Sports

I’m not a big sports person. Being exceedingly lazy, I abhor pretty much any kind of physical activity and refuse to participate in most sports.
However, there are sports which I will happily watch – hurling being foremost among them, followed by camogie, football and ladies’ football. Plus I’ll take an interest in a good game of rugby from time to time.
Other than that, I’ll watch most sports when they’re on, from snooker to darts, swimming to gymnastics.
Except cricket. Can’t stand cricket.

One thing I’m not particularly keen on, though, is soccer. It just never interested me. It seems too slow, after you’ve been watching hurling.
Nominally, I support Manchester Utd., ’cause if I didn’t I think I’d be thrown out of my house, but beyond that I’ll take no real interest in football.

Andrew’s also a ManU supporter, so today he went to O’Neill’s to watch the match, although he ended up in Caulfield’s, ’cause that’s where the GameSoc crowd were, and I went with him.
I know I don’t like football, but when the choice is between sitting at home and paying no attention to football while my dad yells at the telly or sitting in a pub with a drink, some people yelling at a telly and most of the GameSoc also sitting around, it’s not exactly a tough choice.

Earned me some serious brownie points, though, woohoo!
So, there you go! Turns out choosing the more interesting of two possible nights watching football is a good idea. Worked out well for me. =)

Tears

I’m a wuss. No two ways about it, I’m a wuss through and through. I can’t watch anything with even a hint of sadness in it without welling up.
TV shows, films, books, clips from anything, I’ll be in floods of tears before I even realise it myself.

It’s something of a running joke within my family – at the first sign of a minor chord a box of tissues comes flying at me from somewhere in the room.

Anyways, today I was grabbed by the urge to listen to Winter, by Joshua Radin.
I looked it up on Youtube, listened to the song, everything was hunky dory – until I looked at the related videos.
Had to click on it.

That’s probably at least the twentieth time I’ve seen that clip, yet I cannot seem to harden myself to it. It still makes me cry. Every time.
Every damn time.

God, I am such a wuss.

Pens

I’m a pen person. Not to the same extent as some people, I have to say, I would never spend a huge amount of money on a pen, but that’s because I’m likely to lose it.
I don’t like writing in biro, I find it boring.
In general, I’ll write in Parker. Last week I bought myself a set of new fine-liners, which is cool.

Anyways, at work, having a pen is one of the most fundamental things you need. Well, a pen and sellotape, but probably more so a pen.
I use my pen to sign out my gun, to sign out a float, to sign off on coupons and clubcard vouchers, to get customers to sign for cashback, to fill out my cashbag, to sign off on what I’ve validated that day, to write out the report on what I’ve done that day, to label the scan report and to sign my gun back in.

I definitely need a pen at work. So for the last five or six months I’ve had an orange pen with frogs on it, as it was bright and pretty unmissable, as well as being easy to claim back if I lent it to someone.

But today, DISASTER STRUCK!

I wasn’t particularly happy to be going to work anyways, as it was Tuesday, and I have a tutorial at five on Tuesday, meaning getting to work is always a rush and a pain in the hole as I always end up a minute or two late, which really, really bugs me. I hate being late for anything, at all.
Then, to make matters worse, I was validating the freezers. I believe I’ve complained about that before, it’s all to do with the fact that I’m always cold…

Anyways, I put off the freezers for as long as I could, as I was in an awful mood, and I managed to end up being the first person called for tills, meaning I spend the guts of the first two hours on my till. Eventually, at about nine, I had no choice but to go back to the freezers and start validating.

Disaster! As I bent down to pick up some oven chips, my I knocked my pen off the strap of my printer and it fell into the freezer. Then, just to be awkward, it fell down beneath the shelves, so I couldn’t get at it.

I’m down one pen, and I’m not happy about it at all!!! =(

Jazz

Since I left band for a few weeks, what with exams and study and being so utterly, horribly sick of it that I’d feel the need to strangle myself rather than spend another two hours stuck in a youth centre with that asshole at the head of the room, my Monday night was free today.

So for months Oisín and I have been planning to go to Cauldfields on a Monday, as that’s jazz night and, well, as saxophonists, we kind of like jazz.
Anyways, I ended up going to St Mary’s band practice, which is on at the same time as Lucan, only in Maynooth, and conducted by Áine, who is Lorcan’s sister.
It was good fun, although I must say Maynooth aren’t half as high a calibre of player as Lucan – the difference in standard is incredible.

