Category: Personal

On the Buses

Back in residence after my trip to Norn Iron with Julie. Took in all the usual touristy things, like the Giant’s Causeway (I’m sure in Scotland we were taught that it was Finn MacCool who ran away from Benandonner though!), the Tyrone Crystal factory, the Belfast bus tour and the traffic jams in Dundalk. (Okay, so Dundalk’s actually on this side of the border.)

Still not quite sure what to make of the fact that said bus tour includes the Shankill and Falls Road these days… the fact that open top buses can now freely parade around (perhaps not the best choice of phrase) interface areas is a sign of remarkable progress, and our ironically-monikered tourguide Billy’s irreverence towards the tricoloured-kerbstones, murals and army observation points would probably have seen his kneecaps in some danger not so many years ago.

But the 12th of July bonfires were still being readied, and I don’t suppose we’ll hear any fewer poisonous party songs at the next Old Firm game.

Quids In

Off to Belfast in the morning for a long weekend. Despite having grown up with pounds and pence in Scotland, digging some out for the short trip up the road from Dublin has made me realise just how old-fashioned they look nowadays.

Boak Cuisine

Back in the land of the living after a week’s skiing at Pico, VT. Sadly I was unprepared for America’s Legendary Haute Cuisine and ended up with food poisoning after a mere two days in your wonderful country. So I spent the third day in the condo sampling America’s fine televisual output, which consists almost entirely of adverts (apparently Americans spend their entire income on lawyers, cars, and drugs with embarrassing side-effects) interspersed with the occasional fleeting glimpse of programme.

They almost persuaded me to call 1-800-SUE-PICO for the dodgy cheeseburger, but I decided just to stick to the chilli for the rest of the week..

Happy Hallmark Day

Valentine’s Day. Gives you the dry boak, so it does.

/me hides flowers and sad helium balloon that his girlfriend sent to the office, requiring a well-timed journey from reception to desk via the back stairs so nobody would notice.

Lots of cool GNOME usability stuff on the boil at the moment, so much so that I shouldn’t really be sitting here typing. But I haven’t done an entry for a while, so I felt guilty.

/me hopes the pressie he sent his girlfriend turns up before she goes home tonight, or he’s for the high jump later.

Blianna mhath ur

A pretty uneventful Christmas and New Year was had by all, in my household– mostly because I live alone! I did a lot of gadding around, though… England the weekend before Chrimbo, back in Dublin for Christmas Day, Scotland on the 26th, and back in the Emerald Isle for Hogmanay. All for under 100 quid, thanks to Mr. Ryan.

New Year’s Eve in Dublin is crap, though– half the pubs are shut and the only free ‘event’ involves hanging around outside a dingy cathedral waiting for the midnight chimes, then going home!

The dressing room bust-up down Fir Park way seems to have done the trick, though… the ‘Well are back to their winning ways, with fine victories over Dundee and Dundee Utd in the space of a week.

Boy racer

Took the banana boat round to some dodgy local garage to have its shiny new exhaust fitted this morning– and it was closed :) Luckily they were open when I went back later, ‘coz I’d already bought the exhaust and had it sent it straight to them, so they’ve got 300 quid of my hard-earned cash sitting in their workshop!

Now I’m just waiting on the phonecall to tell me it doesn’t fit, or that they decided to take it out for a test spin and ended up in Dublin docks…

Another week dawns

Hardly any email waiting for me at all, this morning… always a bad sign, means I’ll have to do some work instead. (One of the few was to inform me my actress friend in England has started seeing a new bloke she doesn’t fancy– if I’d known that was her type I’d have asked her out years ago!)

The first public draft of the HIG will apparently be released for review later today. Fortunately I’ve only just picked up my flameproof suit from the dry cleaners.

Bought my first Christmas present at the weekend, as it has to go to America– I promise not to think about Christmas again until about December 17th. Saturday also saw Scotland soundly thrashed by the All Blacks, and Motherwell winning again. The latter is becoming a worrying habit.

Wizard wheeze

Well, I’m still here… the GNOME team at Sun got away without too many casualties, one voluntary and a couple of not-so-voluntary.

Went to see The Proclaimers in town again last night… good show, ended up going on my own though. I did get them to autograph my unused spare ticket, though, so that was always something…

Saw the new Harry Potter movie at the weekend, too… wasn’t bad, pretty faithful to the book, not entirely convinced about the acting abilities of young Harry, though– his school chummies and chummettes were rather more accomplished, I thought. At least Gryffindor are obviously Motherwell fans, judging by their claret and amber scarves…