Weird and Wonderful Happenings

I've been a right lazy beast of late in the old blogging department. Not long after my last post, we got some really bad news in work... basically we went bust with a little help from our good friends in a non-NAMA bank and all the hard work my bosses had put in over the past 15 years went up in smoke. It was a horrible few weeks and the end result was that all but 2 people lost their jobs. I was the lucky person to be kept on (there are some days though I wish they had let me go because disorganisation and lack of information seems to be the name of the game...) and it looks as if I'll be there for the foreseeable future which is a massive relief financially.

It is very disconcerting to show up every morning to an empty office and literally see nobody from 9am to 5pm except the post man. There used to be about 10 of us in the office every day and we were like a family (i.e. we bickered like kids but cross one of us & the rest of the gang would track you down and murder you!!!!). Now I just sit there, do what I can and talk to myself. Thank god for my media hard drive to pass the time. Trust me, I would much rather be busy and not notice the time pass, but needs must eh!

Christmas Day was rather fun this year - the Hubs was working at 7.30 this morning (yes, this is not a typo... muggins here was up at 6.30 to make sure he didn't oversleep) so it was a two part visit instead of staying at home. I spent Christmas Eve cooking like Gordon Ramsay... 6 hours solid and it was all done and packed, ready to be transported to the MIL's. We had lunch with her and Hubs' brother... it was actually great fun and as usual I cooked way too much food, so she'll have enough leftover to keep her going for weeks! Then we headed over to my parents for the annual quiz - which I won... yay! My nieces and nephew were running riot and demanding chocolate at 10pm - the demands fell on deaf ears and they were subsequently sent to bed.

Santa was very nice to me this year and brought me my Dior Escale de Pondicherry perfume - which I knew about - AND a Nintento Wii (which Santa wanted for himself). Then this morning, I bought myself a brand new shiny Sony Vaio laptop. I knew there was a reason I had been saving in the Credit Union! So now I can aimlessly surf d'internet downstairs but for some daft reason, I've no coverage in the sitting room... all suggestions to sort this would be most welcome.

Right, I can hear Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the TV, so time to sign off and wish you all a very Happy Christmas

It's A Beaut.ie-ful Day

It had to be a good omen - the sun was shining, the birds were singing and the clouds were at bay - I was off into town for the launch of the utterly fabilis book by Aisling McDermott - The Beaut.ie Guide to Gorgeous. This book does exactly what it says on the cover - talking about the beaut, the whole beaut, and nothing but the beaut.ie!

Myself and The Hubs headed into town early so we could park the car & have a little wander before the midday launch and book signing (for which he was planning to skedaddle into Tower Records for some man time). Ooh, I do love the 3rd floor in BT's - homewares are loved almost as much as beauty products Chez Baba and a good candle-sniffing session was on the cards. Most of 'em were just rank. The funniest one was called "Log Fire" which spelled exactly like one of the cottages in Bunratty Folk Park - brought me right back to my Colaiste Bhride Rannafeirste gaeltacht experience. Eventually we made our way down via the posho ladies clothes - a sequinned geansai by Chloe for €350 - Hubs told me to buy two!!!

We got down to the ground floor and there was already a whole heap of people in a queue-like manner near the display, so I dispatched Hubs off to squander his cash on mental, sorry metal, music and I went down to where the action was. Most of the ladies queueing were relatively normal apart from two junion Foxrock Fannies behind me who, at the tender age of 15, were yah-ing about how OMG I just like totally need this Mulberry purse in purple. Drove me bonkers and I was itching to wire her braces to the nearest security tag just for the sheer fun of it. Finally, after trying and failing to ignore the pistachio macaroons from Laduree, Amy Huberman hopped up to enthuse about the book (god she's tiny and pretty... and I'm still not hatin' on her) and finally I got to buy the buke and rootle in the stuffed goody bag. Oh I only had a little glance inside as I love to wallow in the stash in the privacy of my own bedroom, showing The Hubs yet more goodies for me to play with. Aisling looked gorgeous - beootiful frock, flawless makeup and very very lovely in person.

I got to meet some of the other lovely beaut.ie bloggers - they are all gorgeous with perfect makeup and accessories - before I had to head off to see one of my nieces do a star turn as a mascot at the Bray Wanderers -v- Liverpool Legends match at the Carlisle Ground.

Now for a spot of ironing, otherwise I'll be going to work in my jammies tomorrow and I'm too posh to work that particular look!!!

