Have been playing with VoIP as a possible replacement for our (vastly over priced) Eircom line rental. Ireland has one of the highest line rentals in Europe, for probably some of the worst quality lines, so I will be happy to see the back of that bill! BlueFace will give me a Dublin number for terminating calls (which have no cost to me) with the ability to call any PSTN/Mobile network at cheap rates and all the IP to IP calls I can eat for free. They do a great 1 week free offer. I have made some calls from a mobile to it and the quality is superb. Granted that's not guaranteed but then again it's not exactly guaranteed with a mobile either.

I have briefly looked at Skype but am not sure why you'd bother given that it doesn't use VoIP standards so cannot be called/make calls to other VoIP providers and that the likes of Trillian do very good audio calls.

Had band tonight (Bray Concert Band) which was good fun. No concerts planned at the moment so a fair few are missing each week but that does mean he works those that are there quite hard.

We have a mouse. The little git wondered across the lounge floor in broad daylight. Will have to go and get a trap of some sort. S favors ones that kill it although apparently the humane ones cost a fortune. I favor a live trap that will also kill it in the form of a kitten. Now I can see mice out the corner of my eye all over the house. A few times recently when sitting watching TV on my own I thought I saw something move out the corner of my eye on the floor. I assume a spider but never actually saw anything when I looked closer. Maybe I'm not going mad after all.

Had friends round last night for a Chinese followed by a game of Cranium which was great fun. Today was a lazy day which didn't achieve much, except more sorting through stuff recently downloaded.

Spent an enjoyable 90 mins listening to SFC get their 3rd win of the season on Sat. While it's shocking they have only managed 2 other wins, it's just about not too late as there are other (worse) teams that are catchable. The commentary said they played very well although Liverpool were poor. Still, has to be good for confidence. If they play like that for the rest of the season I think they'll be ok. Just.

Ok, I owe Trillian an apology. It still takes too long to start up, but once it does it is superb. The audio quality when chatting is excellent, even if the quality of the content cant be helped. It no longer mews which is a shame, but I'm sure there's a fix for that somewhere.

Today's observations: Trillian 3 is a pile of arse cause it takes SO LONG to load up! Maybe this 2Ghz AMD is too slow, but the old Trillian was just grand. Secondly that cooking dinner while cleaning out yesterdays fire and lighting a new one on your own is a bad plan when you realise there's no coal in the house and have to fight with the shed to get more. Sadly S is away for a conference/study in the UK for a week so I am left setting fire to just about everything.

On the plus side we had broadband installed yesterday!! IBB turned up when they said they would, did a good installation and have left me with a fantastic 1024mbit symmentrical up/down link connection :) So what to do with such a nice connection... Persuade all my chums to upload their movie collection to me? You never know J, I might even make a pirate. But dont hold your breath. Speaking of J, I'm not sure the feature of being able to chat to people is still in Trillian 3, as it claims J is there and online and I am sending all kinds of abuse, but there is no response... The actual "chat" feature in the last version was getting a bit dodgy with connections that dont work, maybe they decided to remove it altogether.

Real open fires are all well and good but I'm glad it is not our only source of heat. It's taken a while to get the thing going this afternoon, not sure why it's been more problematic than other times. I've always wanted to live in a house with one though. Those fire logs you can get are ace, set fire to the paper and the thing burns brilliantly. Today we started from scratch using small bits of wood, paper and a match. Later lobbing half a tree and some coal. It really wasn't having it to start with, but I resisted the urge to siphon petrol, or see if trumpet valve oil is flammable...

Our week in the UK after Christmas was brilliant - very tiring as we spent the whole time visiting friends and family but lovely to catch up with those we managed to see. Sadly it's not possible to fit everyone in, but we did pretty well. We went over to Hollyhead from Dun Laoghaire as this end is on the door step, plus the road in the UK is better from Hollyhead than Pembrook. The drive down to Winchester was a fair way (about 5 hours although I now appreciate the British motorways!). We went over on the 27th and saw most of my mothers side of the family when we got there. Saw all the grandparents and other rellies, plus trips to the pub to see friends. English pubs are a bummer as they stink (as do you when you leave) of smoke! The sooner the ban comes in over there the better! Went for a day out shopping in Bournmouth with M&D one day, where I made sure there was a Richer Sounds so I could replace the recently dead amp. S was overjoyed to hear this one has the ability for another speaker! (it's a 6.1 capable). We had a lovely day with M&D, rounded off with me buying a toy in the sales in the form of a DVD recorder. I didn't put enough research into it, but it is cool!

On the 30th we drove up to Birmingham to spend new years with friends. We drove to Solihull and went for a Nandos (I'd been longing for one for almost 2 years!!). Wandering round Solihull was very weird. S recognised some ex pupils but S didn't spot any old colleagues.

We stayed with S&M (and M) for new year. It was lovely to catch up and spend some time and to see how much the younger M had grown up in a year. We also spent the day with A&K plus our God daughter K and her new brother H. It was really nice to catch up with them all and spend some time getting to know younger K. (what is it with parents calling children names with the same initials?!). She was too young to know us when we left for Ireland and I have felt bad that we've not been able to spend more time with her, but we had much fun playing for the day. Then the evening was with M&S (OK, so these initials are getting more confusing!) who we've not seen since leaving CMG. It was great to just get on like we'd never gone away. They are popping over this way soon which will be nice and I think we've persuaded other friends to come and visit Ireland.

I am now very hungry and a Chinese is on order. I'll just go and poke the fire again and find anything left in the house that burns before it arrives.

I will write up about Christmas and our travels, but in the mean time this is fantastic: Fridge letters!