Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

# inhumaneness: the quality of lacking compassion or consideration for others
# atrocity: an act of atrocious cruelty

I know I know I haven't written in aaaaaaaaages but I have been busy and also haven't been inspired for a while, until today that is.

There is a man who lives near the restaurant where I work. He is probably in his 50's or 60's and quite obviously has some kind of mental illness, what it is exactly I am not sure of, but I see him all the time and he talks to himself in the street always, chatting away, full blown conversations with himself and he makes strange faces a lot. He is always walking up and down the street, up and down, up and down all day. He comes into the restaurant sometimes, for coffee, for soup, for tea, for a chat mostly. He is very obviously lonely. He is not doing any body any harm, ever.

He was in today for his lunch. He always has soup with extra bread. He was sitting there minding his own business talking to one of the waiters. No one else was sitting inside because it was so sunny. Then he went to sit at one of the tables on the terrace, to smoke a cigarette. As he was coming back inside a table of 6 was also coming in. One of them stopped him coming in by putting his foot to the bottom of the door. Why? Because this man is different. He is "strange". "We don't want HIS sort in here". Do we? Why not? Why would we not? He was a customer, a regular customer at that, he was paying, he was not bothering anyone and yet this man, this big bastard in his pink shirt and fancy tie thought that it was right to exclude him because "he's not normal". What's not normal is how unaccepting people are. Anyone different. Get rid of them. Anyone with anything wrong with them physically or mentally. Get rid of them. Or stare at them. Or laugh at them. Or all of those things combined.

Posted by Babs at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's my old tricycle from Le Eighties made all nice and shiny and new again for Isobel, she doesn't even know about it yet, I can't wait to see her face. Ah the glorious days I spent tricycling about the place, under tables, under peoples legs, out the back of the house on the path way and drive way, wind in my "airy fairy" hair, plasters all over my legs, marmite on my cheeks, kittens all over the shop. I loved that trike with all of my heart, Raleigh Special with frogs on the seat, peddling away like I was free as a bird.

I think the reason why I loved it so much was because the siblings were too big to have a go of it so it was all mine all the time. I have some vague recollections of falling off it a few times. Poor me when I was three.

My Dad is the best Dad and the best Granddad for Izzers ever for fixing it all up so it's like new again!

Posted by Babs at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I watch How Clean Is Your House a lot, basically to let me know that people are WAY mankier than I could ever be. I love the way that they tell you how to clean things in your home with natural products and ingredients, so after watching it the other day I decided to use this tip in work on the char grill / griddle thingamy. Hmm, they don't tell you how HARD it is to remove the mixture from the over, they do say elbow grease, I use elbow grease to clean the griddle every day, wire brush, blades, ice, more scrubbing, more wire brush, dry and oil it, this was INSANE so don't do it.

I made the mixture up, easy peasy, threw it all over the stainless steel bits, grand job, left it for about 5 hours and then tried in vain to clean it off. it took me amost 2 hours to remove all the remenants of the mixture and then I could taste it off my hands for the rest of the day, yack. Yes I know the alternative is some caustic over cleaner jazz that will burn the bejasus out of your hands but what else am I supposed to do? My normal method takes approx 30 mins every day and it's hardcore scrubbing for that long, this took 4 times as long and only made it marginally more shiney. Kim and Aggie - down with this sort of thing.

(*Best EVER top tip from Kim & Aggie - get a piece of material, a rag or whatever, small now not a whole t-shirt or anything, throw some lavender oil onto it, throw it into your vacuum cleaner - bagless is better - and then every time you vacuum it smells of lovely smells and not of old dust. You can use whatever essential oil you want, I like Rose the best).

Posted by Babs at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Every Wednesday night during "relaxation" in my Yoga class I almost pass out, almost, my body is still there, but in my mind I am in my favourite place, or one of them anyway, my most recent favourite place I suppose, one which I may never be in again...

...here. Fremantle Docks, the place I sat and dreamed, the place I laughed with my friend every day, the place I took people too, it's just a dock, it's pretty murky looking, there are huge ships with animals on them being shipped off somewhere to be slaughtered, there are knobs in their Daddy's yachts cruising by, but then you would see loads of Dolphins in the wake of the boats, you would see Sea Eagles, Moon Jellyfish and all sorts of deadliness in the water, you might catch some fish like we did sometimes, you might catch a sea snail by accident like we also did! Oops!

I used to go there every morning, sit there reading books, thinking, lying in the sun on the docks, in my shorts and my flip flops and just think about the world, write letters to my Granny, write in my diary (lots of writing in that back then) listen to my iPod, dream about what was to come, whistle "Sitting At The Dock Of The Bay" (no really we did this a lot!) walk around to the tiny beach and watch the sunset over the Indian Ocean every evening, the sand still warm under my bare feet, write love songs on the back of supermarket receipts, it was my place, my escape, and it's where I go in my head when I need to get away from things for a while, like when the Yogi is saying things like "Re-Lax, Re-Lax take a deep breath into your chest, and just Re-Lax", well when Frankie Says Relax where do you go?

Posted by Babs at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Friday morning wake up freezing. Drive to my mates house in the ice. Wake him up to drop me to the airport. Walk ten miles to Ryanair "terminal" which is really a portacabin. Listen to iPod for the ten seconds I am allowed to on the plane on the 40 minute journey. Find Laura. Go to her new house. Student city. Go to town. Cold. Cold. Cold. Shopping. 3 skirts in 30 minutes...oops! Christmas markets for mulled wine. Mmm. Tiger lounge for more wine. Fairly locked. Smuggle half a bottle of wine we can't drink up my sleeve somehow to drink on Saturday. Buy chips. Bus home. Sleepytime. Wake up. Go to town. Go to Pret a Manger for sambo and crisps. This will become a habit on the weekend. Go to Primark. Walk straight back out as its crazytown in there. Go to Wetherspoons scummy bar for a pint and to get out of the cold. Home. Ready to go out. Go to town. Into the Gay Village for a dance and to be offered lots and lots of drugs. Am told by a random that I am the only person who they "know" who doesn't do drugs". I don't know if this is a compliment or not. "Want some ket?" I am asked a lot. Get out of there. Am told I look like a sweet by a tranny. Hmm. Go to Northern Soul night. Dance a lot. Drink some vodka and lemonade. I don't normally drink vodka. No ill effects. It's all good. Dance some more. Music stops. Go to get a cab. Brrr. Chilly. Below zero. Get cash out for taxi. Feel very generous towards Steve the homeless lad, so I give him a tenner. He probably spent it on drugs. But I hope he spent it on a bed for the night and didn't freeze to death. Frozen fog. Can't find the new house. Find it. Cheese on toast. Bed. Up. Pret a manger for a new sambo combo and some tea. Christmas Markets again. We can move about there today. Some crazy tried to trip me up. Buy some jazz. Go to a giant Igloo for warm cocktails. Go to Somerfields. Buy food for dinner. Home. Listen to the TV because the picture doesn't work. Sleepytime bed calls me at about 11. Wake up. Boil myself in the shower. Into town. Shopping again...Oops. At least this time I buy some warm clothes...actual warm clothes. Like jumpers etc. I am amazing myself at this stage. Bus home. Make Nachos for dinner. Listen to more TV. Pack my shit. Run on the ice to get the bus. Airport is deserted. Bizarre. Flight delayed. Lots of crying babies. Land in Dublin with a less bouncy thud than the landing in Manchester. My mate collects me. Back to his house to defrost Heartbeat. Jump in. Reverse badly out his driveway. Drive home shitting myself the whole way that I am going to die on ice roads. I don't. Marmite on toast. Mmm. Bedski.
Total Spend: £224. Rawkit.

Posted by Babs at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Well it finally happened, the inevitable, Bob, my trusty goldfish, has died.
Poor old Bobser. He was 5 years old, that must be about a million in Goldfish years.
We "buried" him in a toilet paper coffin (only the best) in a plant pot outside the house.
May he rest in peace and not get dug up and eaten by a cat.

Posted by Babs at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

So it's come to the time when Babs needs a haircut, again. I was going to go short again, but really I don't want to have to be arsed getting up a whole ten minutes earlier than normal to GHD the life out of my hair because it was too short to allow it to curl up, as in, I had an afro, and it wasn't pretty.

When I was in Perth the lovely Teeny did my hair for me twice, in her "salon" which was basically the room in the hostel we were all staying in, but she gave me the best haircuts I have ever had, and now I am mildly scared. Also I am thinking of going fringey or "getting bangs" again. People keep telling me it was nicer. But also, it's a hassle. When it rains I have this curly sue thing going on at the front of my head, I don't really like the feel of hair on my face, even though I got used to it eventually, all I know is thank fook I am not going to "The Butcher" who cut my fringe really short and then feathered it, so
what do you think?

Bangs? Or no Bangs?

(PS: Becca if they butcher my mane I am holding you responsible as you
recommended this place, and you know how scared I am of hairdressers!!)

Posted by Babs at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Babs at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every time I hear this it transports me back to Perth, sitting on the "gossiping seat" with my friend Laura drinking El Cheapo Beer and a bit of a chair dance (mainly pretending we were drumming), gossiping about everything, telling each other our life stories and laughing a lot.

Today, the cold, wet, windy and basically miserable day that it was, I really fucking wished I was there, just even for ten minutes, but alas it was not to be. I am going to Manchester at the end of this month to see her and I can't wait, roll on the 27th. Whoop whoop! (PS: I really hope this embedded because as you all probably know, I am pretty much retarded at anything computery!)

Posted by Babs at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

So myself and Andy (who you may know from The Podcast) and Adrian went to Amsterdam for my Stag Weekend, which Adrian liked to refer to as a "Stag Do", but I thought was more of a "Stag Don't". It went thusly:

Friday: Arrive in Airport at 6.45am, realise the flight left 45 minutes ago, panic, go to Aer Lingus desk where nice lady changes our flight for a small fee. Praise lord I didn't book with Ryanair.
Get to Amsterdam at midday-ish, check in, go STRAIGHT TO (after getting totally lost for about an hour) ABRAXAS COFFEESHOP and proceed to [redacted] on some of the "local herbs".
Meet Adrian, who was flying from London, back at Prinsen Hotel. Chill out for a while and get ready for dinner (where "get ready" means [redacted])
Go to Cafe De Koe for dinner. Have an INCREDIBLE Tuna steak (crispy on the outside, sushi on the inside... Mmmm...) while the lads tuck into their ostrich steaks. Proceed upstairs afterwards for beverages and multiple games of pinball. Awesome!

Saturday:Wake up late (as in after breakfast), [redacted]. Go to some random place for breakfast.
Go to NEMO. Make huge, person-sized bubbles, take amusing photos, watch some dude mess up his Rube Goldberg-esque contraption, generally have good clean geeky fun!
Be very surprised by the fact that there's a sun terrace and bar on the roof of the science museum! Get beer. [redacted]. Be told by random NEMO dude in yellow t-shirt that "err... You can't schmoke weed here guysh". Cool, no problem. Wait until NEMO guy disappears, [redacted].
Go to Liverpool FC v Stoke City in Durty Nelly's Irish Pub. Drink beer. Eat chips. Have half-time [redacted]. Watch a really, really boring football match. Complain. Watch goals in West Ham v Newcastle match on other side of bar.
Back to hotel, get ready (for real this time, change clothes, freshen up, etc). [redacted].
Go to SupperClub Amsterdam. Eat amazing food in an amazing place. Dance furiously between courses. Impress tasty Spanish ladies with awesome dance moves. Big Fish, Little Fish, Cardboard Box. Fantastic.
Walk back to hotel, in desperate need of a toilet. Find "outdoor urinal" and investigate. Not as bad as pissing in the street, not as nice as your average public loo.
Buy munchie food. Go back to hotel. [redacted] (again) and stuff face. Fall asleep in bed full of Pringles.

Sunday: Breakfast in some nice Pancake place near Dam square that I'd been trying to find all weekend. Very nice.
Go to Vondelpark to chill out and [redacted] whatever we have left (FAIL: we had to throw away some of the "local herbs" that were remaining). Take photos. Chat. Chill. Watch the world go by very very s-l-o-w-l-y...
Pick up bags from hotel, go to airport, tearful farewell (to the CITY not EACH OTHER), go home.

Verdict: 10 out of 10. Did everything I wanted to do, in the company of two of my very bestest mates. Three weeks to go until the wedding. AAAAARRRRRGGGGH!

_{(This post has been poorly edited to disguise the shenanigans)}

Posted by Matt at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

So I left Mission Beach sorely disappointed at my cancelled Skydive but onto bigger and better things!

I went to Magnetic Island, nice place, nice weather, nice kayaking, it was fun, met some cool peeps, was sort of bored and then left again to go to Airlie Beach to go on a Whitsunday Islands Sailing adventure. My boat was called the New Horizon. We drank lots of beers, did lots of saling, scuba diving, snorkelling, shark watching (only lil reef sharks though so it was ok, there were no Jaws like attacks. My bed was beside the engine room, I got very little sleep. I did see Whitehaven Beach, it is like paradise!! Then we got back to Airlie and I had a 12 hour wait ahead of me to get my night time Greyhound bus. I chilled out at the lagoon, walked about aimlessly, talked to a crazy Italian coffee shop owner and then went to the pub for our boats party. Got fairly tipsy and then swayed my way down the main street with my backpack to get on the horrible
Greyhound. I had a 12 hour journey overnight. I awoke at 6am from my beer fuelled slumber and thanked my lucky stars that we were stopping in the next 10 minutes. I downed abut a litre of orange juice in about 10 seconds such was the ferocity of my hangover.

Next stop was the Town Of 1770, so called because it was discovered in 1770. Sweet! I loved it there. Very chilled out, small town, I surfed loads (and pretty well) won the best bikini contest in my surf school for my floral number and then went on a 4 hour motorbike cruise called the Scooteroo, we ate chips and dips while watching the sun set over the ocean (that doesn’t happen much on the East Coast seeing as the sun sets over the West) and it was all very pretty.

