The Announcement

Whoooo-hooo!

Before you ask:
Yes, we're really pleased. Both of us.
No, I haven't been sick. At all.

Now, say hello.




As you can tell, I had a scan a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, what we're looking at here is a mini-me, but I can't really make head nor tail of what I'm seeing. All the various bits had to be pointed out to me. I just nodded at the obstetrician and smiled. For those of you who, like me, really can't see anything other than a mass of grey in varying shades, here's the map:

Love is...

This is so soppy. I can't believe I'm about to share this level of soppiness with the internet...

Anyway, I left my apartment this morning at the usual time of 7a.m. It was still a bit dusky out and there was a light drizzle falling. It takes 10 minutes for me to walk to my bus stop and in that time, I'd got fairly wet and had come up with this incredibly gooey thought that I'm about to share with you.

Yesterday, Con & I had stayed at my parent's place. It's close to where we live, but is about a 20-minute walk to the nearest bus stop. We left at 10 to 7 in the morning. It was barely beginning to get bright and it was raining heavily with a strong wind blowing.

And here's the unbelievably sappy thing:
I thought this morning was more miserable than yesterday.
Why?
Because I was walking on my own.

Awwwww.

Writer's Block

Well, I'm finally doing it. If you happen to have read some of my very early posts, you'll be aware that I'm just about finished an MBS degree and all I've got left to do is get my thesis written.

If you don't believe me, you can look in the archives. It's all there. If you couldn't be arsed reading back, you can just take my word for it and read on, MacDuff...

Anyhoo, I have finally stopped procrastinating and I am writing the blessed thesis. I'm up to 10,479 words (10,556 if you include footnotes and endnotes). I took this week off work to do it. I've been spending hours every day in front of my laptop, at my desk, with mountains of reference material around me.

The thing is, that I had about 7,500 words already written before I started working on it this week, which means that in real terms, I've only produced 3,000 words. That's an average of 1,000 words per diem. (I'm being generous and assuming that I'll manage to hack out at least another 1,000 words today - though that might be a little over-ambitious, seeing as it's already taken me the guts of four hours to string 500 words together so far today.)

I think that I've officially got writer's block and it's very discouraging. The submission deadline is the end of this month. I've got to have another 10 to 15,000 words (good ones too, not just some sort of crappy filler) written in the next fortnight. I'm meeting with my supervisor tomorrow afternoon and I had hoped to give him a 20,ooo word draft. Now I'll be lucky if I can squeeze 12,000 words out... I've even stopped kidding myself that I'll get a "good" 15 or 17,000...

But here's the killer. Last Friday evening, in the half-hour before I left work for the weekend, I whipped 808 words out of thin air to write my last blog. Not so much as a crinkled forehead to cause me trouble in producing it. I've just spent fifteen minutes here and produced 349 words and counting...

How come then, it's taken me four blasted hours to drag 500 stinking words out of my brain and onto the pages of my thesis? It's not like it's a completely uninteresting subject, and I've read enough papers and talked to enough people to have plenty of views on the topic. But can I marshall my thoughts and write them in a coherent argument? No.

Bugger.

Can you see my bum, Fernando?

(This might seem a little bit out of left-field if you don't know the origins of this blog. See "Steppin' Out (for Sinéad)" on Gerry's Blog for a bit of background...)

Once upon a time, there was a green and cabbagy Irishman called, oh, let's call him Gerry. Gerry was a bit of a cheeky up-start, a wanna-be fella-me-lad, one of those guys who is so aggressively heterosexual and yet so lacking in romantic female companionship that you start to consider that maybe he's playing for the other team. He didn't set your gay-dar pinging, but you wouldn't be surprised either. Gerry went to San Fransisco for the summer after he finished his second year at University. No-one was surprised.

Now at around the same time, there lived a beautiful princess... oh sorry, wrong story. So there was also a greener and cabbagier Irishwoman, who will be known by the pseudonym Pen. She was a fairly gullible character; a bit innocent about the ways of the world - but she's not me. Really.

