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I am sick. I am not well. I have been in bed most of today because of this, plus I know I have a rough week ahead. Hopefully the added sleep I picked up today will stand me in good stead. I am quite busy over the next couple of days and there is the added stress of us having finally sold the BMW (it is being picked up tomorrow) and that means we are down to one car until we pick up another one and there are places I need to be at times I can't be there over the next wee while and it is stressing me out big style. Here's hoping we find a car TOMORROW!

Part of my sickness is me feeling run down. Part is that I have had a cold knocking at my brain and throat and chest for the past couple of days. And part is because I was fairly drunk last night after several Sex on the Beach cocktails plus a couple Cosmopolitans. They were very nice and I don't doubt I will do it all again but dude - my head today! I am so glad I didn't take Becky up on her kind offer to get out of bed at 11.30pm last night and go to her house to start drinking all over again. I am not so sure she wasn't joking. I have a feeling she was polishing the optics as we spoke. Will save that for another night!

We had a last minute invitation to our niece Louise's 21st birthday - family bash yesterday. Louise is my favourite niece and I have blogged about her before. She had three of her friends there, they were hitting the town after the party but not before we ribbed Louise to pieces about her Blonde Moments. They know her so well, after spending a couple of years with her in a flat at university and some of the stories they were telling about her were priceless. When one of Louise's friends took over the bar I thought it was time to stop drinking - I am not sure she knew about measures and it is possible that last one was 95% alcohol!

Talking about Drunken Stupidity and such like, Jacqui found a video on her camera she had forgotten about. It was taken on holiday in the caravan in July and apart from the total embarrassment of it being me and ew - who likes to see themselves ?! - it still has me giggling reliving the moment. I am not sure why it is so dark but I can only point out with pride that I continued to slurp the whole way through!

I hope you enjoy!

The school runs a disco every Hallowe'en for P4 and up. David has been to it a couple of times now. It was at his first one that we realised he is a bit of a raver - he seems to love discos and always comes back covered in sweat, tired and happy.

This year I had my instructions. He wanted a new outfit and face paints. On pain of death was I to go home without a suitable get-up for him. I picked up what was needed in the pound shop and nipped home early, knowing he would need plenty of time to do the make up, fix his hair and get ready only to find the childminder had the kids away and was late getting back! We had a total of ten minutes to get everything done. . . .

At 7pm he was ready to leave! He had a vampire suit on, glow in the dark face paint and half a head of purple hair and half green with glow in the dark highlights. The best bit was the dripping blood from his vampire teeth.

What a lovely two hours. Iain and I had a quiet tea, Jessica went to bed sensibly and I remembered that next year David will spend a few days in Edinburgh on a school trip. Suddenly I got a lump in my throat and asked Iain "Are you ready for David to go away for a few days without us?" He looked at me. "How will you cope with him leaving, do you think?" I continued. He put down his knife and fork, waved enthusiastically and said "BUH-BYEEEEEEEE!"

As predicted, David came home tired, happy and this year he was also jubilant! He won second place in the fancy dress contest! He won loads of wee prizes including a couple of packs of chocolate which he shared with me for "making him look so cool."

I do have my uses. It's nice to be recognised sometimes. It isn't why you do things - but it sure is nice to get a little recognition just once in a while.

I have stuck this into the category "Humour" because it is too late to start adding new categories and "Total Embarrassment" isn't one I wish to use too often anyway!

I had today, what we used to call a "red-ner." I never heard it being called that outside Northern Ireland and I am glad to say I have never had to spell it before - so forgive me if I have spelled it incorrectly. It is "Having a ruddy or flushed complexion: red with embarrassment" and also described in my hearing today on a totally different subject as "Having a Colour."

Total Embarrassment suitably sums it up though.

We were in college. We had Sybil all morning: the craic is mighty with Sybil at the moment. There are only ever three or four of us at any given time and that has led to me being a little more jokey with her than I was last year and her a little less formal with us. It is safe to say I am enjoying my relationship with the tutors this year.

