What a WEDDING?!!

We hitched up Daidie and Olivia with great fanfare!

The bride looked elegant and graceful, the groom pulled off tails and the best man didn't lose his speech, or the rings. Okay, maybe he did lose both, but only for a few minutes! :)

We gave Karl and Siobhan Connell (not to be confused with the other non-programming Siobhans who appeared from everywhere!) a lift to Dalkey (made it in loads of time, go *my* directions!!) to a hilarious ceremony. I say hilarious for two reasons; one, whilst prompting Dave's vows, the priest said "take thee Olive". Dave wasn't trumped though and got his new bride's name correct. Hurrah! The second reason was because the second reading was from the Song of Songs and includes such lines as:

"My lover is like a gazelle
or a young stag."

"O my dove in the clefts of the rock,

in the secret recesses of the cliff,
Let me see you"

Dave's tall and everything.. but a stag? ;)

We then shot off to Rathsallagh to THE. BEST. ROOMS. EVER!! Everyone was impressed. We had all been set up with named rooms. The bathroom was bigger than a lot of hotel rooms I've stayed in. I was very put out that I couldn't immediately have a bath. Darn make-up!

The wedding itself was a huge success. Kev gave a great speech, Ned cracked us all up with a poem about Dave and Olivia's romance and we all had little lego figurines to play with. Yes, really. Every place setting had a lego figurine minding your name. Siobhan Connell was an evil queen, I was a buccaneer, Karl was a punk and Thom was an evil dude with a helmet (he always looks good in a hat :) ). 

After the meal came so much dancing. There was no band, which made it better! Everyone had included a song request with their RSVP. The DJ played through the decades, there was music for everyone, including a ton of cheesy 90's music that we'd put in the mix (Chumba Wumba!).

We finally retired about 4am, I got up at 8am and enjoyed a long hot soak in the bath. It was HUGE! I *might* have still had some Amaretto from the night before, so it was very luxurious! I followed it up by going in for a shower (as well as a rainfall shower, there were also nozzles on the wall to give you a lovely back massage).

This was followed by a large breakfast (Rathsallagh House provides a giant ham as well as their fry), chatting to everyone, including all of the Siobhans, about the previous night and my lovely bath, and a wander around the gardens.

All in all, a mighty fine wedding!

Running, weddings and moving

I went for a ferocious run today! It cleared up in the evening so I grabbed my gear and jogged over to Trinity. There I did laps around the cricket pitch with intervals mixed in. I'm sure the students thought I was great entertainment as I whizzed by only to stop a minute later wheezing like an old maid. It'll all be worth it when my speed picks up though! :)

Dave's wedding is Friday!! Aaaaaaaaaaaahhh!! It's gotten so close now! I have to try on my dress again and match shoes and a bag to it! We're going to be driving Siobhan and Karl out so I've printed all necessary directions. Let's hope that the combination of google maps and my scribbles of "turn left at a church" will get us there!

Lastly, we've finally found a new place to live! Fingers crossed yer man is legit and doesn't just steal our deposit and leave us hanging, that would suck. The rental market in Dublin is so bad that we've been looking for 4 months. This is the first place that's gotten as far as a deposit, which I must remember to give Thom..

Freedom, caffeine and dresses!

It's officially Summer now! Thom finished the first year of his Masters yesterday. No more study for him and no more sitting around and letting him study for me! Now I can help him catch up with all of my fun and exciting stories, it'll be great! :D

So, in typical student fashion, we went out last night. Due to release obligations today, I abstained. Instead I had a lovely combination of coffee and soft drinks. This blend of sugar and caffeine kept me alert and active until 1am. Including making tea for Thom after the pub, because apparently tea is nice.

This backfired fantastically when my caffeine-soaked brain decided to wake me up at 6am. "No more sleep for you!", it said.

I think I made the most of it though, I got up at 6:30am and went to the gym! 'Twas a fine gyming session.. apart from the fire alarm going off in the middle of it, whoops! I felt bad for the people evacuated from the pool, dripping wet, still in their togs and trying to wrap aluminium blankets around themselves.

Judging by how my week has started, that'll probably be the last proper training session I'll be able to work in before the weekend. I made sure to work extra hard on my legs as I'll be showing them off on Saturday. We'll be visiting Thom's parents for a family gathering and I want to look my best! This is going to be achieved courtesy of the lovely Ms. Connell lending me the most *perfect* dress! I couldn't have gotten a better one after a month of shopping, she's so much better at it than I am :) I can't wait to be all girly and get all done up and transform into a wonderful butterfly, or some such. It's a nice change from the boring software programmer I portray all week long :D

All systems GO!!

