I am getting bad at this! It's been ages since the holiday and as one reader has pointed out finding time after the event to write up the blog is hard work. I will do it, honest! Getting S to type up her own notes would be the clever thing to do.

Speaking of S, it's her 29th today but the poor girl has been so ill she had to see the Dr (which at least you can do here at short notice). It seems the antibiotics she's on have affected her badly and gotten some infection on her lung. They have given her anti nausea stuff and different antibiotics to start in a few days (which I assume is when the anti nausea will have kicked in). She's been looking forward to this particular birthday since she was about 5, poor girl!

The house is coming on. D&T visited today and did an amazing amount of work. D seems to be able to paint far quicker than we can and do a much better job. The lounge is basically done although we want to get some new furniture for it eventually and put the existing sofa in the "cinema" room. This room is currently FULL of boxes. I guess one day we will unpack them all!

What will be our bedroom is next. It's ready to start painting and I have the rest of the week off (bar over night tomorrow). We want to get a bigger bed for our room, but I don't understand how anyone buys furniture on this Island as there's no Ikea! What there is seems stupidly expensive.

Some people have too much time on their hands... here

Ok, it's been a week since we got back from NY and I've not yet posted (and there is enough to post from our trip), but I needed the week to recover! It was fantastic. Had a brilliant time - nackering with all the walking (and we used the Subway loads too but still managed to walk miles) so needed time to recover when we got back.

Work this week has been dull, so nothing exciting to say there. Thursday was band again and the harder pieces he's decided to play means I have to concentrate - which is hard work! He wants to do a trombone trio in the next concert (some time in oct...) so gave us the music and it looks scary. I might actually have to do some practice so not to make a total tit of myself.

Had our first Youth Group on Friday night (S and I are part of a 4 leaders team running a group for 15-18s) which was good fun. Not that many turned up as several are still away but it was good to get to know those that were there that I've not previously spoken to. Looking forward to the group growing etc.

Right, as for NY S kept blogable notes of what we did, so will make a start of writing it up tomorrow as I'm too nackered to start now.

Only 2 days to go until we leave for NY!!!

Got up early for a haircut on Sat. Cant go to NY without one. Then we went to the Radison to meet C&K for breakfast. Not seen C in ages and have never met K. We had a really lovely time with them - got on very well. Could chat to K for hours. Spent the rest of Sat chilling out not doing much.

Went to my first band rehearsal last Thursday as I have joined the Bray Concert Band! I didn't even know there was one, and looking on the net you wouldn't know any different, but some of the lads from Crinken play in it and have suggested I join. It was great fun! They play "sillier" music over the summer (things like New York New York, The James Bond Theme, YMCA, even Celine Dion!) it's all great fun. None of this 150 bars rest lark like you get in an orchestra! The down side to that means that there's no 150 bars rest like you get in an orchestra... So I have to play for the whole 2 hour rehearsal! I am out of practice but this will be a big help. He put me on 1st trombone which was fun, until I noticed the little word "solo" in the music...

I was asked if I would join in the bands concert last Sunday - at Lord Meath's place (or however you spell his name). A fantastic manor house between Bray and Greystones that I didn't know existed. The concert was great fun and went well, except again just as we were about to play a piece the conductor said "and there's a trombone solo in this one". Great!

Work has been a bit slow in parts this week, mainly cause I am watching NY web cams and not thinking about work. Today was particularly slow in the afternoon. Getting through a fair few cuppacinos in a day.