A Pertinent Quesion

My mother has just asked me one of those questions which make your heart beat faster and your breathing become more difficult not to mention makes your head spin. She has a habit of asking pertinent questions at impertinent times and by God she's just hit me with a good one. It's my own fault for being such a bag of misery at the moment and seeing as she can read me almost as well as the boy and in fairness in some cases better she's never too far off the mark.

Today she asked me "Do I want to do this?" Meaning the law thing. When I say I nearly jumped down her throat I'm not exaggerating. I assured her immediately that Of course yes I do want to do this. She had to ring off then but I know she'll be back to me later so I really began to think about it....

The thing is Yes I want to study law. I want to spend my evenings and weekends stuck inside learning off cases and I want to pass my FE1s, I want to sacrifice my time and energy and press my relationship to its limits and not see my friends and family. Why? Because I really want to have a purpose. I'm sick of drifting from poxy job to poxy job. I want to be successful. I think I have a head for this legal stuff and I want to engage it. Yes its tough now but By God I'll make it pay when I'm finished! I have great support from people who care about me I'm young enough to have the energy and old enough to know the value of everything that I'm doing. If I don't get a direction to go in now and stick to it then I'm afraid I'll drift for the rest of my life wake up old and worn out someday and think what the hell did I achieve? That's why I'm doing this. And that's what I'm going to tell her when she calls me back. And I'm going to thank her for helping me get my direction back.

This is a flying post as I have loads to do but I needed to put those thoughts on paper (or at least in writing) now otherwise I would forget again! I've just read what I wrote its a bit stream of conscience-like but I feel better for it!

I got MeMe'd!

Right 10 points for anyone who can tell me what meme stands for/means!I haven't a clue and would love to know the origins of it if anyone can tell me!

I haven't been tagged before so I guess that makes me a tag virgin so cheers for that Red Mum!

Ok here goes:

Seven Things I Plan to do before I Die
1. Have kids (God love them)
2. Read Ulysses by James Joyce
3. Own a cat
4. Practice yoga in India
5. Drive across the USA
6. Perform on stage (again)
7. Attend a Cookery School

Seven Things I can do!
1. Crochet
2. Bake cakes
3. Sew a hem
4. Produce wind(I'm an expert at it)!
5. Cross my eyes
6. Make people laugh (whether it's with me or at me is inconsequential)
7. Drive a car

Seven Things I cannot do.
1. Wash dishes properly (it's boring)
2. Be tidy
3. Edit what I say before I actually say it
4. Remember last week without really concentrating
5. Tip my nose with my tongue
6. Eat a grapefruit (or anything bitter) without looking really stupid
7. Pretend I'm not bored.

Seven Things I find really attractive about the opposite sex.
1. Smile
2. Eyes
3. Openess
4. Sense of Humour
5. Hands
6. Intelligence
7. Conversation

Seven Things I say most.
1. Ah Feck it!
2. Bollox!
3. Shite
4. Oh No!
5. Hey ya!
6. Manic!
7. Grand Thanks.

Seven Books I love
1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
2. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
3. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
4. Possession by A.S. Byatt
5. Rain on the Wind Walter Macken
6. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
7. Birdsong Sebastian Faulks

Seven people I would like to see taking this quiz are:
1.My Dad
2.Elke
3.Steve
4.Gillian
5.Emma
6.Becky
7.Conor.

All the bloggers I read have done it already apart from Elke and Steve so it's up to you guys to carry the flame in blog land!

A Busy Bee!

I may not be around all that much this week and early next week due to the fact that I will be trying to earn my degree in Legal Studies by taking deferred exams. So wish me luck! I'll need it!

I have just about finished my Equity course and only have two more topics to cover in Property which is all good news as they are the exams I will be taking. However the serious bad news is that I haven't learned anything from either of them so the head will be well and truly down!

In the meantime I have posted a review of The Importance of Being Earnest on my other page for your delictation. And here is a picture of the lovely Alan Stanford just to add colour to the post!



I'll pop by later to let you know how the insanity is treating me!

All Loved Up

When I opened my mailbox this morning I had a lovely surprise. 10 whole people left comments on my site all for little ole me! I feel loved on this friday morning!