Posted by Babs at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Babs at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nikki and I are "going out" four years today. Four years in which we have had our ups (mostly) and our downs (pretty much never), bought an amazing house, we've been to several different countries (Italy, Spain, Scotland, Wales, England several times, Fuerteventura, Alaska, and, I'm sure, others I can't think of right now), we've been separated for periods by work (which sucked, and continues to suck, as she is away today when we should be together), we've spent long winter evenings together, been on long walks in the country (not often enough), gotten engaged (woohoo!), gotten a cat, and have recently been planning for our wedding and our future together.

But none of that doing of stuff of going to amazing places would have been half as much fun if we hadn't been doing it together, because being together with someone you love completely and who you know is completely in love with you is the best thing in the world. There's absolutely nothing like it, and if there was, it would definitely be illegal.

Here's to us.

Posted by Matt at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Nikki's away for a week and a half, and we're having visitors while she's away. She's been away quite a lot recently with work, so the house isn't in it's usual pristine state. See, normally, I do all the cooking and Nikki does nearly all the cleaning. Very rarely, Nikki will cook and I will clean*. Because we're having visitors (my cousin Ame and her hubby Adam, and their baby Jack) for the weekend, Nikki instructed me to clean the house a bit. But she didn't trust me to follow that vague instruction, so she left me a list.

Now, I dunno what would happen if I were going away and I decided to leave cooking instructions for herself. I'd imagine I'd be going away with a black eye. :-)

* _{Where "very rarely" means "almost never", especially in the case of me cleaning.}

Posted by Matt at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago after I discovered that someone in my office was stealing food from me I wrote a nice email to my boss saying that the problem needs to be dealt with blah blah without accusing anyone. Now I knew that it was him which is sort of why I sent it to him in the first place but there were no accusatory (is that a word) tone to the email, just that I was very unhappy about the situation and it needed to be sorted pronto :)

He admitted to it and it hasn't happened since, but since then he has turned into the total boss from hell. So today instead of working in the office with all of the rest of them (all three of them) who have no idea of the general code of conduct in an office (ie: if someone is on a phonecall don't say fuck really loud, don't talk really loud, don't talk to the person who is onthe phone to a client, don't give shit to someone who has no idea what they are supposed to be doing in one aspect of their job because no one has ever shown them etc) I moved to the office downstairs and worked away all day on my own, it was great, I got loads and loads done and it was basically a very productive day because no one was distracting me with inane bullshit that I don't want or need to know anything about.

Posted by Babs at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes, slidey slide, my little baby car Muriel or Heartbeat as she is known to some had a small accident last night, well, medium, on some bastarding black ice. I was driving along (in my automobile) in 2nd gear as the road was very sparkley and I knew it was super icy.

I was being careful, I was freaked anyway as I had skidded a few times already and then all of a sudden I was backwards on the road, the car spun 360, was straight for about a millisecond so calmed down a tad and then all of a sudden we were skidding down a hill sideways, I hit a kerb and turned backwards and smacked my head off the side window and then finally she stopped.

I thought I was going to die. It was the scariest thing that has ever ever happened to me. Skidding a little bit is scary enough but backwards and sideways down a road is freakishly scary. I was so scared and shaken that I couldn't get out of the car for about 5 minutes. I finally opened the door and assessed the damage in my frozen and shaken state. All lights working, no damage to the front, a hissing from a burst tyre, great!! The whole passenger side of the car was up against a wooden fence, that was broken, a big dent in my passenger side front panel and the small panel beside that, and the rest I couldn't see because it was pitch black and the car was against the fence. Panic panic, I dropped my phone three times before I got it together enough to make a phone call.

I rang Sean my brother in law, whimpering at him down the phone, "I crashed the car I crashed the car, its fucked, help me!!!". My head was killing me, I was shaking from either the cold or the shock or both. A girl who was driving behind my car had pulled in, she was holding me as I shook and cried and sniveled on her shoulder, she was my savior. I remember saying over and over "I broke my baby car, I broke my baby car". Sean came along fairly quickly and got me sorted, he doesn't feel the cold he said, he took off the burst tyre and replaced it with the spare, he pulled out the dent as much as he could. I didn't know what had happened. I was still shaking. The girl had gone at that stage.

The grass was crunchy. The road was twinkling at me. I was ok. No harm done to me. If something had been coming on the other side of the road I would have been dead, instantly gone. Black ice is a bastard. I have to get a new panel or two, I am amazed at the lack of damage. Thankfully I hit grass and a wooden fence, thankfully it was not a wall, or a car or something harder and thankfully I was going slow enough to not do any major damage.

What really killed me was that while Sean was doing the tyre people were speeding past us. How stupid are they, obviously there had been an accident, obviously the road was dangerously icy, obviously they should not have been speeding, but they were, I just hope that all of them got home safe. I was lucky. Someone was watching over me last night.

Posted by Babs at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Bish.

Bosh.

Posted by Matt at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Today for my job I had to do a trip to Waterford City and County to deliver a few thingys and also collect a broken thingy, my boss gave me the keys to the company "truck" yesterday, I was like "em dude, I drive a Mini", he said I would be grand, I sort of feigned an agreement and then I was off. This morning my heart was pounding in work, its a Land Rover Discovery Long Wheel Base Commercial, so lots of blind spots and its about 20 foot long, a LOT longer than poor little Muriel who was left in the yard in work all day and tonight too, I hope no boy Minis have come along and been bold with her, well unless they were really hot boy Minis :)

Anyway, I was great, the Discovery was automatic, something which I was mildly frightened of. I had driven the manual one last week but I was not alone, but today I jumped into her and looked down, no clutch, aaaaaaaaaagh!!! It was grand, a tad annoying when wanting to take off really fast and that, but other than that grand. I didnt hit anything, well I softly grazed a picnic table in a petrol station but not a mark on her.

Crap end to the day though, finally got home after driving from 10.30am till 7pm and there was a number 4 bendy bus broken down ACROSS my driveway, so therefore I could not drive the giant Land Rover in there, they took three hours to fix it, who breaks down across a driveway, fuckin Dublin Bus does, we're not there yet lads, but we're getting there, is that the trains? Who cares, I was annoyed!! The driver was very apologetic I suppose!

Posted by Babs at 9:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

If I can find an El Cheapo flight.
Ok here's the dealio, I need to book a flight to Melbourne, Oz-Tralia, for two people, either end of Feb beginning of March, or middle of April (Ciara, my travel bud is in college, she has exams or her students have exams or something) anyway, help meee!! I looked on Trailfinders and they are 1200 dolla, ie: way too much. I need to go and I want to go too. One of my bezzie buds is there now, we used to send mammoth emails constantly, now, he is jobless and has just signed up for a year on an apartment, doesnt really have the cash for an internet cafe, especially in the middle of the night there when I am in work, another of my bestest buds will be there for the three months listed. I want to go, I need to go, I just cannot fathom spending that much on a flight, donations are welcome if you like, haha!! In my dreams.

Also, speaking of friend who is there now, funny thing happened today, I was in my parents house watching Back To The Future and we were texting, I said something along the lines of "oh its awful here, almost dark and only 4.30 and pissing rain, the only thing keeping me sane is Marty McFlys shennanigans" he says "Back To The Future, its 3.55am here, how you like them apples, now I must go and have the one thats one too many", I laughed a lot and spilled tea on my new Cashmere jumper (its Penneys cashmere and I love it), Penneys gotta whole lotta things for Christmas and a lot for the family, tra la la la la, only if you are able to root through the velour tracksuits and the fake Ugg(ly) boots though, I spent 170 dolla there last weekend and came out with a whole new winter work wardrobe that fits me, then unfortunately I visited M & S on Monday night and ended up spending almost the same amount on tights socks and other assorted undergarments, they last forever though so its ok.

I know this is very disjointed, but thats how my conversations roll, over and oot...

Posted by Babs at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

(Bee-doe-day-up-bee-doe-day-up-I don't have no time for no monkey business)

I have been thinking about this for a while now due to the fact that I don't really like living with other people at the moment, more so because one of my roomies wrecks my head, and really ever since I have been doing the whole house share thing (6 years) there has always been someone who really gets on my wick.
I want to move out of my house anyway as I feel that I have been here for too long and there is really no reason for me staying as I moved to this house initially because it was 5 minutes from where I worked, but then I haven't worked in that particular establishment for nearly 3 years now, and after January I will have only one South Side friend cause the other three are going travelling etc.

But then I am thinking will I be too lonely? Will I get scared? Because when I am here and I know that I am on my own I do get kind of scared, but then I think that's just because I am used to hearing other people here and then when there is no noise it sort of freaks me out.

To be honest I am just sick of dealing with other peoples shit, I want to have my own space that is not just contained in my bedroom, I want to not come home and not be able to make my dinner because someone else is already doing that, I want to be able to shower when I want and not be worried that the noise of the electric shower will wake someone or piss someone off, I want to be able to not have to clear away someone elses stuff so that I can eat brekki, I want to be able to sit in the living room and watch what I want instead of always the Simpsons because everyone likes the Simpsons, I want to have responsibility for no one apart from me that is. In my house I am responsible for EVERYTHING, urely because I know if I leave it up to someone else it will not get done, the bins will not be left out, plastic will go into the green bin even though there is a sign detailing everything that does not go into it (apparently plastic two litre milk bottles are not real plastic in La La land), I pay the bills, I sort out everything, I sweep the floor, I wash the floor, I wash the unclaimed dishes, I dip the oil tank every week so we dont run out and get an air lock, I call the landlady, I call the police, I am the one they ask how to do things or can I do things, and I always do it. I am too nice I think.

For the past two weeks I have been conducting an experiment, I have been coming home from work and not interacting with my roomies to see how lonely I get, and so far, not lonely, I have not actually had a visual sighting of ANY of them for two weeks now, and it's fine with me, not lonely, not getting separation anxiety not anything, actually better than before. I can do what I want, I can watch what I want, I can sit here nakey and no one can say anything because my bedroom is mine, and no one can come in, and I think that's what I want my home to be.

Plus, I own all the furniture so it means when I do move out they have nothing which I know will piss off at least one person who I will be happy to piss off (a lot!) heehee!!

Posted by Babs at 7:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I called over to see a friend of mine yesterday who had an operation to remove ALL of her wisdom teeth last week, as the dentist dude put it, her mouth was just way too small for them. When she opened the door I nearly died, her face was green, like Kermit the Frog green. Is this normal I asked her...well she said, the dental nurse said she has never seen anyone with bruising this bad after a week of healing. She thinks the dentist butchered her, even though she went to some "special" private clinic funded by Bupa or Quinn Health or whatever they are called now, she was saying that while she was having her operation, the same dental surgeon operated on SEVEN other people, sounds like a conveyor belt to me!!

It came to us to question why would someone voluntarily go under the knife for unnecessary surgery, why would someone actually wish this pain upon themselves for no real reason? Then we got to talking (yes she was sort of mumbly and kept saying "ow" but we were talking nonetheless) about a good friend of hers who was in a car accident last Christmas:

She was in the passenger seat of her boyfriends Toyota Landcruiser, asleep, while he was driving, she had the seat pushed all the way back and her feet on the dash board, the vehicle hit black ice and skidded off the road and rolled, a few times, her knee was shot into her face and she has no brow anymore, the bone above one of her eyes is missing, she has no forehead. She was in the ICU for a long time, where she got MRSA (of course) and they had to remove what was left of the bone on her forehead which is to be replaced at some as of yet unconfirmed time, her eye is no longer eye shaped it is circular and will be forever, when her false forehead is put in she will have grafts to make her look as normal as possible, she had to have her face wired back together and after she woke up only consume liquid food for over 6 months.

Myself and my friend were complaining about not being able to eat solids (I was sick with a vomitting bug on Monday and Tuesday and she with the no wisdom teeth) and then we thought about her friend for 6 months on tasteless yock food and I felt so guilty, because today I am better and yes I look pale from lack of food and fresh air, and my friend will be better and no longer have a green face next week, but her friend, the girl who was in the accident, will never be the way she was before. Her boyfriend walked away with a broken nose....DON'T let people sit funny in your car, even having your legs crossed can cause awful things in the event of a head on collision.

Posted by Babs at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

It's all done, the big clean up, all the crap is gone, all the dust is gone, all of the bad stuff is gone, It's bizarre looking around and having nothing there, but now I have a fresh clean space to sleep in, and no fire hazards, I have kept everything that means anything in a folder, so that when I have my own forever house I can stick it all up somewhere, hmm! I feel great!

Posted by Babs at 7:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During my short term of unemployment I was doing cheffing nixers (I do them a lot) in a friend of mines restaurant, and one of the days they said they needed me to work the grill, now I was a chef full time for three years and half time when in college but I never ever worked the grill because I went from commis to pastry and never looked back so I was scared as shit that I wouldn?t be able to it, its all about timing and steaks, steaks are not hard to cook for yourself at home, but when you have 40 orders for steaks all done at differing degrees of doneness it can be mildly frightening, but, amazingly I did it, 102 covers all day and nothing sent back, I was delighted and then the next time I was there I wanted to work the grill, so now, I am the "grill bitch" when I work there, it?s a dirty job, but somebody?s got to do it.

Posted by Babs at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

In other breaking news, a very good friend of mine, my Space Twin (anyone who has read Cats Eye by Margaret Atwood will know what it means to me) who lives in London was attacked by little bastards a few weeks ago, I found out a few days ago, he was too angry to talk to anyone about it until then. He was walking home from work (he is a chef in a restaurant called Chez Bruce, it?s very fancy apparently) and was about 5 minutes away from his house in Brixton when he was whacked over the head with a bat and then beaten severely and left for dead in the street, they got £15 from him, that was all that he had, no phone or anything, and he is in bits and I am very sad for him and very angry about the whole thing.

See he was lying in the street for over three hours before someone stopped, realised that he was fucked and called an ambulance, over three hours, how many people walked past him? How can they live with themselves? He is not a big guy but I have seen him fight before and know he is well able to hold his own but they hit him with a baseball bat across the back of the head resulting in whiplash and then kicked and kicked him. He was in hospital for a few days and has not been able to work, he has tried twice, the first time he couldn?t remember how to do anything so they sent him home, and the second time he passed out during service, like totally KO?d, and that?s too dangerous, so now he thinks that he will have to give up his dreams. This is a person who will go insane if they cannot cook, cooking is in his heart and soul, it is what makes him him, and now he might never do it again which is making me sad and also worried for him. He is mostly angry because he never saw the people who did it to him, so they know who he is, but he will never know who they are.

