In a move that caught everyone by surprise including myself I asked my Ladyfriend to marry me while we were in Rome last week. Following only the briefest of pauses to exclaim surprise the Lady said yes.

Back from Warpcon in UCC with the LadyFriend where I came across the scene above. Garnish house rocked once more. Good times were had and I had a lot of fun with the camera. I uploaded 95 new photos to usual place. You should check them out. Those without access should drop me an email and access can be arranged.

People should also be warned that I have started a new project to get good portrait shots of people I know and above is a good example but I have no idea who the young lady is.

Mince Pies…. Mmmmhhhhh…. I am quite fond of them. Hope everyone is having a good Christmas

Siting in Leiden watching Jurassic Park with Colmmacc and expressing the opinion that along with Richard Attenbourgh, James Earl Jones would be the other person that should doing the voice over to my life. Imagine my joy to discover Mr Jones was presenting one of the special features on the DVD.

Things are all good.

I need to find a decent GP on the northside of Dublin, preferably close to / in Clontarf. Answers on a postcard please.

Right then, Second visit to the dentist done. This time the filling better stay in.

Emergency visit to the dentist this morning. Hopefully tooth will behave.

This weekend has been action packed. It started on Friday evening with a trip to the concert hall with the LadyFriend to see the R.T.É. Concert Orchestra performing the works of Ella Fitzgerald. The vocalist was a british jazz singer who despite some really bad microphone technique was very good. A good time was had by all. This was followed by a brief visit to a work do in the Mercantile where the theme of the night seemed to be “who is that, they work for us”. Mary also got to meet some of the people I talk about lots which was good and work people got to be amused with our whole unique nomenclature.

Saturday night was the night out to celebrate ten years of the LadyFriends spine still working. Grand Central on abbey street being the venue and very acceptable it was bar the absence of a dance floor which ruled out some intensive testing of the spine and associated motor skills. A fire in an apartment above the bar brought things to a close a little early at 1 a.m.

Sunday was a lazy day involving watching some DVDs including “The American President” which was part of my birthday present from the Ladyfriend. I also rewatched the last four episodes of Firefly.

To finish off the weekend tonight Colmmacc, Noirin, the LadyFriend, Colmmacc’s parents, the LadyFriend’s parents, her brother and myself are off to the Olympia to see Alison Krauss and Union Station.

More on Paris in a bit, apologies for the lack of updates. I promise to update later today.

Last night at dancing myself and orly had a breakthrough. We managed to hold a spirited conversation and not notice the fact that we were waltzing around the room. We were very impressed and would now feel that we are eligible for key roles in BBC period costume dramas.

Orly also bemoaned the lack of mood lighting that would prevent me from hitting on her. So you can see we take dancing very seriously.

Yesterday brought even more proof that the world is tiny. Rob had joined the team here shortly after I did and it turned out he was living in Kildare not far from where I was from and in a somewhat world shrinking move was renting the house he was in from my old Engineering Teacher. I was chatting to Rob last night and made a reference to being in Africa doing work for AT&T in 1990 (Yes that was long ago and I was very young) and he mentioned he used to work for AT&T too. Turns out he worked with/for the same group of people there. It also transpires that some of the other people here did as well. Small World.