I'm sitting here minding the reception desk in work which is always more fun than doing real work as I get to field the freaks and then laugh at the people I pass them on to! Who needs to deal with legal queries when you have the option of freak fielding!? It could be a new career move for me. Anyway I'm sitting here freak fielding and singing to myself and the tune for today ladies and gentlemen is....

The Cure Friday I'm in Love! So sing along if you want here's the lyrics for your convenience!



I don’t care if monday’s blue
Tuesday’s grey and wednesday too
Thursday I don’t care about you
It’s friday I’m in love

Monday you can fall apart
Tuesday wednesday break my heart
Thursday doesn’t even start
It’s friday I’m in love

Saturday wait
And sunday always comes too late
But friday never hesitate...

I don’t care if monday’s black
Tuesday wednesday heart attack
Thursday never looking back
It’s friday I’m in love

Monday you can hold your head
Tuesday wednesday stay in bed
Or thursday watch the walls instead
It’s friday I’m in love

Saturday wait
And sunday always comes too late
But friday never hesitate...


Dressed up to the eyes
It’s a wonderful surprise
To see your shoes and your spirits rise
Throwing out your frown
And just smiling at the sound
And as sleek as a shriek
Spinning round and round
Always take a big bite
It’s such a gorgeous sight
To see you in the middle of the night
You can never get enough
Enough of this stuff
It’s friday
I’m in love

I'm Officially Mad!

I did this psychometric test yesterday which portrays your personality as a movie and I got Platoon! Apparantly I'm an over anxious soldier lost in the jungle of life or something! So I disregarded it and put it down to the fact that I'm so wound up at the minute..

I did it again today for a laugh. This is what it gave me....

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I think I'll do this from time to time to remind myself that while there may be no hope for my sanity at least I can make myself laugh!

The Rose of Tralee (a.k.a. The Lovely Girls Competition)

Every year on these fair shores the Lovely Girl Competition to end all Lovely Girl competion's is held in Tralee Co. Kerry. This is a pagent dedicated to discover the prettiest and most accomplished and as already stated the overall Loveliest Girl in Ireland (or of Irish descent).


One of the Fr. Ted episodes did a fantastic take off of beauty pagents like this one which was called "The Lovely Girls Competion" where the girls had to impress the priest's with their baking and such like to win. My favourite quote has to be from Ted as he commentates on a girl on the catwalk (this is not a direct quote just my recollection of it!) " Would you not agree that she has a lovely bottom? I mean sure don't they all have lovely bottoms?" You have to see it to really appreciate it!

This year there were 30 entrants from all over the world and while I definately didn't have the time or the inclination to watch all them strut their stuff I did watch some of the show over the 2 nights.

To be honest I settled myself in to watch The Rose of Tralee with more than a pinch of cynicism as I haven't looked at it for years and my over riding memory of past year's shows was of being bored out of my skull as one after the other frumpy looking girls in guna's tried to flirt with Uncle Gaybo on stage, generally while shaking with nerves and waving at their Granny's. This year there was the requisite amount of Granny waving, leaping around dancing, caterwauling and instrument beating, so I wasn't disappointed! However there were a couple of fundamental differences this year.

The first being Ray D'Arcy (I like him) and his ability to put the girls at ease flirt with them in a flippant way and generally the fact that he seemed to be aware of how silly the whole thing really is but was determined to have as much fun as possible doing the job!

The second was the girl's themselves. Jesus some of them were very impressive. There were nucelar physicists, assistants to Congress women, biologists extracting DNA from fossilised bones, I even heard a rumour about a potential astronaut being among the number! I believe it too. These women were high achievers the majority were gorgeous and sporty and funny and .... it was a bit sickening actually. Back when I was a kid if they had the Leaving Cert they were clever and ambitions ranged from becoming a teacher to getting married and having babies!

The winner this year was a case in point Aoibhionn Ni Shuileabhain is from Mayo has earned a first class degree in maths and theoretical physics. Is a talented Sean Nós singer (type of Irish rythmic singing very beautiful and difficult to perfect) a musician and overall a Lovely girl! She was a deserving winner!


This not a great photo of her!

Utter Frustration

You know when you look at where you are at a given moment and you think "Humph this is a bit crap" and then you look to the future and it occurs to you "Yeah there are possibilities out there I've just got to make them happen" and that thought cheers you up and you go back to your hum drum life and make some plans, and take some action.