After band, we moseyed on down to the jazz, which was cool, although unbalanced, the entire band was built around the sax player.
Stayed there for a while, Andrew turned up, then Charlie, Aaron and Peter did too.
A good night, I’d say, then by the time I got home I’d forgotten that my aunt and my cousin Liam were coming to visit, so they were both at home, along with my mother, sisters and Shane, who seems to spend more time in that house than I do.

Anyways, jazz is cool, I like jazz a lot, although it’s hard to play, sometimes. A lot of improv.
=)

Scratch (II)

Scratch concert was today, and it was fogging awesome!!

We started at half eleven, with rehearsals and setting up the last pieces as they would be performed, which was cool. Having two instruments is a *pain*, though, ’cause it takes twice as long to get on and off stage. At least I’ve got two small (ish) instruments, could you imagine being a bassoon/contra-bassoonist? That’d be the biggest pain in the world!

Anyways, we set up the pieces as they would be performed, which was cool, and wandered offstage to get ready for the final performance.

The performance itself went well, nothing majorly wrong, many applauses! Thankfully, the one solo I played wasn’t too bad, Sinéad said it was better than the one I’d played during rehearsal anyways. =)

The pieces themselves were so cool, we played three, and they were great. Who’d have thought we would mix Michael Jackson with Prokofiev?
The

After the concert was over, we said goodbye to the members of the RPO who’d played with us, which was kinda sad, offloaded our instruments and went to Burger King on Grafton street for lunch.
mmmmmmm, bacon double cheeseburger. Yum-o-rama!

Came back to the NCH for ten to four, and crept into the auditorium to listen to the full RPO rehearse. They’re fogging amazing. I’d love to do something like that, make a living out of playing music, travelling the world, being a part of something so fogging awesome to listen to. It was just… oh, there’s nothing like listening to a professional orchestra live, it’s indescribable.

Anyways, yeah, it was a fantastic two days of workshops, a great concert and a brilliant experience seeing the RPO playing. I wish I’d been able to go to their concert tonight, I’d say it was unbelievably good!

Scratch

The last two days have been amazing fun, I have to say.

A few weeks ago, at band practice, Sinéad’s old flute teacher, Jenny, mentioned that applications were open for a workshop with some members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, just in case we were interested in taking part.

We were, we applied, got in, fast forward several weeks and here we are!

The last two days have been amazing fun. The Scratch workshops have been great.
There are twenty five of us doing the workshops, and five of them are current or ex- members of the Lucan Concert Band, which is pretty cool.

We’ve been doing some improvising, some different interpretations of Prokofiev pieces, some insane things, really. I mean, who would have thought you could mix the love for three oranges with Billie Jean? Certainly not me, but we managed it!

We’re performing the things we’ve been working on at lunchtime on Sunday in the National Concert Hall, which should be good fun, then afterwards, hopefully, we’ll have a chance to rehearse with the full RPO, which should be amazing.

There was a short report on us on News2day today at five, which I knew about, so I taped it, as I knew I wouldn’t be home by the time it was on.
But then we were also on the nine o’clock news, which I hadn’t known about. Texts were flying, things have been facebooked, all sorts.
So, here’s the link to the report, it’s not very interesting, but you might like to have a look. Both myself and Alan have small speaking parts, plus you can see my sister at one point when it pans around the group. Cool, neh?

Jealous

I have a whole lot of guy friends. My friends are primarily guys, I know very few girls, especially since I joined college.
The four most important people (friends-wise) in my life at the moment would be Andrew, Dave, Dave and Alan.
Obviously Andrew has to be a guy, since he’s the boyfriend, but the other three are good friends, and just happen to be guys.

I don’t know what it is, but I just seem to get on better with guys. Since I started college, I don’t think I’ve made a single female friend by myself, only girls that my friends know that I happen to get to know, and they’re few and far between.

For the most part, having guy friends is great. They’re a hell of a lot of fun, and they take far less time to get ready to go out than girls do. As well as that, they’re more willing to put up with me jumping on them, which is important when you’re around me, especially if I’ve had caffeine.

