It's been a busy few weeks. Hot on the heels of my long overdue uploading of the 2006 Monaghan road trip - I am happy to now have the pics of the 2008 trip uploaded and in the gallery for your perusal. A great weekend which saw Garett's competitiveness win him and Carmel the Wii Bowling title. For never having played it - Roisin - or 'Rawshine' as she became was remarkable adept at hitting strikes, she certainly made up for some of my appalling screw ups!

Currently Reading: American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Currently Listening to: Björk - Greatest Hits

As always more to follow shortly. Stay tuned.

Sean

It was great to hear from Yonca the news that her and Andy have a new addition to their new home - in the shape of Poppy (above). I'm hoping shes at least part Dingo. Imagine being able to live in Australia and say you have a pet Dingo?! How cool would that not be?

In other news I've been watching with great interest the build up to and now the installation of the 1.2MW tidal energy convertor called 'SeaGen' in Strangford Lough, the first of its kind in the world. A brilliant idea - heres hoping it works as planned and the resident sea life aren't adversely affected. I shall have a few photos of its installation uploaded onto here in the coming days so watch this space.

For this update I've added some pics to the photo section from a wee road trip we took to Monaghan to visit Marty in 06 - two years ago! - already?!

Currently Listening to: Cherry Ghost - Thirst For Romance

As always more to follow shortly. Stay tuned

Sean

St Patrick's Day came with the annual parade (Sorry for the ridiculously politically correct Down County Council - "The Cross Community Carnival"). Much credit to all who took part - huge time and effort clearly went into the amazing costumes and floats. Of note were the Salsa Dancers from Salsa-NI who were brilliant - where they got all that energy from is a complete mystery to me, indeed what was most impressive was that they all seemed to be really enjoying themselves - fair play to them! More photos of them and the rest of the parade can be found in the gallery.

Also some 'mobile pics' have been uploaded in the 'Misc' Section. See if you can spot yourself ;-)

More to follow shortly.

As always Stay tuned folks!

Sean

'world renowned' bookcases & Ireland's largest 'Restaurant' - hmmmm a better summary would be flat packed run of the mill furnishing with Swedish names & a large dining hall which was so busy - by the time you got to the till with your meal it was cold. Weak. Soulless. Maze like. Don't go. Don't buy. It ain't worth the stress - there is better.

It was great to receive a wee late night email - (not from the usual Penis enlarging drugs companies) but from Andy in Australia! The big man and Yonca are getting on great in the land down under and are currently hoping to make take their first step onto the property ladder.

Anyway - not long after emailing back - I received an email in return from Andy asking was I still up - as we're both bright sparks we realised instant messaging would be more apt for communicating in real time. While explaining that a guest bedroom was necessary as I intend to get down and see them "soon"* - *(as I've been saying this since before they got hitched I doubt Andy took any heed of it) we got on to the topic of the local 'wildlife'. I was assured it was very rare for the Funnelweb Spider (a.k.a - Mr 'Im in the top 3 of the worlds most deadly spiders' to come indoors. However the more 'friendly' Huntsman Spider is regularly indoors. CHARMING. Interesting thing is though there are lizards which live in their garden and keep such creatures at bay and all houses over there are insect proofed. Thank God for that!

I wish Andy and the lovely Yonca every success with the property hunt - and am looking forward to some pics of those lizards and the rest of Oz you've promised me!

Currently Reading: Tescopoly: How One Shop Came Out on Top and Why It Matters

Currently Listening to: Morceeba - Dive Deep

More to follow shortly

As Always Stay Tuned Folks

sean