Pen had just finished her degree and was working in the airport for the summer, when she got a phone call from Gerry. The conversation was short.
G - "Hi, what is everyone doing tonight? I just got back to Dublin."
P - "No plans. Where are you?"
G - "Just coming into Dublin Airport"
P - "No way! I'll meet you in 10 minutes..."

The interesting conversation took place in the arrivals lounge.
P - "Welcome back! Good summer? You look great!"
G - "Great summer. You?" (You'll note that there weren't any compliments to a member of the opposite sex... I'm just saying, it could be evidence!)
P - "Any scandal? Any women on the scene?"
G - (Blushing a little) "That'd be telling..."
P - (Noticing a plain band on the wedding ring finger) "Did you get laid and then tricked into marrying the harlot?"
G - "Weeeelllllll....."

So the yarn that Gerry spun went along the lines of having met this guy Fernando - a hot Latino beastie - in SanFran. Gerry and Fernando eloped to Las Vegas and got married in the Chapel of Love. Gerry now has "Fernando" tattooed on his ass and Fernando has "Gerard" on his. This was a marriage of convenience though, of course, because Gerry wanted a Green Card and for some reason, Fernando wanted to live and work in Ireland. Fernando would be coming (if you'll excuse the expression) to Dublin in about 2 weeks.

So yes, I am getting a little embarrassed on Pen's behalf at her gullibility in swallowing (again, I apologise for the unfortunate turn of phrase) a stinker this big.

Anyway, Pen had to go back to work. Gerry was heading home (to his parents, not to the house that he shared in town with Pen and a bunch of other friends). Pen got back to her office and phoned everyone that they lived with in turn, and told them the story. She had been convinced and was therefore quite convincing herself.

That night Pen met up with three of the others and over any number of pints, retold (and only embellished a little bit) Gerry's tale of the love that had unfortunately dared to speak its name. There was little else to talk about all night, really. They got a taxi home and were still talking about it. The taxi-driver was drawn into the conversation despite himself. He wasn't sure what to believe. Could it be true? It couldn't be! But what if it was? He had to know.

As Pen and her posse climbed drunkenly out of the cab and paid up, the taxi-driver scribbled his mobile phone number on a card and passed it to one of the gang. "Lemme know how all dis works ou', yeah bud?". They promised they would.

Three days later, Gerry came (fnarr fnarr, I'm sorry, I can't help myself) back up to town and was practically attacked at the front door. He was still wearing the plain band on his wedding finger. So, the guys pinned him down while the girls ripped off his trousers to check for the tattoo on his ass. I was there for that bit. I wish I wasn't. It was horrible. The hairiest arse I have ever seen.

There was no tattoo!
There was no wedding!
There was no Chapel of Love!
There was no Fernando!

There was Las Vegas, but Gerry had only lost $300 there, not his ass-cherry!

Poor Pen was mortified at her naivete. And to make matters worse, the others all voted that seeing as how it was her fault, she'd have to be the one to ring the taxi-driver and tell him that it was all a hoax. She was so green that she did.

More Triangular Bees

Further to the glut of comments that were added to the last post, may I present the wonderful triangular bee that my wonderful husband made to go with it...



To be honest, before I posted that Toblerone rant, I went looking for any pictures I could find of the animation that went with the ad, because it was really excellent. Unfortunately, seeing as how I'm a bit rubbish, and even that nice guy at JFGI couldn't help me, we'll have to make do with Con's effort above.

Triangular Honey from Triangular Bees

It's made with triangular chocolate from triangular trees,
Triangular honey from triangular bees
Hello! Mr Confectioner please,
Give me Toblerooooooone......

I have had this song rolling around in my head since the weekend (thanks a heap, Conor!), which some of you may recall from an advertising campaign run by Toblerone a few years ago. FYI, it was originally aired in the late 1960's, around the time of the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Yellow Submarine.