Posted by Babs at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

(Yes there are a few more of these babies!!)

More panicky happenings, then came the ?oh my god I am so bored I actually don?t want to do anything? phase, so I sat about in my jamas watching the telly which was back, I watched it all, re runs of the OC on late at night, the ever brilliant Home and Away, yes I love it and am not ashamed to admit it, Neighbours, Oprah, Rachel Ray (I hate her and her stupid stupid EVOO bollocks sayings), re runs of Friends, everything and anything that was on and also sat with my laptop on front of me and my mobile beside me at all times waiting for something to happen, and eventually last Thursday after I had a bit of a meltdown a la Babs, an agency called and I have now started temping for a company that I keep calling by the wrong name, I have no idea what the company do, but currently I am Dictaphone typing and doing database stuff and answering calls and invoicing people, I have learned so much about Excel in the last day, I am impressed with myself a lot, its fairly inane but a lot better than sitting in my own house alone and bored or sitting in my parents house annoying them or sitting in Becca?s house crying to her and wanting Isobel to play when all she really wants to do is climb on me and drool, so cute!! I had a nice time when I was off and got to spend time with the family and sleep lots and do things that I had been putting off like cleaning my turtle tank twice, washing all of my clothes, ironing everything and tidying things, a lot done, more to do though unfortunately.

Posted by Babs at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The last six months or so have been a veritable gadget-fest for me. I have purchased or been given the following shiny toys:

1. A new(ish) Seat Ibiza Sport (nice)


2. A new MacBook Pro (very nice)


3. A new Nikon D40 DSLR (brilliant)


4. A new Lens for said DSLR (cool)


5. A Nintendo DS Lite (awesome)


6. An iPod Touch (awesomely awesome)

But today, they all paled into insignificance next to my newest, bestest, shiniest gadget.

Posted by Matt at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

So anyway, then came the panic after the initial relief, I was freaking out at home, on my own, all day, with nothing but the internet and the telly to keep me company, or so I thought, turns out the telly wasn?t working for the first week of unemployment, so I had the internet, and my auld flower from old job to keep me company via email, she is leaving soon so is allowed to doss off and send me ridiculously long & sympathetic emails, I learned a lot on Wikipedia, and basically stalked people via the wonders of myspace, facebook and the dreaded bebo, shh now, I am still allowed to have a bebo, I am a child still in my mind!! Then one of my friends or now ex friends decided to turn into a psycho, she was a bit of a psycho before about two months ago but I let it go and thought that she would get over it, but she hadn?t, she got let go from a job that she thought she had for life and went on the dole and spent all day smoking joints (like lots and lots and lots) and skulling vodka and becoming more and more paranoid and then attacked me via email because I said that I didn?t like the sandwiches from a certain establishment. She said that I thought that she was below me because I am picky about my sandwiches, and food in general, I am a chef for jasus sake, I mean, we are picky about food, and I was before then anyway, its quite hilarious really because of the subject which she went insane over, but she is gone now and I am quite glad about it, the relief is immense.

Posted by Babs at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have decided to do this in stages, because all in all it is too long for one go, so here is part one, and the rest of the parts will be coming soon to a computer screen near you:

Matt reminded me that I hadn?t posted in a while, I really should have because I have done a lot, and a lot has happened, and then I wasn?t doing anything for a while as well, so sorry peeps!

So I started a new job in an unmentionable place which I promptly legged it from due to the person who I reported to directly being a complete bully/wagon/the C word!! I started on Monday the 8th Oct, I left on Weds the 10th Oct, shortest employment term ever, go me!! She was horrible, she had me in tears on the first day because apparently I had done something totally wrong even though she was supposed to show me and she never did, she had fecked off for coffee and a fag or something and left me there for three hours totally clueless and when she came back she was all ?oh I expected better from you, I was sure you would hit the ground running but you haven?t I am disappointed, tut tut?, I swear if she tutted a bit more her tongue would fall off. She kept on having to run off to meetings, and then told me that I should be working faster, even though I was on average 20% faster than the initial fastness targets she had set for me, the auld wagon, she wasn?t auld though, she was about 26 and had just been newly appointed the title of manager, only she couldn?t manage a piss up in a brewery or whatever that saying is, then she told me I lacked passion, (this is all on the first morning, she had yet to tell me where the toilet was like!!!) that I lacked drive and obviously had no ambition to succeed, I love the way she could tell all this after my first morning, most of which she was on her mobile talking shite to her ?friends? or out the back smoking, or doing important stuff, like walking around with a chip on her shoulder, she was mean, mean, mean, she had a mean mouth, no lips, mean, I knew she was going to be a total wagon from the second I laid eyes on her, the job was not what the job description was, and well, she was horrible and rude and a bully and I put myself through a long time working with people like that before and I was and am not willing to kill myself for someone like that, she was a right knack bag too, I bet she was dying to wear her air max into work!! I cried on the phone to the agency that got me the job and then they told me that I was actually the third person that they had sent there who had legged it ?oh yeah, she has a bit of a tendency to be a bully, just put it down to her lack of experience as a manager? I was like ?em, that?s not MY problem?, dicks!!

Posted by Babs at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Well we are back, and we had a great time. We flew with BA and they were really great. We got the seats, the meals and the basinette (kind of sit up cot thing) that we ordered and there was very little delay etc.

We stayed with Janel and Mort Smith and their kids Braden and Nadia, in their fabulous house in Tampa for the first (overcast) week but it was lovely and sunny anyways. Isobel was so good on the flights, hardly cried at all and took lots of naps. She was referred to by a lady in business class as the 'da da da baby'. haha.
We did a lot of day trips to Tarpon Springs, the Ellenton Outlets (GO Visa credit card), Lowry Park Zoo, Channelside and the Florida Aquarium and Ybor City. Then we headed to Sanibel and Captiva (only we didn't go to Captiva) on the south West Coast. Sanibel is a little Island but it's totally signboard and neon free and it's only 25miles and hour speed limit and it's very quiet and quaint. Very pretty. Then we went to St. Augustine on the Atlantic coast. For America it's gorgeous, really cute little spanish colonial town. We really enjoyed our few days there. God I am even boring myself typing this.

Here are some of the photos. There are too many to upload.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Pixiegirlo/Tampa?authkey=ah7rfsyW2t4

Posted by Becca at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's officially 8 minutes into my 24th birthday.

So far I have recieved a beautiful Betsey Johnson bag from Matt & Nikki and also a Little Miss Chatterbox mug (very appropriate!!), a Newbridge silverwear compact mirror and perfume bottle from Becca and Sean, a book called Green Is The New Black from my beautiful niece Isobel, L'Occitane Green Tea smellies from my good friend Trishbags and a baby Toblerone from my friend Marian (it's payday tomorrow so apparently I am getting my birthday prize then!!!).

Tomorrow is also my last day in my job, eeeeek, and payday (even better!) so it's a triple celebration for me.

I remember when I was about 16 or 17 I thought that 24 was really old, and thinking that I would be married with kids! Ha! How mental is that? I don't feel any older, or wiser, maybe when I wake up in the morning I will! I am very sad this year because my Mini Mammy and Becca won't be here to celebrate because they are off on holidays and normally we do a family dinner thing where we get together and eat too much food, but this year it won't be happening, hopefully we can do it soon though, even though it won't really be my birthday then...sob sniffle!! I am VERY happy though that it's my last day in work and that my very own new year will hopefully be a good one, with an interesting new job to look forward to and loads of fancy stuff to enjoy!

I bought myself a Betsey Johnson dress on ebay for my birthday, I love it and it was only 87 squid altogether, I am dead chuffed with myself...I am allowed to buy myself a birthday present right??

Posted by Babs at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh oh I have an interview at 8am tomorrow morning, I am cacking it, its a big brillo job with great "prospects" and the money is deadly (yahoo) unfortunately I have been SUPER DUPER busy over the weekend, socialising and nixering and what not and so haven't had any time to study, this will be done before bed time, oops!

I did manage to buy not one but two suits for it in Next in Dundrum (I know I say I hate Dundrum but the fact that its open till 9pm on a Monday is brilliant and a lifesaver for me-I did go into town on Saturday to get a suit but got too hot, was starving and there were far too many people so I abandoned ship and fecked off home with a 3 bean wrap from M & S - yum!).

Anyway dudes, wish me luck that I get the deadly job, oh and that I can find the place!!

Posted by Babs at 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Well some might say we are mad but we are taking the small girl on a big holiday to Taaaaampa in 5 weeks time (29th September-12 October) We are going to visit our friends Janel and Mort and stay with them and their children in their fabulous house. We haven't seen them in over 2 years and we've never met their daughter Nadia so we are very excited about the whole thing. We'll be celebrating our 5th Wedding Anniversary and also Sean's birthday while we are there.

I sent over Isobel's passport last week and it came back after only 5 working days which I think is probably a miracle, it's SOooooo cute.

We are flying with British Airways so the veggie meals, the baby bassinet and the front seats are all booked. I can't wait.

Will post photos when we come back.

Posted by Becca at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

She said yes (naturally). But from what people have said, I think everybody would've said yes, even a few blokes have said they would have. Just call me Captain Romance. Actually no, don't call me that.

This was on Day 2 of our Alaskan Adventure, nearly three weeks ago, on the 9th of July, at about 3pm. After that, the holiday took on a kind of hooneymooney feeling, and really just got better and better.

I will be uploading about a thousand photos to Flickr in the next few days, and a few videos will be going up too. And I will blog a fair bit about the whole Alaska experience too, so tell me if y'all start getting bored of glaciers and bears (or lack of bears).

WOO-HOO!

Posted by Matt at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (36) | TrackBacks (0)

Well I did it, well half of it, one eye in fact so far. God it's hard to type with only one eye.
I got a heap of money for my maternity benefit and rather than whittering it away (or 'pissing it against the wind' as Sean so nicely put it) I bought a new TV, table and chairs for dining room, and two new eyes!!!

I had been talking about it for years and then two friends got it done and thought it was fab so I took the bull by the horns and went for it. I had the first eye done by LASEK yesterday in the Mater Private Hospital. The procedure itself was over in about 2 mins and wasn't sore but by god was it sore last night. It's very disorientating to only have one eye working and I was dizzy and tired and very emotional but today it's less sore but very watery and hard to open - see pic.

I had a check up this morning and the doc says it's very successful and healing well blah de blah but they leave the contact lense in until Monday (another check up) and then I should be able to see properly.
Can't wait for more pain and blindness on August 10th.

Posted by Becca at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Well eh hello. I am Becca big sister of Matt and Babs. This is my first confession... I mean blog entry. I haven't a clue what I'm doing so this will probably look crap.

Right... well as I said I've never done this before, just following printed instructions from Matt. I'm sitting her in 'the office' in my PJs, hair like a mad woman's shite, eating toast with marmite and listening out for 'gorgeous girl' AKA Isobel who is my 5.5 month old baby who is asleep in my bed upstairs. I have a monitor and unbeknowst (is that a word?) she is listening to Gerry Ryan on the radio so through the monitor I am listening to it.. haha.

Well that's me for now, I'll post something of interest later maybe if I have time.

I'm off to do some house-wifey type things...
Adios!

Posted by Becca at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm learning that waiting for something to inspire you to write something interesting doesn't really work, as sometimes you will go through periods of no inspiration, and then you're pretty much fucked.

So I'm just going to prattle on about stuff instead.

I've been busy! In work, mostly. Thankfully the community festival is finished. For those of you unfamiliar with the differences between professional and amateur theatre, it goes like this: Professional theatre practitioners know what they are doing, to a point, whereas amateurs are amateurs, and they haven't a clue. That said, working with the group from Inchicore College was fun, as they had a clue, and were willing and eager to learn, and I love teaching to inquisitive minds. Someday I get the feeling I will be involved in teaching to some capacity... Anyhoo, the amateur shows are finished now, and my weeks have gone from 60+ hours to a more manageable 35-40-ish.

Apart from that, I've mostly been watching Battlestar Galactice on DVD, again. On repeated viewings, some of the loose plot threads that I picked up on while watching season three (which is not out on DVD yet) actually make more sense. And the way the fourth wall came crashing down for Dan when "All Along The Watchtower" started playing at the end of the last episode of season three was pretty much negated for me when Starbuck was driving around on Caprica in her Hummer, and the way there was a Citroen DS in the basement of the café the resistance blew up. Fourth wall my ass (cue much shouting from the Danzor).

This weekend, myself and herself went out to my parents on Saturday, got fed (although we were already stuffed from having lunch in Queen of Tarts), and went down to see how my baby niece was doing. She is getting HUGE and so alert and full of energy and inquisitiveness. I have some fab photos of her that I will be uploading to Flickr tonight, and a few that I want to squeeze through Claire's black-and-white conversion technique (which will be hard without Photoshop). Maybe converting them in-camera might be the best bet. We left my Mam and Dads' yesterday afternoon, inspired by my Mams' flourishing garden to go to a garden centre to buy some plantage for our balconies. Woodies was the answer, and we did rather well.

In other news, me and Nikki are going to Alaska in three weeks, just in case there's anybody out there who I haven't bragged that to. I can't fracking wait. Huge bears, landing an aeroplane on a glacier, fjord rafting, etc, etc. Granted, driving like 2,500 miles might be a bit of a bitch, but I reckon it'll be great.

Posted by Matt at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

1: I have been told to take the rest of the week off to recuperate from being ill by my boss, and I really want to go back tomorrow but he won't let me, is this weird.

2: Out of 5 people who were in my house last night none of us had injection marks on our left upper arm - this is very weird as we all scar normally

Just thought I would share those.

Posted by Babs at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

So as you all more than likely know at this stage, I have the (poxy) Shingles, on my face. It's very sore. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy (seriously). Now if it were on any other part of my body I wouldn't be so upset (I think) but it's because it has basically deformed one side of my face that every time I look in the mirror or if someone who hasn't yet seen the Quasimodo face sees it, I start crying. (Or if I am on the phone to the VHI nurseline nurses who are fantastic I must say - really brilliant at helping calming me down and telling me repetitively that no I won't look like this forever). Now I know that Matt has seen it, but no one else has, which is why I have taken photographic day by day evidence pics (mainly for my new employers in case they don't believe that I am actually that bad) but also so I can gauge my getting better-ness. I will post them when I am better along with a normal faced Babs pic so you can see and hope and pray that you dudes NEVER ever EVER get this.