The only time it’s a disadvantage is when it comes to Andrew.
Obviously I love him, spend as much time with him as I can, blah blah blah…
Andrew doesn’t really like the fact that I have so many male friends. A lot of them are mutual, so he’ll cope with that fine, up to a point, especially when it comes to horseplay. When we’re messing around, it’ll almost always be Andrew who breaks it up, telling whoever it is (probably Mark) to “stop bullying my girlfriend”, or something similar.
Generally at this point I’d be curled up in the ground practically in tears from laughing too much, because all the lads know that I’m horribly ticklish, so I don’t normally mind at all, plus I kind of like the feeling that he’s in charge. I know that’s horribly anti-feminist and all, but my view is that I have the freedom to be as assertive as I choose, and I choose to be less assertive than some women might like to be.

Anyways, today, after Scratch (post on that soon, maybe) and Clubs and Socs, and a game of Mushroom in Andrew’s house, because it’s Charlie’s birthday tomorrow, we were heading to the village, me to the train and Andrew to the Roost, and we were talking about when we’re going to see each other next. I mentioned that I’m going to Jazz in Caulfields on Monday, because it’s something I’ve been planning to do for months, but band kept getting in the way. Since I quit band, or rather took a break from band, my Monday night is free, which means I’m definitely heading down.
Anyways, I told Andrew that and he got unreasonably mad. I know he had drink in him, but his reaction was way over the top. I spend as much time with him as I can and have seen him every single day this week, which is unusual in itself, so I think it not unreasonable that I should be able to go out one Monday night.

Agh, I’m ranting. But it just bugs me that most of the time Andrew doesn’t care what I do, then occasionally he bursts out in this jealous fit about plans I’ve been meaning to carry out for months.
Well, when I say jealous fit I’m exaggerating, it was just some exclamations of disgust.
Ugh, I think I’ll just go back to having female friends, at least that avoided all this crap.

Post

I would have posted today, but I was too busy celebrating six months since I met my adorable and wonderful boyfriend Andrew.
Hope you had as good a day today as I did!

Eyes

I went to get my eyes tested today, ’cause my mother told me to months ago and I’ve been putting it off.
I wasn’t exactly worried, I’ve never had any problems seeing, and I have no problems with glasses, so it wasn’t a big deal.
Wasn’t a full eye test anyways, all I needed was one to get my learner’s permit, ’cause my theory test is gonna run out soon or something… I can’t remember, I just know my mother’s been at me to get an eye test for months, and I eventually got sick of her nagging me.

So I wandered down to the optician today during college, at half eleven – I’d made an appointment last week. I figured I’d only be a few minutes, so Dave went to get some lunch, and I said I’d meet him afterwards.
I sat in my nice comfy chair, they put up the little optician’s chart, and I read off the line she asked me to.
Covered my left eye, asked me to read out whatever line, did that too.
Covered my right eye, asked me to read out the line on the screen.
“Eh, I can’t.”
Okay, fine, she puts up the next one
“I can’t read that either.”
Next one “Nope”, and another “Still nope.”

Uh-oh.
That’s not good.
I still passed the standard needed to get a license, which was fine, but she thought it would be best if she did a full eye test, ’cause something was not right with my left eye.

Anyways, went through that whole rigamarole, with the dots and the “better or worse?” “One or two?” things.
Turns out I’m long-sighted in my left eye, but it doesn’t really make a difference because my vision in my right eye is perfect.
The optician told me I can get glasses if I want, but I don’t really need them, ’cause the vision in my right eye is perfect.
Then I went home this evening and talked to my mother about it. She over-reacted a bit, because she’s exceedingly long-sighted (minus six, whatever the hell that means), so I’m being sent *back* to the optician tomorrow to investigate some more.
Le sigh.

Trouble

I think I’m in trouble.
That’s not how it’s supposed to happen.
Not when it was so great.

And then I was, just “oh, I’m fine, sure, don’t worry about me.” and he had to look after Fi, of course, because she was in a really bad way.

It’s not like it’s a big deal, really, sure I know how to deal with it, of course.

It’s just… scary. And it’s put me in a bad place. A place I’ve been fighting to avoid for several weeks now.