I had managed to get the song out of my head until 20 minutes ago, when I sat at a colleague's desk to fix something for them and spotted a mini Toblerone bar on her desk. Completely oblivious to what I was doing, I started crooning along as I worked, much to the amusement of everyone in earshot. I wasn't even deterred as I got odd looks while I walked back to my own office, humming merrily to myself.

I'm about to go and run a training session with some folks from upstairs - I hope I can control my melodic (and melodramatic) tendancies for another hour or so. Otherwise, I fear I may loose my job as a result of perceived diminished sanity...

Multi-tasking

Apparently, feminists (of the butch, hairy legged, javelin throwing type) seem to think that a woman's ability to multi-task is proof that Woman is better than Man.

I'm not sure I agree. I think it's an ability or trait (and only one of many) that makes us different. But better? What about jam-jars? Do men suggest that just because they can open the really tightly screwed on and vacuum-packed ones that they're better than women? Ok, I guess some of them do...

What this appears to come down to is an argument over which is better: Brains or Brawn; Mental Dexterity or Manual Dexterity; Intellectual Power or Physical Strength... and let's face it, there's no easy answer to that conundrum.

As I sit here and write this, I am yet again astounded by the way I can so easily be distracted from my original idea... This was going to be a mini-piece trumpeting to the world about how great I am for being able to add a "mail this to a friend" link to my blog, at the same time as creating a test scenario for work, while simultaneously writing an Operations Manual (also for work), concurrent with writing this blog!

To be honest, all I've really got to show for it right now are sore fingers from Alt+Tabbing every couple of seconds and a bit of a headache coming on...

Where's that jam-jar, so I can relax?

My theory about winning

I have a theory about how I win things. This is a personal theory, developed through the observation of my own environment and circumstances. As I haven't conducted any tests on its applicability to the wider community, i.e. anyone other than me, I cannot comment on its generalisability.

Anyway, enough preamble. Here's my theory on how I win things:
"If I genuinely don't, not even for a glimmering brief moment, have the slightest thought of winning cross my mind, then I might win."

This is the tricky bit - it means that winning is a completely unpredictable and unexpected outcome for me. I can't even anticipate, imagine, hope or speculate on what it might be like to win something that I have entered because if I do, I won't. I can't even consciously prevent, suppress or negate a thought of winning or think about not winning.

This might sound like a fairly pessimistic world view, but in fact it's not. Let me give you an example. Every Friday, my department in work runs a mini-lottery. You put your €2 into the pot and your name goes into the hat. If I think to myself "Ooh! it'd be lovely to win this week", or "Hmmm! last Friday before payday and I'm broke... I hope I win the lotto", or "Will I win?", or "I'll never win this week", or "I could do with the cash, so that means I won't win" at any point during the day, I won't. In fact, if I have any thought whatsoever about the outcome of the draw, there is no hope that I will win it.

But (and I think this is the great bit) anytime I do win, I haven't had the slightest inkling of a win, loose, or otherwise on the cards for me while I was handing over my cash. A completely genuine lack of consideration for the outcome of the event results in success!

Now, this theory has led me to speculate just how far I can extend the logic. Does it apply to anything good that I might like to happen to me, e.g. applying for a new job that I'd really like? If I really don't think about what it might be like to work in the new place, does that mean my chances of getting the job have been improved by my karmic resonance?

What about life in general? If I completely ignore and refuse to consider the possible outcome(s) of any situation I am in, will this mean that I will (proverbially, of course) always land on my feet? (I'm almost ready to give this strategy a go!)

Or by consciously deciding to never consider possible consequences for my actions, have I just cursed myself to a lifetime of mediocrity and nothing really good that I would have quite liked ever coming true for me?

Ooooh. Sometimes the metaphysical conundrums that I construct to pass the time on a Friday afternoon just end up freaking me out. That's why I normally don't post them, because then you'll start to see the inner workings of my brain, and even I get scared in there on occassion.