Wow, I'm stunned to discover a girl I used to be good friends with is now a Sky Weather Girl!! What's more is I was convinced I saw her on Sky on one of the large TVs at work several months ago but couldn't find anything online to say it was her. But sure enough, now she even has her own fan page... Very strange!

Anyway, several people have complained recently that I've been useless at posting, so here goes. S is currently in London for a few days for work (back tomorrow) and we go away on Sat morning!! Do I need a holiday or what?! Else I'm likely to end up doing something I shouldn't at work...

Since I cant post any other way from home at the mo, I am trying email. From what I remember it makes a complete arse of the formatting, so bear with me.

Last weekend the Jazz Band played at a wedding. It seemed a typical Irish wedding where the family turned up to the Catholic church and repeated the words as if they went every week then legged it off to the bar. About 8 of us played in the church, then 15-20 of us in the Jazz band played an hour at the reception. It went very well and was good fun. Although with that
an then all Sunday doing various youth groups I didn't have much spare time. I was asked to look after the younger lot than I'd normally do on Sunday morning - but they were very good so I enjoyed that.

Have just finished watching England lose away in Northern Ireland. What a shocking load of sh*te that was. England were clueless and were obviously shocked that the poor team they were playing didn't read the script and let them win effortlessly. England needed a good kick up the @rse and maybe this was it. Sven looked more clueless as the 2nd half wore on and had no answer to NI playing well and deserving their lead. I personally rate Sven as a good England manager, in that his record in competitive games is better than any other I remember. But they need to put the effort in regardless of how bad they think the opposition are. Like against Wales, it was obvious the England players were happy with a 1-0 win even if the 1 went in the 89th min. They've not cared about friendlies for a long time, too overpaid to give a toss I guess. I'm not sure what the answer is. I know full well England don't have many (any?!) truly world class players but the ones they have can play so much better if only they could be bothered to try. Trying isn't asking too much, is it?

My employer has been reasonably generous recently as we've had: a free icecream and open air rock concert (by Republic Of Loose - who were very good) with the promise of more gigs to come and yesterday I arrived at work to find a blueberry muffin. Bargain of the day was a colleague offered me two chocolate muffins for my blueberry... Of course a large pay rise would say they cared in a far more acceptable way!

Given posting at home doesn't work there's lots I've wanted to comment on that have now passed and realistically I'm not going to recap the whole summer. Except it was overall fantastic and I cannot believe how quickly it went by. S is now back at work in the office mainly on her own after ODing on people all summer. I'm authoring a web site for Crinken Youth at the moment and then have lots of video footage to edit for S for some publicity material for her to use. Not that I have any time to spend on either of these with playing in two bands and having youth group every week! The "Big Band" I play in on a tues is playing at a wedding in a couple of weeks. Rehearsal last night went well except the drummer wasn't there and it really showed up what the rest of us could or more realistically could not play! Although it was sounding good at the end of it.

Final comment of the post, it was my birthday on Monday! So a big thanks to all those who sent SMSs - a big slap to those in SA who did not!!! Had a great day as S and I took the day off. Got some great pressies and S cooked a big fry up before the two of us went out bowling for the laugh. It was good fun and we were surprisingly not awful. We mooched about for the rest of the day then went into Dublin centre for a Tapas which was very nice. Now I'm looking forward to Ss birthday in 2.5 weeks time, were we have a whole week of fun away for her 30th!

This is very strange and bloody annoying. It seems I can only post entries that are 3 lines or less long in the editor from home, but rant as long as I like from work. Must be something odd with my ISP but I have no idea what or how to prove it to get them to sort it out!

Very curious, I have discovered all my failed postings are from the laptop at home, while from work I seem to have no problems at all... Will have to try other machines at home and then see if I can do so from my works ISP when home fails. Maybe I've been unfairly blaming blogger.com and it's my ISP or laptop.

Made a prat of myself at work yesterday. I was in a meeting with about 8 people, including one girl I recognised and knew had worked there as long as I have but have never known her name. It occurred to me that I should ask who she was after the meeting since I was meant to be the technical lead and have a clue what's going on. Half way through other people were talking about Ls requirements for this that and the other. I stopped them after a bit and said "who the hell is L?", this girl sheepishly puts up her hand as everyone else falls about laughing.