Six months later you're back thinking "This is still crappy" and the possibilities are still out there but haven't come to any fruition yet. That's where I am right now.

I know the path I'm on I can see the end sign it just feels like I will never get there. I call it Frustration.

This Robert Frost poem keeps coming to mind at the moment.

The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I've always taken sustenance from this thought when I have decisions to make or like now when I am on a path and wondering did I take the right one.

Food Conservatism

I have been pondering on the different levels of adventurousness that people exhibit when it comes to food this weekend.
Personally I'm a foodie, I love trying new food of all shapes and sizes be it with a face or without. I generally don't mind as long as it tastes good. I am also of the opinion that most things taste good apart from a very short list of food that I have tried but have failed to warm to. The list includes aparagus and caviar oh and artichoke.


Yuck!


Double Yuck!

Everything else I will either suffer through or wolf down. Now I admit that I was not always as adventurous as I am now and I definately remember a time in my childhood when onions made me gag and I made my poor saintly mother sieve anything that might have "lumps" in it, specifically yoghurt. But I'm over that now and what's more since meeting me the Lovely Boy has also tried all varieties of new cuisine and also likes it! All is good.

Some people just aren't into being inquisitive or adventurous with food at all and it just puzzles me really. There is so much out there to be experienced why would you limit yourself to what you know? Well that's my thought for the day!

I'll give you a laugh at my expense!

I received a call today from Mr. Q who is the financial director of the company I work for. I have no real dealings with his department and apart from a friendly Hullo whenever we meet, there really is no need for me to have any interaction with this sixty year old man. So the phone call today came as a bit of a surprise and I was even more surprised when he asked me to come to his office to see him.

So up I get and stick my head round his door fully expecting him to say he had made a mistake and actually wanted to see someone else. Instead he was sitting there looking sheepish and grinning at me. So I said hi and he said hi and then he asked me who Lovely Boy (insert real name here) is. I replied he was my boyfriend, I was beginning to get very suspicious at this stage so I asked why.

Here goes deep breath... I had sent an email to the boy stating "I love you loads" it had somehow ended up in Mr. Q's mailbox. How? I have no idea. Embarrasment factor? Massive.

I turned a lovely shade of purple and burst out laughing. Whereby he started laughing so all I could do was look him in the eye and let him down gently with a "Timmy I'm sorry but I'm not actually in love with you!" Oh the shame. That'll teach me to send random emails without checking the address bar at least 6 times!

Hope this story of my humiliation has given you a giggle. I'm still alternating between laughing and turning an unattractive shade of peuce!

Rainy August Days

It feels like Autumn has come early today. It's very wet and dark and not cold exactly just cool. If you could chose weather to match your mood today would suit my mood perfectly!

I think I have sorted out the problems with my site by moving things around a bit but if somebody sees anything else its always good to get constructive criticism!

We went to see the Ireland v Italy friendly last night in Landsdowne Road. I really enjoyed the game and while it was crappy that we were beaten at home for the first time in 17 games I felt that the team played well as a whole and with the inclusion of the 2 Keanes for the qualifier against France in September we shouldn't embarass ourselves. I hope to God we win though, I really do. Of course we never make these things easy for ourselves if we had only just beaten Israel like we are capable of doing we would'nt have put ourselves in a position of having to beat France. And they've dug Zidane up again just when we thought we were safe. It's a bit of a disaster for us really. Anyway everything's crossed that the Gods of the FAI will smile on us and pure rays of genius will burst out of all our player's pores collectively, which will blind the French thereby allowing us to score fabulous goals due to their distraction. Well we live in hope I guess...

Problems with css (whatever the feck that means...)

Anyway thanks to the anonymous blogger I have moved stuff around and hopefully firefox users will be able to access and see my site properly! This is all double dutch to me!

The FEAR

Oh Lordy I got the fear real bad right now! It's consuming me as I sit here making me more and more antsy and agitated. Why do I have the fear? Exams dear reader stinking yucky life consuming exams!

I have to date passed 5 of the FE1 exams which are the entrance exams to Blackhall place where you train to be a solicitor. They are notoriously difficult bloody things and I have only 3 more to get before I will be in a position to seek training as a solicitor. Yeahhh say I, I'm over half way there! Booo say I, I still have 3 to do.