We're in full swing in work today! The release is next week so (as usual) we're swinging into action! Code Code Code!! Although I do love my Java automation, I miss .Net coding, C-Sharp (C#) was fun.. maybe that was because I was coding in my spare time and that made it *more* fun. The whole software/IT industry means that you've gotta go where the work is, and currently my work is in Dublin and Java, and that's good too!

Now if only there was less debugging and testing to do and more programming! :)

Sunny weather!

It's hard to concentrate when the weather outside is so … DELIGHTFUL! :D

I've hunted out some Summery clothes and myself and Siobhan were just IM-ing with plans for the evening. Mainly involving getting out and getting some vitamin D!

Bye-bye rainclouds! Hello sun! :)

Let the pampering begin!

I've taken Siobhan's advice and booked my hair appointment in advance of the next wedding, and Thom's family thingie. I went to the extra effort of booking a manicure appointment too! Thank goodness for vouchers!

Maybe if I go in to Peter Marks in Stephen's Green and tell them that Mademoiselle Connell advised me to go, they'll think I'm a hotshot and give me a discount? It's worth a shot right? This is Dublin, "Mademoiselle" should carry some weight!

At least I get paid before all my pampering.

Running time is fun, but friend time is better!

That title may be a lie. It's been over three hours since I finished the race though, so the pain has faded and my breathing is back to normal. For a flat course, the Terenure 5 mile was tough!

I got out in loads of time, but I had absolutely nothing to worry about as Audrey and Michael were there before me and collected my race number and t-shirt, bless them! :) Once past the giant queue for the ladies, it was off to the race. Michael is a total speedster, so we bid him goodbye at the startline and searched for the sub-50 pacers. This was the last wave, but we didn't let that get us down! Audrey set us both up immediately behind the pace makers.. I moved us back a step or two when their pace balloons started hitting me in the face :)

For a sub-50 min 5 mile, you need to average out at a pace of 6:15 min/km. Judging by my Garmin, the pace setters went at 6:40, 5:45, 6:30, 6:00.. Audrey stuck with them and I struck out by myself to have a steadier pace which, it turns out was by staying about 2 metres ahead of them. Around 3 or 4km in, they suddenly upped the pace and took off! They left us both behind, it was sad :(

I really started struggling with 2km to go. It turns out that my fitness just isn't up for a 6:15 min/km pace. Audrey caught up with me, and didn't even look smug as I puffed and wheezed the rest of the way. I had just enough left in the tank to have a mini sprint finish and completed it in 51:09.

Afterwards Siobhan was the perfect friend, she fetched tea, coffee and scones while the rest of us sat in a sweaty heap waiting the results. No spot prizes for us :( Okay, that's a mini-lie, Audrey and Michael stretched, I sat in a sweaty heap :) We did get to exchange pics of our dresses for upcoming weddings though!

All-in-all though, not a bad day! :) Siobhan didn't even complain about the smell as she sat beside me on the bus back to town. I used plenty of deodrant first ;P

Fun filled weekend planned

Oh I'm so excited!! I can barely concentrate on work. Audrey convinced me to sign up for the Terenure 5 mile this weekend so, come Sunday, I'll be racing around the place! It sounded so much simpler when it was just an 8km race, 5 miles sounds like too much!

However, it isn't just the race that has me all excited :) Audrey's bringing along a blanket and Siobhan's coming out to cheer us on. So afterwards, Ms. Connell and Mr. and Mrs. P-P  and I are going to relax in the sunshine and sip our coffees and have a muffin or two! It's gonna be great to catch up! :D

Friends can be so cruel

My best friend, Siobhan Connell, is now slagging me for the multiple posts in one day. Apparently I haven't blogged so much since our Trinity College days and that's not how a "Software Developer" behaves. She just doesn't understand that I need my creative outlets! :)

Running

Oh, I never mentioned! I'm now into running! It's not as much fun as weight lifting, but I can sign up for races and compete with people. All good clean fun, until Aud decides to trip me up (preview for Sunday's race).

Getting back into the swing of things

It's been so terribly long since I've updated this blog. I even had trouble remembering my username and password!

Not much bloggable seems to happen really. I cycle to and from a great job in IT (I'm working with Swrve on Mobile Analytics) and give out about other road users. The usual ;)

In all seriousness though, don't any other cyclists believe in the rules of the road?!