Night! (I am drugged to the eyeballs on painkillers - woot!)

Posted by Babs at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, so it's very similar to my old car. But please note: Newer model, twice (nearly) the horsepower, tasty wheels, and loads of optional new shiny bits. And a lot like, newer. And shinier. And with less (as in none) dents and scratches.

Yay! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to give it a bit of a run-in, courtesy of the M50 and the back roads of Co. Wicklow.

Posted by Matt at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

(Apologies to Matt for again talking about underwear but I have to....)

So I went bra and knick shopping this evening with my shopping bud Lyn, and as usual went to M & S (cause they are the best ones ever) and managed to spend over ?100 on undies, is that insane, there were three bras and three pants (mathcing obviosly) , I didn't even think about it till I got home and was cutting off the tags and one of the pairs of pants was 12 poxywell euro, what the foooook?? Seriously, are they made of gold or something. I don't understand, considering the bra that matches them was only ?24!!

In other news, I also bought two of the same jacket in different colours, is this insane?

Posted by Babs at 9:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

We're going out 3 (THREE!) years today.

I think that's pretty amazing. Not surprising, but amazing nevertheless.

We've had our disagreements, but never had a "row", as such.

We're very much in love.

We're way, way, way past the stage where silences are awkward.

We have a house together!

We've been on several holidays, and we shall go on a lot more.

We're not sick of each other.

I watch "America's Next Top Model" with her, and she watches "Battlestar Galactica" with me.

And we give each other huge hugs every day.

We're totally brilliant. :-)

I love you Nikki! xoxoxoxo

Posted by Matt at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh Jebus, I found a grey hair, well I think its one anyway, Matt couldnt see it earlier, but I don't think that he was looking hard enough. It's either grey, or blond, and I can't see how I have a blond hair because my hair is so dark, aaaaaaaagh. I am 23 dudes, is this the end of the world? Is it because I was so stressed out because of my unemployment? Should I pull it out? Or is the old wives tale about three growing back to replace it true? Advice needed pronto s'il vous plait!!!

Posted by Babs at 1:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I started the new job last Monday, big mistake, I hated it. They ?forgot? that I was starting that day (there was 4 people there before me and I was the fifth, its not like they had a million employees or anything) so they had nothing set up for me at all, yes they should really purchase a diary to pencil these things into. Anyway, they were dicks from the word go, no training, no training manual, no showing me how to log onto the ?system? they have NO passwords for anything which I find a bit thick seeing as they are a website, and these things are apparently very easy to break into.
They gave me dirty looks everytime I left my desk (for pees and tea making purposes) expected a person who had only been there three weeks to ?train? me in etc. They gave me no information on the company and kept on using shite ?buzz? words, which I fucking HATE with a passion, all this COB bollox, fuck off dude, just say ?at the end of the day? or something equally normal, COB my hole is what I say. Maybe I am not a professional, but these guys were taking the piss.
My email was down for 4 days and they didn?t seem to be bothered that I couldn?t communicate with customers, and their internet connection was shite too (yes this is a website remember). All over the shop, completely unorganised to a ridiculous degree and had NO people skills. They totally lied to me in the interviews. There are two of them in it, a man and a woman, the woman was a weapon, basically ignored me the whole time, she obviously has major issues, and the man, who was the rudest fuck ever. Anyway so I got mass pissed off yesterday when he ?shhh?d? me twice when I was on a call to a customer who was on their mobile hands free. I was talking at a normal level. Yes I have a loud voice but I was far from shouting. And he also moved me away from one of the other girls because I sniggered once at 27 mins past 5 on my first day, in case I distracted her or some shite. Wanker.
So yesterday they went out to lunch (early) and I emailed him, told him the sceal and ran away (hahhaha). I am a coward, but I wont stand for that shite, no way Jose. Help?..I am unemployed?.its insania!

Posted by Babs at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

In case you didn't know, Nikki and I went to Madrid this weekend past. We got the flights as a gift from her Mum & Dad for Christmas (thanks!), which was nice. We had a grand old time, spent mostly idly wandering around the streets and plazas, parks and Tapas Bars. And Starbucks (seriously, breakfast in Madrid was hard to come by, we settled for SB's out of sheer desperation, and convenience).

Madrid is pretty amazing, but definitely what I'd call a typical European Capital City. Very grand in it's architectural stylings, with huge streets, lots of people, a huge amount of history and things to do, but what really struck me as odd was the really low level of English speakers, in all establishments, even restaurants which would seem to be "touristy".. What's really nice is that all over the city there are loads of little parks and gardens, which is perfect for a couple looking to do some serious chilling out of a weekend away. There are also a serious, and I mean serious, amount of fountains. I mean hundreds of them. Everywhere.

Some observations about the city:

• The speed limits in Madrid are seen by the locals as a sort of "minimum suggested speed". Everyone tears about the place.
• Taxi Drivers only wear their seat-belts on motorways.
• As I said, the level of English speaking is incredibly poor, probably worse than Paris.
• The Omelette Sandwiches are fantastic.
• The wine is really, really cheap for a big city.
• So is the food, in general. We only spent over ?50 on dinner once, and that was a big dinner.
• I still love smoking in bars, something sadly missed in Dublin.
• Although we didn't wander far from the "Centro" district, the majority of the city seems to be fairly devoid of rubbish/trash.
• The parks and gardens seem to be the preferred spot for the local stoners to skin up and mellow out.
• The Traffic cops use their whistles, a LOT, to direct the traffic.
• Speaking of cops, they use scooters! Pretty cool, I thought. But they also carry guns, which is not cool.
• Madrid is an artificial city. It developed as a city after it was made Spain's capital. Which is weird.

Anyhoo. We had a fab time. We strolled around for hours, ate some nice food (lots of bocadillos de tortílla, found one of the only vegetarian restaurants (for me) and one of the only tea rooms (for Nikki) with the help of the AA "city guide" drank some nice wine and beer, went to the zoo (!), and constantly struggled to get out a couple of basic Spanish phrases. And Ryanair kinda redeemed themselves with the ease of getting there and back. Kinda. We're still never flying with them again, unless we really, really have to.

Flickr photoset here.

Posted by Matt at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

So yesterday was my last day in work, I have to say it was bizarre to say the least, even more bizarre than when I left the hotel I used to work in after nearly 3 years?leaving behind the daily bollocks made me happy, but leaving behind all of the wonderful friends did not. I loved where I sat, beside the window so I could open it and close it as much as I wanted and always enjoyed the afternoon sunshine beating down on me even when it meant that I couldn?t see my computer screen, the best thing about my seat was that no one could see my screen, so basically I could piss about all day and no one even know anything. I loved my parking space (when I got one?but that?s another story), I loved the canteen where we would sit for an hour at lunch time and look at the builders (or Doozers as we liked to call them) while people would walk in, see my carefully prepared balanced lunch and make comments like ?oh my goooood you are so f*ckin healthy all the time, I never see you eating any rubbish? (as if that was a bad thing) and in my head I would answer ?for f*ck sake looooser, you say that to me every single day that you see me, think of another comment, plus I actually LIKE this food, which is why I am eating it because unlike you, you breakfast roll eating f*ck, I don?t NEED to go on a diet, I have actually got a quick metabolism, and also, if I eat sugar or other shite, I feel SICK, I have told you all this about a million times, why don?t you just f*ck off!!!!!!!!!? (yes really, I would actually say this inside my head, just to make myself feel better). Or other comments would be made like ?what?s THAT????? and it would be something like hummus or quinoa, or something equally normal. I will miss my team, well two of them anyway, as the other one member was a dick head, I named her ?Brekki Roll? which then just turned into ?The Roll?. She would eat one at least every day and was the nosiest f*ck ever in the universe, she would see me telling someone something and be all ?what?? WHAT what are you talking about? basically she was a knacker, who thought that she was dead posh, and she ate the smelliest food in the world at her desk, she had worked there for almost nine years and thought that the company would die without her, she moaned about everything, and I mean?everything. She was enormous as well, and had suffered a massive stroke about 2 years ago, she was 44, and yet still ate more shite in one day that I would in a year. Everything was processed shite, sausage rolls dripping with grease, at least a packet of biscuits every single day without fail, marsh mallows by the sackload, peanuts, crisps, mars bars (like 3 a day) and then would ask me how she was going to lose weight, when she found out that I was a former chef, she even asked me would I come up with a diet plan for her. I don?t think that she quite understood that most restaurant food is laced with butter, cream and salt and other bad? foods when eaten too often. I did however manage to keep it from her that I was leaving until Monday last (which is a fat in itself because everyone else knew!!).

Posted by Babs at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Nikki's gone away for a week and a half. To Fargo, North Dakota, of all places. Yes, THAT Fargo. The one from the Coen Brothers film. She's doing something for Microsoft involving merging several different software programs into one (Microsoft having bought several different software companies that do the same thing).

It's weird, y'know. When we started going out, she was involved in moving some MS call centre from Reno, Nevada to Dublin. She was away a LOT (in Reno), but it was happening from when we started seeing each other, so it was like, normal.

Now, she hasn't been away working on a project for over two years. We haven't been apart for this long during that whole time. It's a bit weird, but knowing we won't see each other again until Thursday week, makes me feel all sad (I'm a big sap, I know). I mean, I know we'll talk on the phone, IM, email each other (and she'll almost definitely comment on this post in the morning (or afternoon, my time), but it's still not the same as chatting over dinner, and it's definitely not the same as sleeping beside her at night.

What's wrong with me?! It must be this love thing, I still haven't quite got my head around the swings from euphoria to utter dejection that can come about during the normal course of a committed relationship. And I better get used to it, as she's going to Singapore for a few days at the start of next month, and then back to Fargo again a few days after that, for Pete's sake.

[ps Love you Nikki, xoxoxo]

Posted by Matt at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

So we had ?slipper? day in work yesterday, it was for charity, the Samaritans, we had to donate ?5 if we wanted to wear slippers in work for the day, nice idea, unless you are me and forget until 7.30 the evening before, and then have to drive to Dundrum* at high speed and then wander around looking for cool slippers, which I found, for the amazing sum of ?4 in Penney?s / Primark. (yay!) Also I managed to spend ?44 more than that on other jazz, including, yes, you have guessed it, more pants / knickers (which I needed!!!).

Anyway I got jeans and a dress, and pants and slippers all for under ?50 which makes me so happy. But I have shrank, and I don?t know how. The dress is smaller than usual and the jeans, well, I never tried them on but they are HUGE on me, now I am wearing them anyway, because they look intentionally slouchy and actually quite cool, but I will be getting the smaller ones too, and then there are the slippers, I was a size 6 / 39 forever, then a couple of years ago it changed to a 5, but the slippers that I bought are a ?small? / size 3-4 / 37-38, WTF??? I don?t know what?s happening, are the clothes / shoes just getting bigger or am I somehow shrinking?

Suggestions on a postcard please.

*Big shopping centre / mall, stays open till 9pm every day.

**I know, I look demented in the pic, we all got one taken in out slippers to highlight the ?relaxed? state of mind we were all in yesterday.

Posted by Babs at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I was getting my clothes together for today yesterday (yes I do that every evening, it saves hassle but is a tad obsessive I will admit) and I decided I would count my tights collection, and I have 35 pairs, is this too much? I had more, but threw out about 10 last night, M & S are the best as they last forever, coming in at a close second are Penney's / Primark (and are cheaper) followed by Wolford ones, Top Shop ones are cack I think and always rip. Also, is it wierd that I think that "fleshtone" tights / stockings are just wrong? They look like saggy skin or REALLY shiny skin. Anyway, next time I am going to count my socks, yes, I am that bored sometimes. (shh!!)

Posted by Babs at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Me and Nikki went to London for New Years. We didn't do much apart from eating LOTS of amazing Italian food, courtesy of our friend Lauras' ex-chef Dad, drink lots of home-made wine, chill and sleep, however, amongst the highlights were:

• Going to the Science museum (but leaving because it was WAY too hot in there).
• Going for lunch in Reigate.
• Going to Covent Garden (we *heart* Covent Garden).
• Getting totally fucking soaked in a sudden downpour and not really caring.
• Eating 12 grapes, one for every "bong" of Big Ben at midnight on New Years Eve/Day (and watching grapes come out of Nikki's nose due to extreme amounts of hilarity ensuing).
• Learning how to play Briscola (badly).
• Meeting Dan, Nat and Ian for late lunch/early dinner on New Years Day (and watching Dan drink five Virgin Marys in 30 minutes without puking).
• Meeting Adrian for lunch in Richmond (near where he works in eBay).

I won't harp on about how completely SHITE Ryanair have become, and how even their own staff are complaining about their ?8/kilo excess baggage charge, but suffice to say that after our trip to Oslo in March (which is already booked), we will never travel with them again.

Unfortunately, due to several silly circumstances, we didn't meet up with Annie, which is a real, real pity as she is so lovely and we really wanted to see her while we were there. Oh well, next time, ok Annie?

Happy New Year everybody!

Posted by Matt at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

LWT is now officially on temporary hiatus. Me and Babs are off out to our M & D's for Chrimbo with zero internet access, and Me and Nikki are going to London for New Years' (If any of you Londoners who read this want to meet up, and I want to meet you, you should have my number! Txt m3.). Normal service shall resume in about a week or more, barring occasional opportunistic photoblogging.