It's a year since I took my first set and considering I have heard verifiable tales of people spending up to 5 years trying to pass all of them (and some not even suceeding within that time frame) I'm not doing too badly and shouldn't really complain. But I miss my life and so I do complain.

However the best thing possible has just happened to me in the past 24 hours.

I got the fear.

The fear is when all you can think about is studying and how it tears you apart because right at that moment you are not. It's like an itch you can't scratch. The only relief for the fear is to sit in a quiet room just you and your relevant books. If people interrupt you, you growl at them, the time for welcoming distraction is now over (the poor unfortunate lovely boy discovered this last night). You examine your timetable over and over trying to figure out where you can squeeze in more study time. You stop watching the soaps and you start buying throw in the oven convenience food. You get fat. You ignore your mobile and your friends.

This is the fear and I got it.

An Action Packed Weekend

I am only just on the point of recovering from the weekend of excessive drinking and howling which I and my pack of friends indulged in. Hence no post yesterday as I could barely speak never mind formulate thoughts to put into words!

Princess Peaches arrived over from London with 2 realtively large backpacks to sustain her for her long weekend in Dublin. I counted a total of 5 outfits in the 3 days I saw her and 2 pairs of shoes which is probably not a lot for herself when I think about it. She stayed with me and the lovely boy friday and saturday and miraculously reduced her room to the status of kip within an hour of arriving! I love that girl she's mad bad and great to know!

So the plan for the weekend was to go Karaoke singing in Ukiyo at midnight with the aim of getting as pissed as possible before hand in order to make the pain of listening to each other sing be more acceptable! Here are some piccies from the booth...


It looks like Beefor is getting intimate with Doyle Doyle but they have the T-shirt for that move already and were just staging a re-enactment for our titillation!


This is the Princess strutting her stuff. Beware!

All in all it was a night packed with good humour and hilarity and I would definately recommend it to one and all as an option for a different sort of night.

On saturday we went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as we figured more alcohol would probable kill us. I'll give my views on the film elsewhere. But it was a fun evening and the darkness of the cinema was a great blessing in our time of need.

On saturday Doyle Doyle rustled up a roast chicken and all the trimmings for everyone and it was delicious! More alcohol was consumed and Princess insisted that we watch Eddie Murphy Raw. It was funny for about 10 mins and then the tutting started and the glancing to check was anyone else being amused. After that came the accusations and it was eventually turned off. I've seen Eddie Murphy performing stand up while being in the company of lads and its definately more palatible with men around for some reason. Needless to say the girlies weren't impressed and I count myself in their number! Dirty Dancing would have been more on our level that night!

All in all it was a brilliantly fun weekend and it reinforced how much we miss the Princess on a day to day level! But we'll enjoy her company whenever we can get it!

Sometimes I wished I still smoked

Sometimes I really do wish that I still had this dirty disgusting not to mention expensive habit. Why? Because of the extra time away from your desk that you are allowed to get away with. Us non smokers are complete mugs you know. I went for a wander a few minutes ago just to stretch my legs and go to the loo before I actually fell asleep sitting at my desk, and I came across a group of about 10 people all hanging outside the back door of the building basking in the beautiful summer sunshine and heat, puffing away and gossiping. I was overcome with 2 emotions. One overwhelming hatred and secondly I was saturated with longing.

I really don't want to be a smoker again I am much better off on so many levels without the habit but I do want to be able to stand or sit in the sunshine whenever I want like all the smokers do. We really are a pack of idiots us non smokers. We should demand equal amounts of doss time that the smokers get. They get paid to do feck all and kill themselves slowly. I get paid work (and blog heh heh) but thats it.

I think there should be some sort of system that whatever amount of time the smokers spend smoking when they should be working the non smokers should get time in lieu and maybe get to leave earlier. Alternatively I could just go stand outside in the middle of them to make my point. I wonder how that would go down???

Views from a holiday

I have uploaded a choice few photographs taken while on my hols onto to Flickr. But I'm going to post some here as well with some comments. These photos were all taken on my camera phone as I haven't quite stretched to a digital camera yet but I think considering the technology I'm using that they turned out pretty well over all. Let me know what you think!



This photo was taken in le Grand Place in Belgium. The building is of gothic architecture and towers over all of the beautifully gilded yet much smaller medieval guild houses which surround the square. This was the Mecca for tourists in the city and while everyone else ran for cover as the dark clouds threatened I took the opportunity to take this snapshot.