We discussed a few things before lunch and then she left the room, we cleared up and while I was waiting for the others to finish off I heard Sybil walking back down the corridor outside. You can't mistake her walk - it is the walk of a person shorter than me - you know - umm - a short person. The corridors are easy to make a lot of noise in and whatever shoes she wears you can always hear her coming. No one else makes those same distinctive footsteps.

Huh uh.

I was just about to walk out the classroom door, heard her coming and then at the last moment without looking, poked my head out and said "BOO!"

Perhaps Sybil ISN'T the only short person in the building wearing stupid noisy shoes then huh?

Some poor woman - a total stranger to myself - was walking past and I scared the wits out of her by appearing from nowhere and shouting BOO at her. She probably has grounds to sue me!

She jumped a considerable height, walked two or three more steps, spun round to look at me and then said "What did you pick on ME for?" Well, that floored me - I didn't have an answer for that one. I raised an eyebrow and looked sheepish, fervently hoping that no one inside the classroom had noticed and kept on about my business. I couldn't even bring myself to apologise!

It wasn't until I was telling the tale to Jacqui on the phone that I started to see the funny side of it all. The red-ner started to subside about then.

Why did I pick on her? Um . . .because she wasn't Sybil . . . because she was short? That'll do! Stupid short people - walking along corridors with noisy shoes on - what's that all about then? There ought to be a law saying that other people HAVE to shout BOO at them. I was only doing my duty!

Nah - I have NO idea why I did it - one of those "seemed a good idea at the time" things. It wouldn't even have been funny if it HAD been Sybil! I sincerely hope that I never meet that woman again in the corridor, that she never recognises me and that she didn't wet herself at the shock of it all as much as I did laughing about it on the phone later.

Oooops! Not the kind of red I really want as my signature colour! *Pulls hoodie over head* No one else noticed did they?

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A while back Lorna emailed all her friends with a "If you are interested in going to see Kenny Rogers in concert let me know. . ." Lorna, Catherine, Shauna and I went last night. That's the short story.

It has to be said, I am not a Kenny fan. I maybe know about err one of his songs. . . I was only going along for the fun.

We arranged to go for a meal first and ended up having chicken goujons in Lisburn before heading to the concert in Belfast around 7.20pm. The meal was grand but the craic was mighty.

We motored down to Belfast in two cars as Catherine was going home in Belfast afterwards but hit the traffic at 7.30pm at Boucher Road. It took us an hour to travel from there to the Kings Hall car park. Can't be more than a couple of miles. We kept texting and phoning between the two cars which was funny. There was great consternation when other road users did stupid things like join the faster lane and then cut in front of us - you know the "queue mentality" that goes on.

It was about this stage that I realised my camera was still lying on the sofa at home. Ooops. Good job I had my camera phone with me - I only needed one photo to blog with after all - I wasn't really going to enjoy myself at the concert - I don't know any songs. . . .

Finally finally finally we made it to the car park and high-tailed it to the front door. By the time we found our seats we had been through about 23 queues! The seats were almost at the back row of the ground floor on the extreme right. Confusingly, the tickets said seats 1, 2, 3 and 4 but there were 3, 4, 5 and 6 empty. We spoke to the ushers who said that for health and safety reasons 1 and 2 had had to be removed but that they would re-seat us. They issued us with different tickets which seemed to be on the balcony this time - that seemed better than where we had been originally!

On the way to the new seats we passed a snack bar and I stopped for a bottle of fanta. Yet another queue. There were only about three people before me but the girl serving kept taking people who arrived AFTER me. Catherine included! At this point I stuck my hand in my pocket and became convinced I had been pick-pocketed as my phone wasn't there. There was no way I had left it in the car - I just wouldn't do that! Everyone was concerned for me and I considered phoning Iain to ask him to get the phone blocked immediately but Shauna convinced me there was a slight chance that possibly I might have left it in the car.