Happy Christmas, and in case I don't see ya, Happy New Year. x

Posted by Matt at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

So I was out in my parents gaff on Friday night (yes the same parents as Matt) and the feckin electricity was gone due to gale force winds, not impressed basically and neither was my Mam, she called the girl in ESB and was told that this was only happening because of the increase in the amount of new gaffs over the past few years, Mam?s response was basically ?I don?t f*cking think so, this has been happening for 20 years? and then she realised that she was talking to someone in Cork!! Anyway, I got bored very quickly and was getting a headache from trying to read the Irish Times Magazine (from two weeks ago) by candle light, so I fecked off down to my sister Becca?s house. Becca is VERY pregnant and therefore unable to move about much so we just sat on the couch for ages chatting and getting all excited about the baba and making bets with her husband about the sex of the baba etc. Anyway, so then she was all ?Ooooh? and told me to touch the belly and I FELT THE FECKIN BABA MOVING!!! It was weird like a little alien thing inside her, I think it was an elbow or something, it must be so squishy inside the belly. The first thing that she said to me was not ?isn?t it amazing? or anything like that, no my lovely sister says ?don?t you start feckin crying? I was disappointed cause I could feel myself well up. I am a sap, did you not know this already? Anyway, now it feels more real to me, like there is an actual human there. So in 6 and a half weeks (hopefully) it will be born and it will be deadly!! Woohoo! In other weekend news, I worked my nixer in the restaurant yesterday, and me and Rob (yes just two of us) did 200 covers all day, crazy busy but not up the caca once, bizarre! We had great fun belting each other with wet tea towels and generally annoying the shite out of each other. Also the restaurant was reviewed last week, I think they must have paid of the reviewer, they were going on about how great the manager was, he is a knob of the highest order and basically the creepiest man I have ever had the displeasure to meet. In one word: YOCK! Anyway that was it, my weekend, not as exciting as putting together flat pack furniture, but then again, how could it compare!

Posted by Babs at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

I was in Galway on the weekend with two of my four roomies, or roomdawgs if you please, and when we got home on Sunday evening we found a plate with toast crusts on the doorstep and a teacup, we thought that the lads had gone mad, actually mad, we were trying to figure out how this had happened, thought that they were taking the piss etc, but neither of them were there, so basically we left it there till they got home / up. Conor aka: Ricky B was up first (was on the old night shift in the baby factory) and he explained what had happened. It sounds like an unbelievable tale, but it true, this is the story of the Mutant Ninja Bum, Conor got home at approx 8.10am on Sunday after a night of hard work and saw someone sitting slouched on our doorstep, thinking that it was one of us for a split second he started to laugh, but then realising that none of us were there, he soon copped on, ?don?t get out of the car? he told himself, sohe reversed and saw what was an old lady bum, with strips of black fabric all wrapped around her face (like a ninja apparently!) so she was fucked basically, all over the shop and had blood on her face and smelled like wee, and was shaking and soaking wet, so he went to the garage across the road, got some ingredients, and made her brekki, he didn?t bring her inside (smelled like wee remember) and some tea and gave her his favourite jumper (sheesh!) and was the best ever good Samaritan ever! So he went off to bed and then she was gone. Flick to Monday morning, she is there again, I opened the door and almost stood on her, she scared the bejasus out of me, started telling me that she lived there and why would no one let her in (obviously lost her marbles) I felt so terrible but was already mad late for work and that (stayed up talking shite till 4.20am) so I had to run past her, this was after screaming from the shock. Then the other roomies also got scared when they were leaving. But seeing as we didn?t feed her, we thought that was the end of it. No sign on Tuesday, then on Wednesday I was off, so was Eimear and Conor was in at 8am, at approx 7.15 Conor was banging on my door and me in my sleepy hazy dreamy state was all ?I am NOT IN TODAY MAN!!!!!!? and he was like ?can I come in pleeeease!!? so I said yeah and he jumped in the door almost landing on me and whispering ?the bum, the bum, the bum is outside what am I going to do I have to go to work, help me?, apparently she was banging on the door and scratching at it and ringing the doorbell all night, (I love the way these things don?t even wake me up!!) so we decided that he should jump over the back wall into Tesco underground carpark, good idea? No it wasn?t!!! He was covered in old leaves and other jazz and there was a beat cop looking at him, then me and Eimear went onto my balcony and started to flap about in our jammies, then we saw a beat cop (yeah same one!) and alerted her by jumping up and down and pointing, she got rid of said bum and then knocked on the door, she came into the house, and told us that she thinks the bum has some ?psychological issues? as she said that she lived in our house and was waiting on the bus and loads of other stuff, she hasn?t been back since but every time I open the door I think she will be there. She is scary looking but I would say fairly harmless, apart from the fact that she has been weeing on our doorstep and that!! Erk!

Posted by Babs at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

My friend in work Louise surprised me today with an early Christmas present, all nicely wrapped up in tinfoil I might ad, now we all received an email telling you how to make slippers out of Sanitary Towels, so Louise took it upon herself to make some for me and boy are they lovely, I actually put one on and it was surprisingly comfy?but extremely strange. I think that they are brillo and also I am so happy to know that there is someone out there who I a little bit as mad as me ? yay!

Posted by Babs at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Is it just me or does anyone else love winter this much. It?s so fresh outside and even though it pished rain ALL day yesterday I still love it. Even though its dark when I get up and dark when I am on my way home from work I still love it. I love walking in the crispy leaves, and the smell of Halloween in the air (yes they are still letting off the fireworks even though its mid November, those clever people!) and I can have the fire on and not feel bad about getting into bed early or having a ?blankies? or getting into my PJ?s the second I get home from work. One reason I love it is that I get to wear my vast array of scarves, hats, gloves and big jumpers and winter dresses and boots, summer is boring, its always the same, flip flop flap as far as I am concerned, you have people who really shouldn?t wearing WAY too little clothes and not to be bad, but no one wants to see that you know? Winter has so many things going for it, lovely snow, lovely refreshing rain, wind to blow away all the cobwebs left by calmer weather. I think at times I am obsessed with winter, I even have a tattoo of a snowflake on my leg done in white ink, so its very subtle, I love it, I forget its there sometimes even, but its mine, and no one else has the same one so its special. Loads of people get them in black and coloured inks which I feel is totally wrong, cause I mean, snow is white right? Summer sunshine is the best, right now I am sitting in my office with the blinds partially closed, looking out at cranes and building going on and there is this amazing sunrise, and amazing clouds, and maybe it?s just me, but it?s too early to see it in the summer.

(*Artwork by Donough O'Malley www.pencilrobot.com)

Posted by Babs at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

So, idly browsing the net this evening (as you do), I happened to do that thing that everyone swears blind that they've never done, and Googled myself. And what, you ask, was item one on the list?

I was pleasantly surprised, at first, when I found that the first result was Wikipedia. Then I realised what it was for. Anyone remember that time I entered Google Idol? With an hilarious lip-synching of "Double Team" by Tenacious D, and reached the Semi-Final of that round in the competition? No? Well that's what the Wikipedia entry containing my name is about.

The shame.

Fortunately, I've used "Matthew Verso" for almost everything I've done online, and "Matt Verso" for everything I've done in work, so if you Google my "work name", you get a load of work-ey stuff, and none of the bloggy, geeky nonsense that I do in my spare time. Give it a try, and see the difference.

But now that I've gone and used both names in this post, right now, that'll probably bollocks all that up royally. Do I care? Not really. [UPDATE: yes, I've fucked it up completely]

So, anyone else got a Google shame that they wish they could keep hidden?

Posted by Matt at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

So, I had a four day weekend.

On Friday, we went to Turlough (my cousin's cousin)'s exhibition, and we bought a lovely picture of his. Click the linked image here for a closer look, it's really cool.

Nikki's birthday party was on Saturday. I cooked a huge dinner, and Nikki and her friends Laura (who was over from London for the weekend), Claire, Deirdre and Catherine, and myself, enjoyed it very much, along with the piles of wine and beer we had, and the banoffee pie Claire very nicely prepared (it was scrum-diddley!).

On Sunday, I chilled and the girls went for lunch in Dun Laoghaire. Claire, Deirdre and Catherine went home, and Nikki and Laura came home, and we chilled all evening, and watched Spider-Man 2 (again!).

Today, I picked up the picture we bought on Friday, and chilled.

It was a pretty chilled weekend!

Posted by Matt at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy Birthday to my beautiful Nikki who has now passed the point of no return, and reached the grand old age of 30!

"Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy biiiiiirthday dear Nikki!
Happy birthday to you!"

Hip-hip, HOORAY!

Apparently (she says) she feels much older and wiser today, but I don't believe a word of it.

We're having a few guests over tomorrow to our lovely pad for a big pile of nosh and booze. Which is nice. I'm cooking, so naturally the food will fricking ROCK ASS.

Posted by Matt at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Meet ?Flange? my new Doozer, this is his actual name, I am scared by this fact momentarily, what were they thinking? I just don?t know, but isn?t he SO cool, I love him, and he has a tashe, just like Tom Sellick, apart from Sellick?s isn?t ginge, ah well!

Posted by Babs at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

In case you were wondering what the crap is going on, like Pix, Dan, and several hundred others:

(There's no badge saying 'we', but I do mean we, and can someone please remind me to un-pink the blog when it's November... Please? Cheers!)

Posted by Matt at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy birthday to Babs, who has reached the grand old age of 23 today!

Hip-Hip, HOORAY!

We're all going to dinner in the lovely Bar Italia tomorrow to mark the occasion, it should be fab.

Happy birthday Babs! Love ya to bits. :-)

Posted by Matt at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Last May, for my Birthday, Nikki got me Flying Lessons (thanx Nikki! xoxo)

On Sunday, Midway through September, I finally got round to using them.

It was absolutely brilliant.

Posted by Matt at 1:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Well I am cream crackered too but for totally different reasons, I am feeling incredibly jealous of my brother now, for which you will see, are obvious reasons:

Friday 5pm: Off work for the weekend ? awoohoo!!! And there is a work do on tonight even better, I want to leave my car at home so my mate Lorna who I work with said she would follow me to my gaff and then drop me to the bar, result and a half I say. So we are on the way home and there is a massive truck on front of me and the lights turn red, but I don?t see them due to the truck which also broke them, and I broke the lights, for the first time ever, and I didn?t even notice, I was listening to Weezer and boogying on down in the car, not in a dangerous fashion, but you know, drumming on the steering wheel and that, Lorna blew the horn which was the scariest part, I am very disappointed in myself to be honest?..anyway so then it was home?change?play with turtles?.back into Lorna?s car, got to the bar, the drink was all for FREE ? yay!! So I ordered my pint, went to the toilet, my pint came and someone STOLE it!!! I mean seriously, the booze was free and yet someone still felt the need to steal my pint, its just ridiculous!! Anyway finally (felt like ages, was actually approx 8.5 mins) got my pint, there was supposed to be food laid on, so we were milling the pints, I can?t say exactly how many were consumed, but I will say 6 in that bar, approx, em!! I think so anyway, so the food came and it was crap, now bear in mind that this was for the General Managers farewell party, and we got platters of deep fried shite, literally, even if you were into that sort of thing, it was still shite. Anyway, so the scabby bastards cut the tab at 10.30 (!!!!!!!!!) so me, my mate Kirsty and my other mate Barry decided to feck off to another place, so we said we were going to the bar and then legged it!! We went to a place called Toast in Rathmines which I love, and they hadn?t been to, so that was groovy!! More pints then Kirsty went home, bar closed, Barry decided it would be a great idea to get KEBABS, and I agreed, and we went to this dive place called Hit The Spot and let me tell you this, it really didn?t hit any spot, none, not at all, we left without finishing and staggered back into town where I got the nitelink, went home, almost fell into my turtlepops aquarium (I could actually more than likely fit into it!! My largest achievement of the night has to be this though: after I would say 8 or 9 pints (I may be short ish but I can fit them in) a kebab and numerous other dirt infested areas including the bus stop and bus, I was wearing white trousers and they hadn?t a mark on them ? awoohoo!!!! Really, this is a big achievement for me.

Saturday: Woke up 9am, slept, woke up 10am, slept, woke up 11am, got up, made brekki (yum), arsed around the house for a while shaking and the like, trying my best to wake up, showered, shook some more, drank coffee, that was a bit better, remembered eating the kebab, felt a little queasy, then was like ?I don?t want to go to work??.oh yeah forgot, sometimes I work in my friends restaurant, with him, as a nixer type thing. Rob is my friend. Rob is in Bratislava on holidays, with his girlfriend Lyn, Rob didn?t tell me that the dude that I was going to be working with was USELESS. I am trained as a chef and have a pretty cool head under pressure, I also have no problem communicating things with my comrades, this guy, apparently did!! He was all chat before service and then just stopped. Now I don?t know if any of you have ever worked in kitchens or even as front of house, but if you have you will know that communication is the be all and end all of the whole operation, there were orders coming in he wasn?t telling me, thus putting me up shit creek without even a trace of a paddle, then I was doing starters, and sides (easier option and if I get a choice then why not) so he was sending main courses but not telling me which table etc, so I had no idea what to be sending, so then he starts giving ME shit for not being together, so I told him to fuck off and worked it my own way from then on. Go me!! The I did something bad!! I was doing some sauté potatoes to go with a steak I think, and I threw on the pan and oil to heat up and then I had the spuds in my hand to throw in and I dropped one into the boiling oil and it splashed my arm and?MY FACE. So now I have this lovely scabby eye socket, I was lucky I suppose that I dint get it into my eye, but man, it hurt into the pit of my stomach!! Then I cleaned down, didn?t help the knob dude at all cause why should I when he?s a dick head and then left, on my way home my friend Su called me ? ?ooh hey, can I sleep in your gaff tonight Micheal ? her boyfriend ? has gone to France and I don?t like being in my house on my own on the weekends, please? so I said yeah and I collected her on the way home, she gets into the car after drinking a few whiskeys ? to calm her down ? with a bag of pyjamas, and a bottle of Jameson, like a LARGE bottle of Jameson, so when we got home, we tucked into it, then about 2.30 I decided I could no longer function so I put her to bed, found a new spider in the hallway, we named him Larry!! And then I fell into bed, and didn?t wake up until???

Sunday 1.45pm: wake up!!! AAAAAAAAAAGH!!!! Its 1.45, WTF!!!! Got up, made myself brekki / lunch type thing, eggs, toast, tea, then some coffee, an apple, that kind of jazz, then lay on the couch till 4.30 watching ?Shameless? DVD?s, then had a 45 minute shower, then got ready for other work, where Matt works, then my roomie Conor came home, and he was CRANKY, he has worked the last 21 days in a row and is angry about it to say the least!! Then I left, went to my mate Trish?s gaff to park my car, had some tea and then went to work?in the third job in just over 48 hours, rock on Sarah!! Then I went home, made luch for today, watched ?Shameless? dvd and then off to Bedfordshire for me, where of course I cannot sleep??????.