A Sick Sense of Humour

I've been a little bit sick for the past 2 weeks - it started off as a cold, turned into bronchitis and ended up as bad asthma, so I've been feeling rather a lot under the weather of late. Two doctors visits, a rake of drugs and two inhalers later, I'm back on the road to recovery which is lucky as the sick cert expires tomorrow!

At this stage I've coughed so much that I've strained the muscles in my chest & back which makes for a small wee bit of discomfort when you're trying not to laugh at your VBF Freak who has now developed a case of the snots. She has been laughing at me over the past week for being bedbound and watching too much 60-Minute Makeover and Jeremy Kyle than is healthy for the average person, so revenge is sweet.

We're planning a bit of a work reunion on Friday night and I've been persuading Hubs and Freak that I will be perfectly fit to attend (look, we've a hotel room in town booked and I'm not wasting the opportunity for a good drunken girlie gossip). This morning she mailed me to tell me she was suffering from manflu, god love her. She was told to get the drugs into her and stop whining. Tonight on the phone, I nearly went into spasm laughing at her bunged up conversation

"Where are you"
"Knoansdjdhasnnnn Hinnnnnn"
"Where?"
"Knoansdjdhasnnnn Hinnnnnn" - she meant Knockmaroon Hill - "near the Snnnnnaaabbnnnyyyy Beennnnnnnzzz" - near the Strawberry Beds.

I think a packet of Tunes is in order!

The Afternoon Shite

Today, I was having many many sneezes in the bed when I got a call from my VBF Freak who was enroute from her holiday home in the Sunny South East. She was up bright and early this morning & flicked onto a repeat of last Friday's Afternoon Show... what she saw brought tears to her eyes, and not in a good way.

Who in the name of all that is relatively fashionable dresses Sheana Keane and Baby Seoige? My piss-poor wardrobe could have made them look better, and that's not something to be proud of, considering that my collection of garments doesn't encompass Fran & Jane, the better stores in Fundrum or even a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress. It's more a hodge podge of H&M, Tescho, M&S, Penneys and whatever else (a) fits and (b) is relatively presentable.

Saint Sile of the immaculate eyebrows was wearing this maggot cranberry coloured top which wouldn't have flattered a three piece suite. It was baggy in all the wrong places, the "plunge" neckline was as dowdy as Emily Bishop's twinsets and was just wrong. Do they not have friends or full length mirrors in that place?

Now as for Sheana. She's a really pretty girl but on Friday, I think she should have gone to Specsavers. The top was, and still is, indescribable. Meself & Freak couldn't get our heads around it - was it an apron gone wrong? Where did the pink bits come from? And why did nobody tell her that it was just rancid. Then there was the hair. Her roots were longer than Freaks (and she is a disgrace) and the makeup looked as it had been in place from the night before - it was very "walk of shame" and not in a good way.

I know I can't talk with my current wardrobe of red dressing gown, pink t-shirt and fluffy slippers but at last I've an excuse... I'm off sick! Back to the very comfortable bed and the joys of City Homicide, two inhalers and a pile of trash mags for me.

Shop Till You Drop...

The internet is a fabulous invention, especially with online shopping. You don't even have to get into your car and brave the beautiful Irish weather heading to Dundrum. This week has been a spendy time indeed.

My very old and much-loved Dell PC is on it's last legs and needs upgrading. I found a charming gentleman in Wicklow who is going to come and give it the TLC it deserves - new RAM, 1TB of hard disk memory and generally prolong it's life to save me buying a laptop (if I get one, Hubs will never see me again!).

A few months ago, I bought a media hard drive from a company in the UK so I could store all my TV downloads & we could watch them on our TV downstairs. All worked well for a month or two and then the USB connection packed up. I emailed them, sent it back, got it back. it worked for 2 weeks and the same problem happened. Back it went over the water. It worked ONCE after that. All I wanted was for them to replace the case and I would be happy. Nope. They started to play silly buggers and only wanted to refund me - which means I would lose absolutely everything I'd spent months collecting. I was rightly p*ssed off to put it mildly.

And then the nice computer man came up with solutions to save my stuff - so now I'm H A P P Y (as is Hubs because he hasn't quite finished watching the last season of Waterloo Road!)

Oh, I just remembered that I had a big mad Ebay spree on Essie nail polish too - 6 bottles of the stuff - which still hasn't arrived, and an early birthday present from myself to myself - a big bottle of my fave perfume - Sugar by Fresh which you can't get here any more which I have stashed away at the back of the cupboard.

Now all I need is the Tesco Visa bill to land on the mat... can't wait!!!