We took our seats and were delighted to find we were right beside the stage area. The first thing I noticed was a gorgeous Powerbook on the stage - looked like a 17 inch to me! I didn't actually see anyone using it the whole night - it was just *on* with the lid pulled half way down. But it was there!

We were just in time. The band came on to stage and after a brief wait Kenny arrived too. We were in just the right position to look down his left ear hole all night. He went straight into two songs I had never heard of, making me more sure I wasn't going to be able to enjoy this too much! I was only there for Coward Of The County don't forget!

After that he started to warm the audience up with a few jokes. He pointed out he can always tell which of the men are there under sufferance - they are the ones who are sitting bored looking with their arms crossed. He picked on one guy at the front and asked him if he was A. a huge fan, B. Knew some of the words, C. Didn't know who Kenny was but would kill for that shirt he was wearing or D. Quite liked some of the songs and would go out tomorrow and buy a Garth Brooks cd. The guy at the front was introduced as James and he stated he was an A fan although Kenny didn't believe that and told him he would give him a tenner (he wasn't too sure if it was ten pounds or ten euros he had in his hand - but it turned out to be £10) if James could name a hit of his. James DID and Kenny threw him the tenner. It continued like this all night - Kenny threw James money at regular intervals. I couldn't work out if James knew all the words and was singing along or Kenny was just throwing money for the sake of it.

Immediately after every song the band went into the next song. There was little chance for catching breath between the songs. It turned out I knew a couple of the songs and umm, some of the words too. . . but shh, don't tell anyone.

Coward of the County came on and we sang a long with that.

James continued to have money thrown at him and the people beside us and behind us continued to talk the whole way through the fecking concert. I was getting soooo cross. It was hard enough to listen to what Kenny was saying - we were ten feet away from the speakers for our section and the sound quality wasn't great for hearing speech but the women with their husbands had obviously been re-seated too and weren't too happy with the new seats. Our section seemed to have been kept clear and we continued to gather waifs and strays the whole night long. Every time one of them arrived the two women would catch the eye of the usher and complain about the seats and how they couldn't hear. I don't think the sound was any better anywhere else in the hall but they were not happy.

This went on until one usher came back and offered the couple behind us different seats. Hallebloodyleujah! Away they went after saying goodbye to all their new friends, banging their seats as they left. I sighted a big sigh of relief and settled in to enjoying the concert again.

Then they came back! The woman announced to everyone who wanted to hear (and unfortunately, to those who didn't want to hear too!) that "HE didn't want to move after all!" FFS!

Anyway, the concert was great. It ended up that I knew loads of the songs (I had forgotten that my Dad was a Kenny fan and I had heard loads of these songs in the car when I was growing up) , we had great fun and it was absolutely lovely to see Lorna squeeing and singing along to almost every word!

I spent a lot of the concert fuming that I had no means of capturing any photographs at all. How stupid am I?

When it was all over we made our way slowly out of the building and then back to the car. Of course, my phone was there - safe and sound! Outside there was a huge advert for "Concert in your car at 10.30 on U105.8." That implied to us that U105 was going to be broadcasting the concert after almost in the mode of a drive in concert I thought but when we made it out of the car park and tuned in - it was just a dj playing Kenny songs along with people phoning in as they left the concert. A lot of them were complaining about the shortness of the concert, but we decided that it may not have been very long but he had packed in plenty of songs.

Then James phoned in! HEEeeEEEee! He gave his account of the evening and confirmed he made £120 out of it! He was going to split the money three ways with his wife, mother in law and himself! Yea right - I would have done that too! NOT!

Happily, Lorna had taken three photos on her camera phone and when we were in the car I bluetoothed them to my phone.

"Huh? How'd you do that then?"

"I bluetoothed them to my phone - you can do that if the two phones both have bluetooth."

"Ohh! Do YOU have blueteeth Shauna?"

"No! I brushed my teeth this afternoon!"