(NOTE:* it is not normal for me to work 3 jobs, I am not insane!! I am going back to college at night time in 2 weeks ? eek! And needed to work extra to pay off fees, comprende?)

Matt is sooooooooooooooooooooo lucky!!

Posted by Babs at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm cream-crackered.

Friday, we had my cousin Andy and his girlfriend Nikki (no, it's not that confusing) over for dinner. I threw together an enormous stir-fry with everything under the sun in it (we're talking onions, 10 cloves of garlic, baby corn, asparagus, red pepper, carrots, sprouts, marinaded tofu, chilli, Thai 7 spice [brilliant], rice, fish, and other things I forget, it was really good, lots, of 'mmmmmms') and got the beer and wines in, Andy brought some nice cheeses and crackers, and we all stuffed our faces and got a bit pished. It was great.

Saturday Nat and Ian came down to the southside as they were in Dublin for the weekend, were looking to meet up and I had come up with a fabulous plan for them, that didn't involve wandering aimlessly and doing touristy things. We walked up the top of Killiney hill, took pictures of the amazing view, walked down, drove to Dun Laoghaire, got coffees and went for a stroll on the pier, had lunch in Harry's Café Bar, came out to Shankers and showed them our lovely house, drove into Dublin City, had a walk around and went for a drink or three in John M Keatings, a new-ish pub/restaurant/club/thingy built out of a converted church, strolled up Grafton St. and went for dinner in Café Bar Deli in Bewleys Café, before we parted ways and went home tired but happy (Nat and Ian: you guys rock!).

Sunday, we got up kinda late-ish, Nikki went to Dundrum and I watched the Grand Prix (Schumacher announced his retirement!). My sister Rebecca and her husband Sean came over for a cuppa with their house-warming pressie which was lovely. We chilled out for a bit after that, then went into town to see Jimmy Carr in the Olympia. He was fucking hilarious, a million one-liners, and particularly good with the hecklers, which is a measure of how good any comedian is, imho. I give him an 8 out of 10.

Really, really great weekend. I'm knackered. Next weekend I'm going flying. I'm off to bed now. Zzzzz...

Posted by Matt at 1:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Seeing as I totally forgot, and she might not have told everyone, Nikki has uploaded all her photos from the Snowdonia trip and my cousin Ian's wedding onto her Flickr. My Snowdonia pics are up in my 'Snowdonia' photoset, but I got almost no photos of the wedding due to me being an usher all day and having a lot of things to do.

Have a look, to see me, Babs, Nikki and Rebecca (aka 'the big sis') in varying states of drunkenness in our bestest of clobber, along with all the rellies and the campest photo of me I think you'll ever see. Enjoy!

Posted by Matt at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

As per me big sis's comment on the post about the lumpy milk, here's the latest scan of my niece/nephew to be, at 20 weeks. Halfway there!

_{(Any coments about sexual appendages that may or may not be visible in the scan and that you may or may not be able to see, please refrain from commenting them here, as Rebecca doesn't want to know what flavour he/she is until she sees him/her 'for real')}

Posted by Matt at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

^{(For all of you non-Irish readers, this weekend just past was a bank holiday in Ireland, so nyah-nyah)}

• Get up late.


• Have a leisurely breakfast.


• Read the papers.


• Chill out.


• Go for a drive in Wicklow.


• Make a nice dinner.


• Drink a nice bottle of wine.


• Watch a good film.


• Go to bed late.


• Get up even later.


• Drink coffee.


• Smoke cigarettes.


• Go for a stroll on the pier.


• Go for a coffee & a cake.


• Go for a stroll in Dalkey.


• Load photos onto your PC, a peruse them at a leisurely pace.


• Get an Indian take-away.


• Play video games.


• Go to bed at a reasonable hour, ready for work (gah!) the next day.

Posted by Matt at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

So I was going about my normal business the other night getting some pitta bread out of my freezer which is in the utility room in my house when I noticed a ?shitpile? of ants on the wall, now our house is in an ant prone area, being near the sea and that, I mean they are always all over the garden and paths and that, so me being me and not afraid of these things got the old ant spray out and blasted them, they were dead or so I thought?..

The next day I got home from work and decided I should clean up the dead ant depris from the night before, and when I looked down I saw more, coming from underneath the freezer, I was like ?oh dear, that?s a lot of ants? (there were maybe 100) so I got my groovy roomie Eimear to help me take everything out of the freezer and move it back (it was VERY heavy and I am strong, but small ish so moving it alone was not an option). When we moved the freezer, what we saw actually scared the bejasus out of me, (and I am not a scardey cat about creepy crawlies) there were THOUSANDS of them, more and more kept coming from under the lino, seriously it looked like something out of a horror movie, now I was ready with the (pretend) Dyson (ie: like a Dyson, but NOT ?400 ? neat!) in hand, and I was wearing flip flops (or thongs as weird people call them) and they were on my feet and I was freaking out BIG TIME, now I know that Matt has seen me freaking out a good few times what with being my bro and that, but I swear I have never ever ever freaked out this much in my life, I was vacuuming to beat the band, for 40 minutes, the container where the dirt goes was FULL of ants, ew, my skin is crawling even writing about it!! So when I was done vacuuming I ran out into my front garden, container of ants in hand, jumped over the wall into this field and set the ants on fire, I know I am a bad bitch but I had to, they would have come back, we pulled the lino up then and there were MORE (yes more!!) so I vacuumed them up too, burned them and then ant sprayed the shite out of everywhere, and ant powder and also this other stuff called ?Nipan? or something, which the ants eat and then go back to the nest and then they explode (groovy?) and kill the rest of the ants, ew Creepy Mac Creeperson seriously!! So yeah, ANT Invasion, not so groovy!!

Posted by Babs at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

Apparently so, yes I know it is the coolest name in the world, but there is a BAND?? In Finland, I found these by accident the other night while hanging out with my friend Suzi Blue (*not her real name ? the Blue bit) anyway she had asked me over to her apartment to sing for her (yes I know, weird you may say but this is what was happening) she is in a band and heard me drunkenly warbling on Saturday at the BBQ in my house, and thought that I sounded lovely so I went over and drank red wine and was merry and sang, so we were kind of drunk and decided that we were forming a band, and were like ?what will we call the band!?? so we decided on Verso and found these dudes, some Finnish type metallers, they seem to be very Finnish, I am amazed, so we couldn?t use that so we decided on The Heroes, and as you can guess there was a band called that too, so what will we do?? Ideas on a postcard please!

So yeah a band called Verso, what were the chances??

Posted by Babs at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Here we go again... Take a deep breath...

Whenever man o man, I dunno I am starving and I have a head full of snot, like if you turned me on my side it would pour out

Scary thing happened after swimming: a knacker dude collapsed in my driveway (?) and then he had this massive gash on the back of his head and wouldn?t / couldn?t get up and then totally passed out so I called the ambo?s and then he got up and staggered across the road on front of a load of cars and that, and then collapsed across the road and then got up again and staggered away so I dialled 999 again and told them this and then they said that they would still get the Ambo?s bit also the cops and told me to go inside and calm down so I did and then the cops and this RIDICULOUSLY HOT paramedic dude came to my house asking me what happened and I felt really bad cause I told them he was gone down ailsbury road and I said that I told the emergency service dude that too and the really hot Ambo was all ?if he got up why did you call the ambos and then I almost started to cry (seriously they sent 4 cops and 4 ambo?s what the fook?) and I was all tearful and saying I didn?t know what to do he was really scary and obviously totally fooked up he had a massive cut on his head (I pointed out the blood on the driveway) and then he was like ?its ok love, calm down, it happens all the time?. I wanted to ask him out on a date but seriously embarrassing, he was a beautiful man! (I know you don?t want to knw about me fancying anyone but whatever! I am a grown up now!! Hahaha!!

Love you and we will get drunk soon ok

And... Relax... Phew. I'm knackered again now.

Posted by Matt at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw this and I want it, but I am poor as a mo-fo at the moment, so will someone buy it for me??? Go on, I am lovely and will be dead appreciative of any gifts! (Please?)

(I am a girly medium!!)

Posted by Babs at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, by older sister Rebecca called me in a state of some extreme excitement.

"You're going to be an uncle!" she said.

"Huh?" I replied, being a little slow of thought at the time.

"Yay!" she said, when I realised what she was saying. Rebecca, after a long time trying with her hubby Sean, is preggers. Knocked up. Drinking for two.

I'm going to be an UNCLE!!! WOO-HOO!!!

Here's the scan she sent me last night. I think it's very clear. I can totally see my future niece/nephew anyway!

(Oh yeah, and congrats are due too to Babs, who's will soon be 'Cool Auntie Sarah")

Posted by Matt at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

To give you an idea of what Babs is like, as a sister, friend and someone who I love to bits, here's an email I got from her the other day. This Mail has been copied and pasted, with no changes at all:

Howdy Dudey!

I am SO bored today, Trishbags is off sick still with some bizarro viral infection jazzaroonie, ew and also scary, she has to go and get blood tests, I am bonnixed from swimming, and also scared that she will make me go into the lane swimming thingymajigaroonie boonie, my chest hurts cause I have a classic Verso spot and no can understand the pain!! I squished myself last night in yoga-toga, I think I mashed my ribs together trying to do that lift up thingy majig, my teacher Ciara told me that I should do some abdominal exercises (?) at home to build up my ?core? and then I can move onto the next level you know like ? a woohoo! Although I am a bit scared of that too, I was thinking of maybe joining the gym but that?s far too boring so have decided against it for the moment, I am SO tired too, felt like I had about 2 hours sleep last night, when in fact I had about 7 ? I am DEFFO going to bed dead early tonight, if I have any choice, that is, I am hoping to be there by at the most 10 o?clock but I just always seem to have SO much to do, crazy town tacular. You know me and the way that I type the way I speak, can you actually hear my voice in your head talking it all out or what, you have a crazy imagination but not as crazy as me, I think I win in the Krazy Kat Kompetition!! I just feel totally drained like I should go to bed or summat, either drained or like I want to explode into hyperactivity, I find it hard at times to decipher which one it is! I am going to Deftones gig tomorrow night in the Ambassador I think, I hope, I have to call Daddio the hero dude father, so that should be good then its dead as a dodo on Saturday I am not doing anything at all, apart from maybe having a stroll on the ?beach? I need a total restamundo day you know what I mean? My whole body feels wrecked, I wanted to make cookies tonight but I think I might be just a little bit wrecked and I cant even think of anything to have for dinner, and I am going over to Trish?s gaff for a while after work, groan!!

Ok I am going to sign off from my rant face!! I am sure that you might be bored, get me a surprise or something, hope that the gaffaroonie is all swell and that, have you slept there yet, whats the bleedin jazz man?

Peace and Love Turtle Dove!

XOXOX

Now, imagine talking to her, every other day, and trying to get a word in edgewise (only messin', as I said before, I love her to bits!).

Posted by Matt at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, 8 months after deciding to go for it, Nikki and Myself finally moved into our new house. Hooray!

I had intended to post last night about it, but when I turned on the laptop all I got was 'the LAN connection has limited or no connectivity' or some such jazz, and after spending half an hour trying to get it to work I came to the conclusion that it was bedtime, and I really couldn't be arsed.

So, yay for us! Even though the place is in a absolute state, with wiring visible in walls I have yet to plasterboard over, kitchen units sitting unsupported on the floor, no tiling or carpets done, bags, boxes and pieces of un-put-back-together furniture lying around everywhere, we are home, in a house that is ours.

_{Invitations for whatever house-warming events we will have will be announced when the aforementioned wiring, walls, bags, boxes, tiling and carpets have been sorted, tidied, finished, and painted.}

Posted by Matt at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

Posted by Babs at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

...Ever do a 20-minute presentation to your Boss, Administrator, and Board of Directors, without using Powerpoint, and get roundly applauded by everyone present? No?

I must be cooler than you then. :-P

(I'm the King of the World, me)

Posted by Matt at 7:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Slowly...getting...there...

So we moved all the stuff from my sister's garage to the new house yesterday. You may recall an amusing blog post about the original move, and the hilarity that ensued when Sean (the bro-in-law) got his truck stuck up a small lane and needed a Garda escort in reverse? Well, I'm pleased to report that due to our new place being ridiculously convenient to the motorway, no such hi-jinks occured in yesterdays move.

We got out to Garristown (North County Dublin, middle-of-nowhere) at about 10am, mostly due to the new N2 dual carriageway taking about half an hour or more off the journey time, which was brilliant (so from taking an hour and a half to get to my Mam and Dad's or my sisters, it now takes 45 minutes!). We loaded up the truck, chasing away a few cats and spiders as we did so (amid screams of "SPIDER!!!" from Nikki), I had a go around their garden on Sean's Quad Bike which was loads of fun, we had some breakfast and tea, and headed up to my Mam and Dad's for a couple more things.

Unloading was easy-peasy, and all the stuff stacked into one of the bedrooms as we're getting wood put down this week in the other two. We headed to Dalkey for a bit o' nosh, and ended up in the IN bar as there wasn't much else open. After lunch we parted ways, another stage in the moving process completed.

Today, the wood for the floors is being delivered, a skip is coming to take away the rubble from knocking down that wall, NTL are coming to hook up the broadband and TV, and I just got a call saying our lovely couch is ready. It's all go here!

Posted by Matt at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

So. Four days later and our fabulous new house still looks the same. It's really nice an' all, but I really really want to get a move on and start actually doing things. I spent most of today hanging around in it, waiting for various tradesmen to arrive, completely bored out of my tits. Good news is that NTL will be installing Digital TV and 2 meg broadband on Monday, so we'll be all wired up before we move in.

This Thursday, me and my Dad are going to knock down a wall that's in a really stupid place. The kitchen as it stands is about 3 feet wide (that's just less than a metre for all you metricians out there), and getting rid of this wall will make it over 8 feet wide, or 'wide enough' as I call it. We have the electrician booked to take care of all the electrics in the wall too, so that's not a problem. This Sunday, a familiar team of movers will be taking all our stuff out of 'storage' (aka my big sister's garage) and moving it to the house. Should be fun!