Wow, wasn't that last post violent??

Yeah, well, I still say that she deserved it. I hang around in male dominated areas and I do find that some women are just complete bitches. They think that they can get away with anything because guys won't say or do anything back. I'm sorry, I'm female too and I don't agree with the way you just treated me. Nor do I agree with the way you've been treating my friends... so bugger off!!!

Oh, and don't worry, I didn't start a fight or anything last night. I don't feel right fighting girls, so as soon as I'd pushed her back I left the pub. I wouldn't want to have to actually hurt the girl...

-d

Yes, it's late, but that's no reason to be a prick!

This is a post which hits me right in the heart. I'm just back from the pub. I'm not particularily drunk. However, as I left the pub tonight some guy shoved me and I ended up accidentally bumping into some random girl. Now, in general, in any pub you enter, this is going to happen now and again. It's no big deal. This is in a metal bar where it's likely to happen more often, therefore you should learn to deal with it!

Therefore, when this happened, I was quite insulted when the girl; before I had the chance to apologise; decided to respond by elbowing and shoving me backwards! Like, what the fuck?!! At the very least give me a chance to say sorry before you attack me!! I caught hold of her shoulder, explained what had happened and how she shouldn't have reacted as such, before I pushed her in the shoulder. Yes, I pulled it, she didn't fall over or anything and she'll be fine in the morning, but hopefully it gave her something to think aboot because a guy in my situation wouldn't have the same outlet.

But seriously, what a bitch?! Look behind you before you attack! I feel bad aboot shoving a girl, but I do believe that she deserved it! Hopefully she has learnt her lesson!! Namely, don't shove me before you look behind you to find out what happened, I will retaliate to unfair treatment! >:(

-D

Random crazy dreams...

I dunno why, but my dreams are generally fairly vivid, the one I had last night was just insane though!

In my dream a load of boring random things happened and then I went to bed. I woke up to banging at the front door, people were rioting in the streets and trying to get in. I was somehow with my family who were screaming at me to lock the door, which I did, but the lock didn't work and they managed to crash through. I attempted to hold them back, which I was doing, until one of them pulled a gun. We all froze. The thing was, it was an older guy, his daughter and her son, who couldn't have been older than six and was doing his best to beat the shit out of everyone. The older guy was waving his gun in our faces and they were both showing off bullets and screaming at us. They wanted to know everything about us, see proof of ID, our passports and whether or not we were actually Irish and supposed to be there. I thought that there must some ulterior motive going on but when someone is screaming and waving guns in your face, you're not going to think about it for long. All I kept doing was, stupidly, crying and exclaiming over them waving a gun around when there was a child there who could get hurt. When they were satisfied with us they returned to the riot and moved on. I went outside and hunted around a bit, I was looking for the purple Ka that my mother had bought me earlier on in the dream. I was doing a bit of parkour and discovered loads of graffiti very high up, all interlaced and hard to make out, but after trying for a while it turned out that the riot was actually part of the Che Guevara anniversary that I'd seen posters for in the streets earlier this week. The breaking into homes and invading your privacy was a statement for how the government is being run and where it's headed, a statement that this could become a routine thing.. Odd to say the least, probably completely incorrect as I don't know what Che stood for or anything, but this is what I see the world coming to.

I also found a bright shiny ring just sitting on the balcony of a pub whilst searching for the car, I swear I heard Zelda music in my head when I picked it up...definitely been playing too much Zelda...too much, or not enough :)

-d

And I'm back

Yes, my new baby has arrived and I am very very glad, I've missed having a home connection; between moving flats, fighting with broadband providers and breaking my old baby, Dagon, I've been offline for quite some time. Now just to think of a new name, it has to be male, beginning with D and have some measure of coolness.

In other news, I saw the most ignorant and stupid individual ever today. I'm going to say he was aboot 16 to give him the benefit of the doubt, his conversation with his mate went as follows:

MATE: *sings Transformers*
FUCKWIT: What's that?
MATE: Cars that turn into robots
FUCKWIT: Ah, they just ripped that off from the Citreon ad

I actually stopped dead and stared at this guy gobsmacked! Now you may say "but he's young, they didn't have Transformers back then". Believe me, he should have known! If his friend knows enough to think it's cool to sing the *original* theme tune then where the hell did that other fuckwit's childhood go?!!