I think that sums up the spirit of the whole evening.

I had a great night, thoroughly enjoyed the meal and loved the concert. Thanks Lorna for making me go - cos you know I would never have gone off my own bat! And Maggi - hope this makes up for you not being able to go. Husbands suck huh?

Today I started to doubt my very sanity in a way that made me think I should ring the funny farm and book a nice long visit for myself. . .

The History . . .

We started looking at this housing development away back in 1999. We then looked at this house in the early summer of 2000. We bought it and moved into it on the 20th October 2000 - so we have been here six years now. . .

I have been tempted many times to blog about my neighbours, but you know how word travels, private as I THINK this blog is, word can get out quickly so I don't generally talk about them. Actually they are all ok, we get on ok with them all. We live in a cul-de-sac of seven houses and all the other owners are grand, with the right smattering of new-borns, children the same age as ours and then there are some grandparents too - we are like a wee village all to ourselves!

The only blot on the landscape away back when we were first looking was a hideous white satellite dish in the garden next door to us. It is humongous - I mean real big - probably six feet in diameter. There is a lot of speculation in the cul-de-sac about what the dish is required for. As the guy is a night-time-only taxi driver we are all convinced that he records porn all day and sells it by night. And that's is just the rumour *I* started anyway. . .

Last year they put up a fence on our boundary line. It's a good enough fence - we can't complain about it. T'is much better than what was there before and it was free - so who are we to complain?

Last week I arrived home in the middle of the day to see the guy sitting in his garage, a table in front of him with a small tv on it and a normal sized white satellite dish beside him. Bizarre huh?

Well I thought so until today.

I left the house at 11am to go to Tescos for a little bit of shopping. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a black satellite dish attached to their side of the fence. I blinked a little bit. What? Was this going to be a permanent fixture? I thought about taking a photo of it but then realised I may be a little anal about documenting this sort of thing so didn't bother. I wish I had now.

When I came back from shopping at 1pm the black dish was no longer there. T'was all gone. I blinked again and reckoned they had just moved it to a better position.

When I came back at 5pm from the birthday party Jessica had been to, I was absolutely flabbergasted to see a WHITE satellite dish in the place the black one had been. I sincerely hope none of my neighbours were looking out of their windows at that moment as I did a double take and then stared for a full five minutes rubbing my eyes. . .

Why have they got so many dishes? Why can't they stick the small one on the side of the chimney like everyone else? This IS going to annoy the happiness out of me now - it is in my line of sight (especially when I am taking photos of it) and they have wound the cable round the fence post several times too. We can see that you know. Sigh.

It wouldn't be so bad if they shared the porn around the cul-de-sac free of charge. . .

You will have worked out by now that I kinda like my t shirts huh? And I may have mentioned once or twice that I like my RSS Reader. When you combine the two you get what?

More t shirts!

Recently a site that I have had on my RSS for a while ran the kind of competition that I like. None of that having to guess things, or god forbid, having to actually know things, this competition was "be the first to respond and I will give you a load of dosh in the form of vouchers for Threadless."

I can tell you that my heart was thumping and my hands shaking when I saw the RSS come in. How many people would have the site listed and how many would be at their computer right at the moment it came in - I might be in with a chance here. . .

I fumbled a bit and I am quite sure that I was Entry Number 1 AND 2 as I forgot to tell them my Threadless ID the first time. When I checked their site out there were two entries there but only mine was showing. I now reckon the other one was mine too though. It took a wee minute or two for Chris, the site owner to contact me but I WON! YAY!

I got $25 and the voucher is sitting in my inbox already. Somehow that equated to me telling Iain that I got "three t shirts worth" rather than $25 - but - hey - anyone out there who buys Threadless will know what I mean!

I may not be making much money at work at the moment but at least I will be able to put clothes on my back huh?

As to my choice the next time I order . . . well "Macgyver" is, at long last back in stock. I got an email about that a while back and excitedly went to press a few buttons to order but then realised that there is no hurry - may as well wait for a $10 sale. I just checked and there are plenty in stock still.