Wooden floors will be going down (fingers crossed) towards the end of next week, carpets around the same time, and me and my Dad (the ex-master tiler) will be doing all the tiling. We've picked black marble for the main bathroom, and terracotta quarry tiles for the kitchen. The ensuite and utility room tiles are still kinda undecided, but will probably be plain and cheap as we can find, while still being 'nice', and without being 'crap'. I have a mate lined up to patch and plaster the large holes that will be left after we knock the aforementioned wall to oblivion, so we're all cool there.

So! We're getting there. I'm getting really, really, really impatient now, but seeing as the short-term lease on our current flat runs out in 2 weeks, I really don't have long to wait. Roll on the 4th of July is all I can say!

Posted by Matt at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

WOO-HOO!!!

Got the keys to the new house today, not an hour ago.

There will be several posts dedicated to the new place, so stay tuned for all the news. I'm too excited to blog more about it right now.

And one more, WOO-HOO!!!

Posted by Matt at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

My nose is a funny thing at the best of times. Not funny as in ha-ha, funny as in weird and annoying. There only ever seems to be one nostril functioning within established parameters (apart from when I breathe out through my nose under water, for some reason), and it goes between dry and crusty to wet and watery in a seemingly random pattern. I have to always, always have tissues or a handkerchief on or about my person, and dust of the type that hides in corners of rooms and in ducts and air-vents is the nemesis of my sinuses. And then, when the weather becomes beautiful and all the lovely people are having a fabulous time in the lazy, hazy sunshine, hay fever descends into my nasal cavity like I don't know what.

Those of you who do not suffer from this seasonal affliction have no idea what it's like to blow several pints of water snot out of your face in a matter of a few hours, to tear at your eyelids like someone has blown a handful of freshly ground black pepper in your peepers, to have that gnawing stuffy headache and dry coughy throat constantly reminding you that you're allergic to fucking summer, and as you have no idea what it means, I hate you (except you Nikki, you're exempt). I'm taking these New Era Tissue Salts, as I'm all homeopathic-ey about this sort of thing, and have a profound dislike of anti-histamines, which are worse than the original affliction ('hey! you've no hay-fever! Cool!' - 'yes, but now I have no snot at all, and I believe that's not quite right either...?'). They seem to be doing some sort of job, but the hard thing to remember about taking homeopathic medicines is that less is more.

In other (GOOD!) news, I met the surveyor at our house today, and it's finished. FINISHED! It looks pretty immaculate, and barring a few tiny niggley things that were to be fixed this afternoon, we should be getting the keys and handing over a chaque worth a small fortune sometime towards the middle of next week. WOO-HOO! (More news will follow as I hear it...)

Posted by Matt at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

My poor Nikki is at home in bed after a night spent being very sick. It's only the second sick day Nikki has ever taken, so understandably she is a wee bit pissed off. She didn't have dinner yesterday, all she had was a cocktail sausage or two on a warship (I'll explain this another time), and no-one else was sick as a result of said sausages, so (using my uncanny forensic food-investigating abilities) I've traced it back to a sandwich she had in O'Briens Sandwich Bar in the IFSC in Dublin city, yesterday afternoon. Well, Nikki said 'the ham looked a bit dodgy, but I forgot to check it in the sandwich before I ate it'. See, this is why I don't eat meat. Too much chance of being incapacitated.

Anyway, the last time I was actually physically sick (as in 'puking my ring'), was after having a tuna (ok, so I eat fish) sambo in another O'Briens Sandwich Bar (for those of you who've never been in one, it's an Irish-owned deli-type place, where Asian students make you a sandwich in front of you). I just thought I'd throw the question out there: Has anyone else ever been sick as a result of an O'Briens (or indeed any other deli) sandwich?

Incidentally, this will probably be my last proper post for quite a while, I won't be online tomorrow, and myself and herself will be heading to windy sunny Fuerteventura on Sunday. I shall endeavour to provoke jealousy in all you readers by mo'blogging pictures of us sipping mojitos beside a pool, peering inside volcanoes and generally chilling to the max. Cheers y'all, and see you in a week or so.

Posted by Matt at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We went down to our new house for the first time today, to meet a 'snagger' lady to give the place a quick once-over and see what's broken before we stump up the vast wad of cash and call it 'ours'. The place didn't look too bad really, the odd nick and dent and bit of trim out of place, but everything looked pretty fine and dandy.

I did notice one thing though. The living room is supposed to be 'pre-wired for surround sound', but although I can see where the wires come out of the walls, there are several problems:

1. I can't see where the wires go into the walls
2. There are only three wires coming out of the walls, and
3. They are in totally the wrong places.

This irks me somewhat, but it's nothing a bit of drilling and hammering can't fix.

The other thing was, when we were leaving, two painters came in (they appeared to be eastern European, but that's not important). One of them was smoking a fag in our house. Seeing as the house is actually still a 'building site', and therefore a 'workplace', this is totally illegal, and could incur a hefty fine for the building contractor. Therein lies the dilemma.

Should I inform the relevant authorities, therefore guaranteeing that the aforementioned painters will almost certainly do something bad to my shiny new pad, or should I do 'the Irish thing', and not complain, in the vein of 'ah sure, it's grand'?

Posted by Matt at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, in between right now and the unknown date in the near future when we will be moving into our beautiful new dooooplex, we moved into a little two-bedroom flat with all our stuff in piles of boxes and black bags. Well, I say 'we', I mean of course 'me', as we moved Nikki into the temporary place on Sunday, last night was my turn. Apart from one box (the one with the books in it, of course!) which was incredibly heavy and required all of my manual handling training to lift, it was all pretty straightforward.

Well, it would have been, if it wasn't for my uncanny ability to be completely terrible when it comes to getting myself together. Why is it, that I can organise a complete truck-full of lighting, sound equipment, set and costumes to be unloaded and set-up within a fairly tight deadline, but I find it a total 'mare to put my crap in boxes and move it from one place to another...?

The flat is ok, there's plenty of room for all our stuff, clothes, etc, the shower works, it's clean and dry, there's a balcony I can smoke on, and the bed is reasonably comfy ('sleepable in' is how I'd put it). Nikki claimed that the toaster was 'broken', prompting the very real fear that 'life without toast' would become more than just a silly blog name, but a bit of jigging around and wiggling of levers and lovely, Marmitey toast was had this morning.

And so it begins. Nikki and I are now officially 'living together'. If we haven't killed each other by this time next week, we should be cool for a long while yet.

UPDATE:I just realised something. There's no internet access in this temporary place of ours. How am I going to live without my eveningly hour or two of interweb trawling? I'll go MENTAL! Either that or I'll go to an internet café. But I know there's none nearby. Ah... crap.

Posted by Matt at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

After four or five months delay, after a small move in January, after Nikki living in spider-infested, at times freezing cold, temporary accomodation, and after spending the last few months looking at couches, tv's, coffee machines and crockery, we finally got completion notice on our new house.

Well, I say completion notice, but of course I really mean 'snagging notice', in that they told us we could now come in to find every little niggley thing that's wrong with the place, tell them about the snags, and get them to fix them. Hopefully, seeing as they've now built quite a few places in the development, they'll have gotten the hang of it by now andf won't have fucked up too much. But judging by Seamus's 5-week snagging ordeal, and the fact that his place is only two doors down from ours, I'm being cautiously optimistic.

In the meantime, Nikki has to move from her temporary accomodation to yet another temporary place, this time a two-bedroom apartment in Monkstown. And this time I'm moving with her. I figure it's a good way of packing all my stuff up and sorting it out, before moving it permanently into an actual home. But then I also realise it means I'm going to move house twice in the next month. Oh well, I'm sure there'll be plenty of fun to be had. :-)

In other news, I have been invited by the Argentinian Ambassador to Ireland and The Captain of the flagship of the Irish Naval Fleet to a reception on said flagship, the L.E. Eithne, next Thursday. This is due to Nikki's dad being a Commodore in the Irish Navy, and this will be the first such Naval reception-thingy I will have been to. There's nothing on the invitation about a dress code though, so I'm going to go wearing bermuda shorts and a hawaiian shirt. And wellies.

Posted by Matt at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

5 Things:

• It was my 29th birthday on Saturday
• It was my cousin Ian's wedding on Saturday
• The wedding was in England
• I was an usher, as previously discussed
• Nikki got a new car yesterday

Fun, games, frustration, hilarity, love, and so much more...

Posted by Matt at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

So, myself and herself are off to the UK for the weekend, to Wiltshire to be precise, for the wedding of my cousin Ian to his fianceé (obviously) Kate. There's five of us going over from Ireland together, us two, my two sisters Sarah and Becca, and my bro-in-law Sean. Getting a flight tomorrow at 6-ish, and back on Sunday late.

I'm actually going to be an usher at the wedding, which is something I actually had to look up myself, as I hadn't a clue what it was. When Ian asked me to be an usher, I said 'riiiight... so what does an usher do?', to which he replied 'what an usher do? Err, I dunno!', so it's obviously a very important position in the ceremony (from what I can gather, the usher is the guy who stands at the door of the church and says 'bride or groom?'. What fun!).

Have a good weekend y'all, and I'll probably post a hilarious wedding-ey pic if I get a break from all my important ushering duties. Later!

Posted by Matt at 7:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Right. In response to Nikki's comment in the last post, I will recount the embarrassing tale of my adventure in the Vodafone shop. Generally, I tend to let on to people that I have very (pretty?) good knowledge of all things technical, but in this instance, I was proved to be not so knowledgable.

My last phone was a Motorola v550, and it was a big heap of shite. It kept resetting back to the main menu while I was texting, I couldn't access the phonebook at all, the battery life was completely rubbish, I had already had the phone in to be repaired, and at this stage I just wanted a new one.

So off to the shop I went, a vast amount of reasons for wanting and deserving a new phone going through my head, ready to be recounted to the (no-doubt) understanding sales assistant. There was a bit of a queue in the shop so I waited for a bit. When I finally got to speak to the assistant, I started ranting.

"This phone is shite!"
"The phone book doesn't work!!
"It's already been fixed, but it's still broken!"
"It's under guarantee, I want a new one!"
Etc, etc.

The assistant (I cannot remember if it was a male assistant or a female assistant, but that's not important right now) stood there, listening and nodding along to my lengthy tirade, before asking me the vital question.

"Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again?"
"Err... No. Bugger." (problem(s) solved, at least temporarily)

And thus ends the embarrasing tale of the Vodafone shop. Thank God for that, Nikki has been threatening to reveal the true secret of my technical ineptitude to the masses for what seems like forever. Finally, I can breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge the the whole world (or at least all regular readers of the Toasty Goodness) knows how truly brutal I am (but I still consider myself 'a bit of a geek').

Posted by Matt at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

So, despite being rebuffed by a German TV station after they had requested the use of my lip-synching madskillz and then decided it wasn't what they were looking for, I am continuing to search for a suitable track to use for my next GoogleIdol entry (or rather our next entry, as Andy has an equal chance of doing 'lead vocal' on our next number). There are no prizes for second place this time. Actually, there are no prizes for first place either, but that's beside the point.

So I have narrowed it down to the following: Me and Chan doing 'Dub Be Good To Me' by Beats International, Me doing 'Jump!' by Van Halen, or Chan doing 'I Am The One And Only' by Chesney Hawkes, or a combination of these. But I can't decide which one to do. Can anyone help?

UPDATE: Looks like Van Halen are the current favourites, with Chesney close behind. I'm quite disappointed at the number of suggestions for other tracks though (ie zero). Come on you lot, give a dude a hand. Suggestions will be credited in any video made!

Posted by Matt at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

So today I learned how to lift a box. Or 'Manual Handling Of Loads' as it is known amongst health & safety jargonists. How to lift things properly. Now, I've been working as a stage hand and lighting technician and sound technician for ooh, about fourteen years now, and I kinda know all there is to know about lifting all sorts of stage production-related 'gear' (lights, speakers, flight cases, mixing desks, I could go on...), but I was pretty sure there must be something I don't know, which is why I was doing the course. And then the tutor very spent all morning teaching us how to lift an empty cardboard box. Using a 'wide palmer grip', and a trolley. And then he gave us all certificates.

Posted by Matt at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

(Yawn...)

After a shortened 'long' weekend (shortened as in it was just like a normal, non-holiday weekend) last weekend, and a pretty busy week last week (busy as in there were four different shows in, we are short-staffed, and the biggest show this year getting in yesterday), I was working all weekend, Friday until late, and all day Saturday and yesterday, and now I'm going to be working every evening this week. I'm stifling multiple yawns and fighting my body's inner urges ('faaaall asleeep Matthew... Just lie down and shut your eyes... it will feel SOOOO gooood... mmmm... zzzz...'), but I am safe in the knowledge that on Wednesday I have one serious motherfucker of a lie-in coming to me. Unfortunately, I just read on Wikipedia that "you cannot 'store' sleep by sleeping more on the weekends in preparation for the normal work week", so therefore, but that reasoning, there's no point in having a lie-in. But I don't care, I'm going to have one anyway, because it doesn't say you shouldn't have a lie-in. I usually require at least seven hours sleep in order to function properly the following day, I haven't had seven hours sleep since about, ooh... March?

Incedentally, has anyone ever heard of someone falling asleep on top of a ladder like this one? No? Okay, maybe it didn't actually happen then. It was probably a dream.

UPDATE (in answer to comments): Yes, I did manage to sleep in to a respectable 10.45 (thanks ladies, for the non-ringing-or-texting!), then sat in bed reading a magazine until about 11.30. A successful lie-in I would say. Off to work in 5 minutes. Later dudes!

Posted by Matt at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (59) | TrackBacks (0)

Hmmm.

I've spent several minutes (or perhaps at least an hour) in the past few weeks thinking of something entertaining to blog. Something interesting, or at least something I find interesting. I just came to the realisation that it's not about that, this thing called blogging. It's about... 'whatever'. Whatever I want. Whatever happened, or will happen, or something I saw or did or thought or experienced, anything at all. I am, after all, pretty new to this whole thing, and thought I've been doing pretty well on the content front, but seeing as I only started doing this to see what it's like, I've found that it's like... I dunno.

So I'm going to share a couple of observations and things that happened recently.