One more thing... I'm beginning to think that I'm living in a dictatorship, a bumbling ineffective one, but evil nonetheless. Their entire campaign was "you voted for us before, and sure, we weren't all that bad were we?" Now, in their third term, they're showing their true colours. I saw a trailer ad for them. I didn't get a chance to read it fully but I'm fairly certain that the main tagline went along the lines of "We're watching you!" Fucken Big Brother has made his evil sadistic way to Dublin. That sort of psycho shit is the reason why I hate democracy. Yeah, yeah, it means that we don't get stuck in some dictatorship shit, but look around you, look at Bush, look at our Bertie...the general public cannot be trusted to choose an appropriate leader who is not a complete retard who's going to fuck up the world! I'm not saying "let's get rid of democracy" but, could we please please pretty please *think* aboot who you're putting in charge! I'm not normally into politics, I generally take them as a huge joke on the world, but that sort of fucken shite pisses me off! >:(

Billy Connelly says it best: I think that the desire to become a politician should stop you from ever BEING one!! Don't vote, it only encourages them!

-d

Netless

I ain't gonna be blogging again for a good while, work blocked off my access to here and my laptop's kinda dead. The new one will be here in a few weeks though so I'll be back to my usual antics later.

-d

Worst Day Blues

Hehe, blues :) One of my friends will be home from China tomorrow, three week vacation, damn him! But anyways, that bit of the title is in his honour!

Now then, yesterday.. I dunno what sort of bad karma I was experiencing, but it was just one piece of crap after another!

* I slept in, this resulting in me being 15mins late for work (bit of good news in that the boss is on holidays).

* Due to me being so dopey-eyed in the morning, I'd worn a normal (ie: heavy metal) t-shirt. The contractor then told me that the meeting with the Business types *would* be going ahead. So I spent lunch in taxis legging it home to get changed into something more suitable.

* I was just finishing up work for the day, using a template, saving-as, cutting to pieces, saving and reopening the template to start again, when I discovered that I had in fact overwritten the template, I'd gotten through doing it correctly FOUR times and the fifth time I forgot to do the initial save-as and basically managed to fuck up the entire thing which was supposed to be reviewed the following evening.

* Whilst moving things between my new flats (I'm moving btw) I was talking to my mom on the phone and some little shit ran past and tried to grab my phone out of my hand! >:( It's actually quite fortunate that my phone got stolen out of my hand a few years ago so now I always keep my finger over the top of it (as most of them who do the snatch 'n' run just try to slip it outta the top of your hand) so the little prick didn't get hold of it and just ran off. It's amusing that in the six years I've been in the "Big Smoke" this is only the second criminal act I've been subjected to, when moving here I was told repeatedly that I was going to be robbed, mugged, murdered, etc. but all that's happened is two guys (one ~16, the most recent ~10) have ran past and tried to grab my phone...not really too bad *sigh*

* My flatmate asked me if her sister could move into my current room as soon as I'm out of it. Not a chance! Our landlady isn't all that happy with us so I'm gonna be scrubbing that room up until our lease is up and no one other than me is gonna set foot in it!

Thankfully today is going better, I've been up since 6am and in work since 7:30am. I've managed to fix up everything I broke yesterday and it's now 3:30pm, home time is in an hour and a half and then I get to move more stuff into my pretty new flat :D

Oh, and did I mention?! My new flat's very pretty :D I stayed over last night and myself and my new flatmate watched spaced and drank beer. It's kinda upsetting that Gir can't be moved over just yet otherwise I would only be back in my old place to pack up things and clean!

-d

Exciting times

Everyone is out to get me! Well, as of leaving work yesterday evening this is how it seems...

Exciting situation number one (thankfully not really aimed at me):
I went for a drink with friends, I was standing outside looking in the window at them, one was making threatening gestures at me out the window with a candle so I leaned over and pretended to be kissing the window where she was seated. She leaned over and did the same thing, forgetting that she'd just put the candle down... This girl is very proud of her appearance and spends a lot of time on her hair and makeup...and had hairspray/something in her hair, it went up in flames! I was outside banging on the window and she didn't even realise that a chunk of her hair was on fire. Thankfully when she did it went out quickly but there was a lot of burnt charred hair and when I went back inside the place stank of it! The poor girl had to go home and shower to get rid of the smell :(

Exciting situation number two:
I was waiting at the bus stop, a bus had just arrived and I was letting other people on while I finished a cigarette. I threw the butt away and started getting on the bus, turning as I did to blow the last of the smoke out the doors (because I wouldn't want to be a bus driver and have people blowing smoke in my face all day long). It was only because I was doing this that I realised that the bus doors were closing, on me! Now, this does happen accidentally a lot of the time, but what had happened in this incident was that the bus driver had *purposefully* closed the doors on me because he didn't want smoke on his bus! He then gave out to me that I should have stayed on the side of the road because he didn't want any smoke on the bus. Arsehole! He refused to give me his name but I took down the license plate number and I'm very tempted to go into CIE and complain about him for reckless endangerment. Accidents happen, but closing the bus doors on someone is dangerous and I could have been hurt while he was protecting his clean air!