Recently they reprinted a couple I was waiting for so I am pretty much up to date with what I want - even though I haven't updated The Threadless page for a while.

I got Ctrl + Z which had been on my list and I even got Rainbow Worrier which was mega dear. There are always a few new releases that I would love to get but they just pick the stupidest colours at times. Like We're On The Same Level for example, I love that - but there is no way I would wear that colour. (And no, Banana is not the same colour as Gold - which I would wear.)

I wish they had a "I would have bought this had it not been in this colour" button. I would push that button from time to time.

There ARE a couple now that I might consider getting second copies of. I know that sounds weird - but I love Afternoon Delight and am going to be devastated when it falls to pieces - I think I ought to have a back-up just in case. . .

Last night on the way home I sat at a junction waiting to pull out after a car had passed just as the driver indicated he was going to turn left. That would be down the road I was on. I never pull out until I see the car committed to the turn so sat for a fraction of a second longer thankfully and watched as the car sailed on past me and into the church car park which was the NEXT left.

Dude. You aren't supposed to give other driver's scares like that.

Today as I sat at the end of Nanna's drive way to turn right across the traffic I saw a car come out of the car wash on the other side of the road. The driver indicated she wanted to turn right so I checked to make sure my indicator was already on so she would see me. It is kinda the way that the person who was there first gets the right of way.

Eventually I pulled out of the drive way and found myself quickly approaching the other woman who was also pulling across the road. She hadn't even seen me. She had time to throw her hands up to her face in total horror but had it not been for me reacting so quickly we would surely have hit each other.

David and Jessica were quite scared by the one at Nanna's and we discussed how scary it had been for a couple of minutes and I must admit I got a fit of the nervous giggles.

I am not leaving the house until I hear of someone else having my third accident though!

Why is it that every single night last week I had my sleep interrupted by at least one of my children and on two occasions had a child lying beside me for the greater majority of the night and yet when there is no work the next day there isn't a peep out of them?

What's that all about then Ted?

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Now, this is a general observation and genuine question - not a criticism.

Why is it that when people talk about Northern Ireland it is generally abbreviated to "NI"? Ok, I know that is a silly opening question. It is obvious. People like to abbreviate. Everyone does it. The United States of America becomes "USA" and "The US" with no problem at all. The United Kingdom is easily "The UK" and Great Britain is "GB." All very understandable so far.

I have a real thing about superfluous work though. If you are going to type something about Northern Ireland it is ok to type "NI." But why type "Northern Ireland" and then edit it to say "NI" later? Ok, I know I have lost you now.

My RSS reader tells me the way the thing was written and then tells me in red if it is then edited later. See? Why did the person type Northern Ireland the first time and then make work for themselves and change it to NI later? Little things like that fill my head all day. Is it any wonder I am not making loadsamoney?

And, by the way, why is it ok to talk about "NI" there and not "Scot"? What has Scotland got that means it gets the full name and not the abbreviation? Surely if one is abbreviated then they all should be abbreviated? I do like my consistency.

I don't mind the "NI." If it hadn't been in red and green there I would never have noticed it. But Dude! Why change it? Perhaps there was a Word Count on the news item? Perhaps they get paid for the amount of space they save? Praps we will c news in txt speak soon?

I dunno. Beats me.

I am away off now to try to win my £2 million on the lottery so I can continue to wonder about such things in comfort . . .

Tonight my brother made an entry in his LiveJournal for the first time in, I suppose, eighteen months. It filled us in with what has happened to him in that time in just a few short paragraphs. From the London bombings, getting married, to the service for the babies he and his wife lost. It has been an eventful year for him.

I got to looking at my LiveJournal habits while I was there. This evening I posted three replies to other peoples' journals and I realised that although I still look at my "friend's page" every day, my life is now more taken up with RSS than LJ. I hardly ever post any replies and the last time I posted there myself was in July.