Last Saturday, after a night spent playing poker, I got a phone call while still in bed, from my little sister Sarah (aka 'Babs', regular commenter on this here site) saying she'd locked herself out of her room in her house, and was greatly in need of some 'big brother' (no, not that Big Brother) -style help. So I got out of bed, discovered to my horror that not a drop of hot water could be squeezed out of the shower, put on clothes, hat, and shades, got into my car, and drove like you can only drive with a bit of a hangover on you (that's very slowly, and very inconspicuously) over to her place (20 mins drive).

Posted by Matt at 7:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

Apologies for the lateness of this post (seeing as I came back from Wales on Sunday night).

Well, an excellent weekend was what was had in beautiful Snowdonia. I was there last summer, but only really passed through quickly, on the way to the English Midlands. We got the HSS from Dun Laoghaire (which was handy, as in 5 minutes away) on Friday morning and got to the caravan park (via a nice drive on the A4086, a really good drive, and at least two wrong turns that may or may not have been due to map-reading errors by my trusty navigator) at about half past four, just in time for several pints and dinner in the country club, followed by an early night (relatively anyway) in anticipation of a dayincluding 'a fair bit of walking'.

After a breakfast of pastries and coffee which had been cunningly purchased in Bangor on the way to our wheeled weekend abode, we debated joining the others for a hike up Snowdon. After looking at the torrential hail, rain, sleet and snow that looked pretty imminent, and our poor choice of non-waterproof clothing and footwear, and thinking of a 5-hour hike up a mountain and back, we decided (wisely) against it. So we went on a drive to Betws-y-Coed and a bit of a shop for appropriate clothing for future hillwalking adventures, some lunch, and to find a smaller walk to go on. We found a nice lake up in the mountains (I can't remember the name) and had a wee (2 hour or so) walk in the sunshine that broke as soon as we got out of the car, took some lovely photies, and then headed back to the caravan to chill for a bit. Dinner on Saturday was to be a gigantic pot of Bolognaise, made by Kabbage, (fiancé of Ciara, who's 30th birthday was the real reason for being in Wales, as I mentioned previously) up in a shack in the middle of nowhere, followed by several games of pool and copious drinking back at the park.

On Sunday we had to be checked out of our caravans at 10am, so we all (about 28 of us) headed out to get breakfast in a roadside café that Ciara had found would probably have space for all of us. After a few goodbyes and a look around the outdoor clothing shop that was attached to the café (every other business in Snowdonia is an outdoor clothing shop, you'll find), Nikki, Deirdre, Claire and myself (the Irish contingent) parted company with the rest of the gang and headed back to Betws (and yet another outdoor shop or three), and on to Electric Mountain. This was an excellent detour, a pumped storage power station deep underneath a mountain, that looked more like something out of the last half hour of a James Bond movie than anything I've ever seen. To say I was a bit pissed off when our guide said we had to leave our cameras and phones in lockers at the start of the tour would be a colossal understatement. The main cavern of the station is hundreds of metres underground (about a ten-minute bus journey down a huge tunnel in a bus), and is over 125 metres long, and I really expected a bald supervillain to pop out of somewhere and snicker maniacally at his creation. Visit Electric Mountain, it's cool.

From there we headed to Bangor (where it seems absolutely nothing happens on a Sunday) for some lunch, and on to Holyhead for the 6.30pm ferry back to the Pale. An excellent weekend I'm sure you'll agree!

Posted by Matt at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

And here we go again... Thanks to QE for this one.

What time did you get up this morning?
About 9. Had to check out of a caravan park by 10 this morning, to go for breakfast in a roadside café, somewhere in Wales.

Diamonds or Pearls?
Diamonds

So me and Nikki are together two years now (anniversary last night, 29th March). Two years since our first proper 'date' (we met before that but then we had a row, and it's a long story, but here we are, two years later!). I can't believe it's been so long, it's really flown by, but then time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?

We've been around! Had a lot of fun. We've bought a house and we're moving into it next month (fingers crosed, builders permitting!), and I'm looking forward to seeing where we go on the next stage of our adventure. I'm loving it so far.

I love you Nikki! HUGE MWAH. :-)

Posted by Matt at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

I was up last night at about 2am. I was in work until about 1am, and met Andy in the pub where I had one bottle of Heineken and gave him and Nikki (his girlfriend Nikki, not my girlfriend Nikki, I'll explain another time) a lift home. "Oliver's Army" by Elvis Costello was on the radio in the car as we pulled up to the house, and as we went inside, Andy turned the radio on the hear the end of the song. We left the radio on (Today FM plays some good music in the wee small hours) and had another beer or two. Then we heard a very eye-opening advert (on the radio, which was still on).

It started with what sounded like a very real person telling a very real story about how someone he knew had killed himself and his girlfriend (the speaker's sister, from what I gathered) in a drink-driving accident. The tagline at the end of the ad was Ray D'Arcy saying:

"Don't be a fuckin' eejit, don't drink and drive"

-Not the kinda thing I can remember hearing before in an anti-drink-driving campaign, and something that kinda made me think a bit more about the fact that I'd just had a bottle of beer (probably not over the limit of 80 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood, but still) and driven home. I think it was basically the use of the "fuckin'" in the tagline, instead of the usual "(please) don't drink and drive". It's part of a campaign directed at people my age, who would be up at that time of the night, and who probably would have done what I had just done, and wouldn't be averse to using that kind of language, and would probably take the message in the right way rather than finding it offensive.

Made me think to myself, "don't be a fuckin' eeejit dude". Which means it's the first ad of it's type to really make me do that.

Posted by Matt at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So apparently I've been tagged by Tatiana. Yes folks, it's meme time again (already...?)! So here we go, five weird habits.

I constantly 'line up' objects aroud me into right-angles and parallel lines, but only at home, never in work (hence my desk in work being in a terrible state).

I brush my teeth exactly the same way, every time, rhythmically. 32 strokes top, bottom, inside, outside, front.

I check my pockets every time I leave somewhere, and therefore never lose anything, ever.

I talk to myself when I'm absolutely sure that no-one can hear me, and have entire two-sided conversations, again, with myself.

I love making lots of noise in the kitchen, closing cupboards and breadbins with a huge 'BANG', rattling cutlery, pots and pans, etc. I have no idea why I do this.

Posted by Matt at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Why I love my girlfriend:

Nikki: "When is pancake Tuesday, is it next Wednesday?"

Me: "Err... I think it might be Tuesday..."

:-)

Posted by Matt at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

After seeing this '4 Things' meme on several other blogs, I thought seeing as it's been a slow week relatively speaking, I might as well give it the proverbial 'bash'.

4 jobs I've had in my life
1) Builders Labourer
2) Door-To-Door Salesman
3) Follow Spot Operator/Flyman/Stage Hand/General Slave (all in one establishment)
4) Theatre Technical Manager

4 movies I can watch over and over
1) Superman (I & II)
2) The Empire Strikes Back
3) It's A Wonderful Life
4) Brazil

4 places I have lived
1) Garristown
2) Sheffield
3) Sallynoggin
4) Err... That's kinda it! For about another two months (at the most, I hope) anyway.

4 tv shows I like to watch
1) 24
2) The Simpsons (watching it right now)
3) Family Guy
4) Pimp My Ride (oh.... piss off, stop laughing)

4 places I have been on holiday
1) New Zealand
2) Majorca
3) Devon
4) Allehies, West Cork

4 things I like to eat
1) Marmite on Toast
2) Botticelli's Italian Gelaté (Ice-Cream)
3) The Natural Confectionary Company's Party Animals ( The Big Mix, with SNAKES!)
4) Sandwiches

4 websites I visit daily
1) Boing Boing
2) Rocketboom
3) s e v i t z d o t c o m
4) The Palace Of Lord Danzor The Destructor

4 places I would rather be right now
1) Antarctica
2) Having Dinner In My Mam And Dad's
3) On A Cheap-As-Chips Sun Holiday With Nikki
4) Outer Mongolia

Posted by Matt at 7:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

My lungs are full of gunge, my throat is in flitters and hurts when I cough. What a total fucking waste of a midweek day off. I should probably stop smoking really (but I loooove smoking... mmmm... lovely fags...), but it really seems to be a genuine infection of some description. If I go to the doctor he'll just give me antibiotics and charge me ?50. So, soup and cough mixture and blankets are the order of the day.

Missed my 6th of 12 swimming lessons last night too, due to cough splutter ow ow ow groan (lie down). Bummer.

</whinge>

Posted by Matt at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

...And we drank some wine, and chatted for ages about stuff. And we gave each other cards. And loads of hugs. And then 'we' watched Desperate Housewives, and went to bed. Best Valentine's day in ages. Anyone else do anything nice/nicer/nicest?

(and I don't just mean those who are attached, I was single for many, many years and sympathise with the plight of the single person on Valentine's)

Posted by Matt at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at my parents' house last Autumn and was outside having a cigarette, when the rooks came in to roost and started making this incredible racket. I ran in to grab my camera, but missed the cresendo, although I got a pretty good sample, as seen in this clip.

The noise would drive some people mad, but personally, I like the sound of rooks, but then again, I grew up with this tree outside my window. As with previous vids, this one is a teeny bit dark, but it's the sound that's important (that and the arty pan-and-twist towards the sky at the end!).

Posted by Matt at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So as I gently ease my way into this pastime/hobby/way-of-life/thingy we call 'blogging', I have started doing a few things you may or may not find interesting, but which will kinda (I hope) help me make this whole blogging malarkey enjoyable for me, and for whoever reads lifewithouttoast.com.

1. I have begun the mammoth task of lashing a whole shitload of my pics up to Flickr. I had been Flickr-ing half-heartedly for a good while, but I have recently uploaded pics from my UK holiday last year, and will follow this with Attchoo! festival photos (more on that later), some nice panoramics (a few are up already), and general random crap.

2. I will try and add a few links to my sidebar in the 'del.icio.us lin.ks' bit, every day (the linkroll is missing at the moment, I'm working on that, in the meantime go to del.icio.us/matt_man). These links are all the stuff I find interesting/funny on the web. Read them, most if not all are good stuff.

3. Using the aforementioned Flickr.com, I hope to start 'moblogging'. This will probably start in March.

4. I will be making more (hopefully funny/cool/fascinating) videos and putting them on Google Video, so I can embed them in the blog. Some I hope will be more than 3 minutes long.

Anyhoo, for everyone who reads this blog (there's at LEAST 5 people who do), cheers, and I hope you enjoy it.

Posted by Matt at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

So I got an email from my sister Rebecca last week:

"Our computer is f*cked. It's UNBELIEVABLY slow.. there is something seriously wrong with it. Any time you try to get it to do anything even open a document, it hangs and takes about 5 mins to open ... Do you think you could call out some evening and sort it out?"

So after going to see out new house again with Nikki yesterday morning and having coffee n' cake in Mugs in Dalkey (where Andy works) I drove across over to her house (an hour and a half away on the other side of county Dublin) yesterday at about 4pm and after tea n' a sambo, sat down and gave it a go. Took about 5 minutes to boot up. Hmmm. Windows XP, I don't remember them getting that. No programs installed that are particular memory hogs. Right. I see.

"Virtual Memory too low, Windows XP needs more memory. MOOOOORRE MEEMMMOOOORRYY!!!!" (or something like that)

Ctrl. Alt. Delete.

Physical Memory total: 89MB

Commit Charge total: 218MB

Well that clearly won't do, will it? I opened up the tower and there was one 64MB and one 32MB DIMM card. I've only been 'into computers' for a while and I had never even seen a 32MB DIMM before (in an actual computer I mean, I've seen them in pictures)! So I gave them the old 'WinXP into 96MB won't go' and a quick lesson in swopping RAM cards out and told them to give me a ring if that didn't work. I'm sure I'll be called out again within a week, but seeing as I kinda owe them a huge favour, it's cool.

Posted by Matt at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

(In case you don't know me and/or have come here via Adrian, Dan or Annie's blogs [the only ones that link here so far (Update: Or Nat's blog, latest link!)], I'm Matt, I've been going out with Nikki for nearly two years, we've bought a house, but it won't be ready until April-ish, and Nikki had to move to a temporary place between selling her apartment and moving to our new place)

SO! Nikki moved on Saturday morning. I had (cunningly) organised for my brother-in-law Sean and his betrothed (my sister Becca of course) to assist us by kindly bringing one of his trucks (of which he has several) to Nikki's place in Chapelizod (Dublin 20). Sean had (wisely in hindsight) suggested we meet at Nikki's at nine (NINE O'CLOCK ON A SATURDAY FRICKIN' MORNING!) so myself and herself got up early and hung out for them.

The move went well, me and Sean and Becca did most of the moving and Nikki and I packed up the last of the bits n' bobs into boxes and bubble-wrap. It took about 2-and-a-bit hours, and we went to grab some lunch (having to cajole the barman at The Mullingar House to rustle up an aul' few soups n' sambos, which in fairness he very kindly did even though it was 11.35 and 'lunch didn't start til' twelve'). So we had a nice lunch and said our goodbyes to Becca and Sarah (my lil' sis' who arrived late - see previous post for pic) who were going to the Health and Vitality Show in the RDS while Sean, Nikki and I went to Sean and Becca's place to put Nikki's stuff into storage in their shed. Sean had to go somewhere else on the way, so he went one way and we went another, stopping at my parents for a cup o' tea and a biscuit, as-you-do. Sean texted, and we were at theirs 5 minutes later.

Now, unbeknownst to us, Sean had had an eventful hour. He has mistakenly taken a route which had an 11-foot clearance bridge on it, and his truck it approximately more than eleven feet tall. He had to try to turn around, and in doing so somehow managed to 'ground' the truck so the rear wheel were off the ground! He turned the steering left and right to try and get it to move, as the rear wheels came down the truck shot back, hitting a wall! By this stage the police had arrived, but they were very nice and closed down Chapelizod village while Sean reversed all the way back the way he had come! Me and Nikki stood aghast as Sean recounted the story, pointing out the numerous huge bends and bumps on the truck, but from the jolly way he told it and the frequent laughs which interspersed the story, he seemed very calm about the whole thing. So we unloaded the truck and headed home while Sean went down to his yard to 'heat the bend up with a blowtorch and beat it with a sledgehammer and pull it with the JCB to straighten it out'.

Coz he's that kinda guy (I reckon I owe him a bit more than dinner now though).

Posted by Matt at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)