaving the country in a few days and if the new one didn't show up in time I'd have no choice but to use the old one. The guy at USAA told me that it'd be fine to use the old one until I started using the new one. Ok. Good. I'm set for Europe. Fast forward to yesterday evening, and I get a response from USAA saying that the old card automatically shuts off 20 days after the new card is sent. This is contradictory to what the representative told me earlier. So now I'm stuck in Ireland without a credit card. It wouldn't be a huge deal if I weren't packing up and moving to Cork on Sunday. That means I have to put an $800 housing charge on my debit card, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid at present. So most of today was wasted trying to get this situation resolved, which it still is not. This is really aggravating because 1) I'm in Ireland and can't do anything about it, 2) USAA has, in the past, been nothing but an amazing company, and 3) they don't appear willing to help the situation in an amenable way despite the extraordinary circumstances that were explained to them. Needless to say I'm pretty pissed at the moment. If it's not one thing on this trip it's another. As my Dad said in an email, it's two-steps forward and one-step back on this trip. Well that's exactly the kind of bullshit I don't need. I've got little time here, it's expensive as hell, and I can't afford (in more ways than one) these types of setbacks. Ireland seems to hate me at the moment and that just plain sucks.