(My brother announced his intention to blog by asking me for a link to my blog. I quizzed him as to which one and he said "Green is not the only colour." That made me smile. It is true. Green is NOT the only colour. Neither is it the title of my LJ blog but I will keep it in mind for the future! It took me quite a moment to think what the name of it IS though!)

I suddenly realised that I have a paid account there. I am paying for it to sit and do nothing all day! I need to make sure that doesn't renew - oops - looks like I DID renew it in February! I remember thinking that I couldn't do without the paid account back then. I needed the extra features it gave me. Like. Umm. Well, there's umm. Well it was a good idea at the time! I used 52 of my 100 User pics! Nods. That is a thing I miss here. I liked picking my user pic depending on what I was talking about. I suppose I carried that over to here a little bit with the pictures I try to put in each time. I also needed the photo hosting to a certain degree. Somewhere I could put photos that wasn't quite a public as Flickr. Oh Oh Oh Oh! they gave me 7 extra user pics for being a loyal customer and it took me 6 months to notice! Ooops!

It was through LJ that I started to learn a little of what I know now. It was definitely where I cut my teeth in the world of online-blogginess. It seems a long time ago now. I still feel I am only on step 3 of um, 100!

If it wasn't for LJ . . .

While I was looking around the "new look LJ" a song came on iTunes and instantly my eyes filled with tears. It is one of the first songs I added to iTunes when that was first introduced to me back in LJ days and for some reason always has that effect on me. Isn't it funny how music reminds you of a certain era?

Ahh. Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be you know. . .

To total disaster. . . Last week we had a couple of power surges in work. During the first blip Iain's computer went off and wouldn't turn back on. I sat in my office quite smug in the knowledge that my Powerbook would run for a while on the battery and not be too badly effected. The only problem was, the router doesn't have a battery and I was off line for a while trying to reboot that. Took me quite a few keystrokes to figure it out though. . .

Half an hour later and Iain still couldn't get the computer up again so he decided he would open it up. He diagnosed a blown power supply and I found him and old beige box out the back that may or may not have been water damaged at one point but I never actually told him that so shhh!

With a heart like a lion he started to strip the supply out of the blown one and I helped him take the other one out of the donor - yes - there was an air of an organ transplant going on, albeit with a tad more fluff and dust than in a hospital theatre! We successfully transplanted and I watched as Iain put all the sides and screws back on and I thought "Little does he know - that side will be off and on a few hundred times before this is finished." I remember when I had 3 or 4 pcs around me I used to carry a screwdriver with me because I was in and out of the innards of them so often. Many of the boxes ended up with screws missing at best and sides lost at worst.

I was right. It didn't boot up the first time. The life was there but no brains. Immediately I took it apart again and checked all the cables were inserted correctly. I re-pushed them but Iain had put them all in securely. The sides went back on and back under the table again to get it all re-connected. This happened a couple of times more before I gave up and rang Nigel. Remember Nigel the computer guy? I used to be in weekly contact with Nigel but I haven't spoken to him for over a year now. Not. Since. I. Saw. The. Light.

After realising there was no power lead to the hard drive (oooops!), correcting that, then phoning Nigel again to get more advice, we finally got the thing up and running. Thankfully. As the computer has all of Iain's life on there - his customer base and the accounts - he backs nothing up and I am worse - I know how to back it up for him but never have.

That little lot cost me at least 2 and a half hours out of my working day. I was in a hurry to go somewhere and had to postpone that to another day in the end.

The reason I am telling you all this now is that I haven't had as much as two and a half hours worth of down time in the over-a-year I have had the powerbook. I keep having to remind myself that it wasn't always this easy, and take a moment to think about the poor unfortunates who cling to pcs for their own various reasons.

Obviously I could have been hit by a power surge too - that isn't a pc only thing - but the fact that I had to look up Nigel's number rather than knowing it off by heart speaks volumes - doesn't it?

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