Exciting situation number three:
I was walking down a narrow street this morning which is generally littered with lorries making deliveries. Due to it being so narrow, they have to park on the footpath to let other traffic by. I was on the footpath when one driver decided to do just that, except he didn't seem to notice that I was walking along beside him. He put his first bumper over the kerb and just kept going, getting closer and closer to me without seeming to have any intention of stopping until he was right beside the wall (and most of them do park right against the wall). I had to jump forward and thump on the passenger door so that I wouldn't be crushed! He hadn't been checking his mirrors and hadn't even seen me, my head barely cleared the passenger door into his line of sight. If it had been a small child they'd have been crushed and he probably wouldn't have even noticed.

So now I have returned to the sanctuary of my office, I don't think I should have left last night :(

-d

Identity Crisis

I have an 11 month old bearded dragon named Gir. He's my pride and joy, I think he's fantastic, though he can be a bit moody at times (like his master) and doesn't like being outside.. He's always been a good eater, he eats and eats and eats. However, every now and then, he'd go off his food for a few days, then perk back up and gobble down a load of it. So I wasn't too worried two weeks ago when he only ate half of what I put in front of him. I did get worried though when this continued to happen, he's been barely eating at all now. He hasn't lost any weight but he did pick up a couple of new traits.

1) He was now depositing all of his "material" on the opposite side of the tank than he usually does.
2) The now clean side of the tank he was ripping to shreds. He was spending ages clawing at that side of the tank, trying to rip through it.
3) Every time that I took him out he would go galloping off exploring, now this isn't unusual in itself, beardies are very curious, but generally he'd explore, then settle down and go to sleep somewhere out of the way, now he was racing back and forward searching for something.

I had my suspicions as to what might cause this, but wasn't at all sure, so I brought him into the petshop I bought him from on Sunday to have my suspicions confirmed. He is a she.

It's very hard to tell the difference in lizards until they're older, so I had thought that he was a he all of this time. Even looking at photos on the web didn't help much because, unless you know beardies well (and this was my first one), you couldn't tell the difference in the size of the head, width of the tails, beard colour or behaviour (she is *not* passive, she actually enjoys displaying at herself when she thinks that no one is looking). The one certainty is bumps under their tails, two with a dimple in between == male, one == female. Gir had none, so I couldn't tell. Anyhews, bringing her in they were able to discern the eggs under her skin and tell me that she should have laid already, hence the clawing at her tank.

In lizards, this is a potentially fatal problem. Without a proper place to lay, the lizard will become eggbound and that's not good. Anyways, to cut things short, I now have a laying area in her tank for her to use, and put lots of greens (with a *load* of calcium supplement) in for her. Hopefully she'll have gotten rid of some of those eggs by the time I get home.

Oh, and the petshop were also very impressed with her, they said that she was "perfect" and "the best beardie I've seen in here" and "I'm not just saying that" and they were thrilled that she was one of their own, and a little disappointed that I wasn't selling her as she'd be perfect for breeding. She's also gone up in worth by aboot 100euro. So I'm well chuffed in all, I've raised a fine healthy lizard :D It's her birthday next month, can anyone think of any good presents to get her?

This nature lesson is ended.
-d

A note to the young Tyrion

My dear dear boy...

A) I did *not* poison you, if you'd been properly drinking with me you'd *still* feel sick!
B) You *will* be coming properly drinking with me again and we'll see how you square up to non-medicated Reilly-ness
C) You wanted me to get you drunk and, in all honesty, you were doing a fairly good job yourself...
D) I still owe you
E) You'd better get your drinking up to par boyo cos you don't get any toilet breaks next time

....

F) Sorry Sith!! In my defence, he was getting ossified all by himself! Plus I think that I came out of that night worse off than anyone bar the boy himself! :(

-d

Oh, and congratulations to the happy couple! :D
Thanks for inviting me, it was a lovely wedding, many happy returns and such and things :D