This is St. Catherine's church in Brussels. It was destroyed some time back in the day and this is a nineteenth century reproduction of the original. Its badly weather worn and didn't really photograph well however I couldn't resist the image of the chip van, fancy as it is stuck in front of it! Damn fine frites though!



This is Le Manneken Pis, he's absoloutely tiny. The day I took the photo as you can see someone had made a half hearted attempt to dress him up. Apparantly its tradition for heads of states to bring costumes with them when visiting Brussels in order to dress the Manneken. His wardrobe is now so large that they have allocated a special museum all for his clobber. Maddness. Personnaly I didn't find him at all charming just funny. And the amount of tack you can buy in the strategically located gift shops was even more entertaining. My personal favourite was the cork screw with the screw part you put in the cork coming out of his little man hood! Priceless!



This is the Atomium which was built for the World Trade Fair in 1959. They were fixing it with cranes when we went to visit and was closed. And that's about as exciting as it got here! Also in the park in Laeken they have a mini Europe theme with copies of famous landmarks from EU states. Thrilling. There is also a replica Chinese style house and Japanese tower built by Leopold II (boo hisss I don't like him).

So there are the holiday snaps the question re who buys the lace will be answere later...

I'm obviously BORED

Wow two posts in one day on this site its a bad sign indeed for my employer!
Actually its just a short one this time to let you know that I have posted a new review on the other site.
I also want to tell you that you can view our rugby team on www.tagrugby.ie if you want but which one are we and where am I??? Its a mystery....

A Bullrush in the Eye

My friend JG called on me yesterday to come pay him a visit and drink a cup of tay with him as he had injured his eyeball! My inate curiousity overcame my hunger and need to study and I dropped in on him to find out just how this unusual injury occured, and grant him the delightful gift of my company for a portion of the evening. It was as is usually the case when JG and I get together an evening of random discussions, good coffee and lots of laughing with the added bonus that I got to screw up my face in horror at the damage to his said eyeball.

The incident which led to his disfigurement is a typical JG scenario and one that anyone that knows him will appreciate and laugh along with just as he is at the moment. Mr G every summer takes himself off to Killarney National Park to butcher Rhododendron trees in an effort to save the Oak forrest in the park.


Rhododendron trees in all their glory.

This is indeed a noble venture by my friend each year and he states that the fact that there are many nubile young German women and lots of "recreational" activity has absoloutely nothing do with his commitment to the cause. On this occassion on the last day of the purging of the rhododendron Mr G was considering to himself how fortunate he had been in all his years not to have suffered an injury of an sort in what is after all very physical activity. According to himself it was about 20 mins before the end of the day and there was one gigantic mother of a tree left to uproot and move. Mr G being a strapping lad of over 6 foot decided gallantly to let the ladies take a breather and proceeded to move the monster on his own. In the midst of turning the tree to position it in a way which would prevent the deer for eating the young saplings next spring the accident occured.


A giant Bullrush!

A giant Bullrush which he had obviously knocked against swung back at home dived behind his glasses and gouged him in the eye. My friend when I visited him is now sporting an oozing weeping redened optic and a pair of very fine pimp effect sun glasses stuck together with blue tack, he is also sitting entrenched in a darkened room listening to Led Zepplin. He's bored but happy and will make a full recovery by friday for his birthday I have no doubt.

I'm Back

It's back to the grindstone for little old me today the holiday is finished and will soon become a distant memory but right now it's still fresh in my mind so before I become too depressed at being at home again I will keep a little smile on my face when I remember the fantasically fun week we had in the Little country.

We ate lots of Moules et Frites, drank many glasses of strangely named beer and viewed a breath taking array of Flemish masters and consequently I learned lots of interesting facts and stories about the lives of Saints! It was riveting honestly so much torture and pain being celebrated everywhere!

I have some piccies posted up on Flickr. Here's a taste of Rue de Bourges!


This is a mad place with restaurants lined up on both sides of the street and guys and gals from each restaurant trying to entice you into their establishment with various degrees of cajolment and flattery. It took a while to get used to it but it was great fun and we learned how to be firm but cheerful very quickly!

I'll post some more stuff later but work beckons at the mo so I shall toddle off!