Laughter is inner jogging.

Norman Cousins
US editor & essayist (1915 - 1990)

Christmas Tree complete with Star!

I drove to the beach after lunch today and the tide was in fully. I had intended on going for a walk on the beach but with the tide in there was no beach to walk on.
Instead of going to a walk I spent ages taking photographs of the sea and the magnificent waves that pummelled the rocks.
I kept taking photographs until my fingers went a bit numb and then I decided to get back into the car.
It was fantastic to take a break from the Christmas madness and inhale the freshest air that I have had in a long time.
If you ever need a bit of perspective or want to get your priorities in check then spend some time watching the sea at work. :-)

I generally find compliments hard to take and its not that I don’t like to be complimented (within reason) it’s just that I find it hard to react to them without feeling embarrassed. My reaction to compliments tends to one of the following:
(a) I deny or dispute the compliment completely
(b) I ignore the compliment
(c) After receiving a compliment I tell a story that doesn’t have much relevance to the situation thus making me seem odder than usual
(d) I say thank you and try to change the subject quickly
I think option (d) is probably the best way to go but I normally only respond like that on a very good day. It doesn’t seem to really matter who is playing the compliment. On occasion I even get slightly embarrassed when my parents pay me a compliment. I wonder is it just an Irish thing because I know other Irish people that also seem less than adept at taking a compliment while other nationalities seem to have no problem with them.

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

Mark Twain
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910)

It had been niggling away at the back of my mind for ages and I knew that I needed to make an appointment. The only problem was I can’t remember the last time I had been to the dentist. Although I did have a sneaking suspicion that it was possibly more than six years ago. It’s not that I had a toothache or anything like that; I just had a general uneasy feeling that this was something that I had neglected for far too long. Part of the reason that I hadn’t been to the dentist in ages is because I didn’t really like my previous dentist.
So a few weeks ago I nabbed the name of a dentist off my sister and rang for an appointment. Then I trotted along on the specified date and was pleasantly surprised by the experience. The staff were very nice and the dentist was lovely, although I did feel a little bit like a naughty schoolgirl because I couldn’t really remember the last time I had been to a dentist.
After the cute dentist gave the contents of my mouth a thorough once over, the dental hygienist took some photos of my teeth and gave me a few pointers. It was really interesting, in an ‘oh I never realised teeth could be in anyway interesting’ sort of a way. Needless to say after this positive experience I’m looking forward to going back for regular checkups. :-)

Boo hoo, Gethin has been knocked out of Strictly Come Dancing. How am I going to survive the weekends without watching the Gorgeous Gethin taking the floor by storm? I watched all of Strictly Come Dancing last night, which was great because normally I miss the Saturday show end up just seeing the summary and results on Sunday night. The results show was a bit nerve wrecking tonight. I watched it with A&D, A is also a Gethin fan while D is a Flavia fan. Alesha was voted to go through to the final straight away, so it was Matt and Gethin in the dance off. I thought Gethin danced really well but I guessed that the judges would lean towards Matt because he made such a good come back after last week. Gethin is gutted that he isn’t in the final which is understandable. It must be hard to work your socks off for weeks and get so close to the final but not make it in the end. He really went from being a non-dancer to a good dancer during this series. Matt and Alesha are going to be in the final next week and it should be an interesting one to watch. I kind of hope that Alesha wins because she has been excellent all the way through and she looks like she really loves dancing.

I went to see a performance of Handel’s Messiah almost a month ago in the Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Anne in Cork. Handel’s Messiah had its first public performance in Dublin on the 13th of April in 1742. The performance that I went to see was in aid of the Cork CABAS School which is a school for children with autism. CABAS stands for the Comprehensive Application of Behaviour Analysis to Schooling, and uses Applied Behaviour Analysis and the principles of Positive Reinforcement as the main teaching methodology. The East Cork Orchestra with the East Cork Choral Society (with the Seafield Singers and Cantate) gave an excellent performance of Handel’s Messiah.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 1860
English novelist (1819 - 1880)

Nope, You're Not a Grinch

Although you may feel Grinch-like at times, it's just because you're worn out from the holidays. You get into the holiday spirit more than most people - and you truly enjoy celebrating with your family and friends.

I went to see Neil Delamare in the Opera House last Wednesday night. I had seen him on a panel a fair bit so I was interested in seeing him doing some stand up. He was good and touched on lots of different topics, sometimes jumping around from one to the other. He seems to have quite a yen for history which added a good twist to his material. He had a funny bit about the questions that you have to answer when you go to give blood. He said he would ask a different set of questions such as ‘have you ever bought a westlife/boyzone CD’ or ‘are you one of those people that puts the sweet wrapper back in the quality street tin after you have eaten the sweet’. Personally I think its worse when people put the empty papers back in the after eight box… grr! It’s weird that it’s the everyday stuff that people often find the funniest.

I went to see ‘American Gangster’ recently and although it was pretty violent in places (cue me hiding behind my hands at various points during the film) I thought it was a good story well told. Denzel Washington is amazing in it. It's weird, even though he portrays a drug dealer I didn’t really think of him as the bad guy in the film. This could have been because there were plenty of other characters in the film that seemed worse than him! Russell Crowe is the other big name actor in ‘American Gangster’ and although I thought he put in a good performance he didn’t quite match Denzel’s standard on this occasion.

The RTE 2fm 2moro 2our came to Cork on the 17th of November and the headline act was Dave Geraghty. I was really excited about it because I wanted to see Dave play and had missed his last gig in Cork while I was on holidays.

The first band on stage was ‘Hope is Noise’ and I really couldn’t tell what any of there songs were about because they were just really loud. The next band was ‘Ham Sandwich’ and they were quite good. They played an energetic set and interacted with the crowd. The third band was ‘Concerto for Constantine’ and they might have been good but it was really hard to tell because they were just too bloody loud. It was almost impossible to make out what the singer was singing about but I got the impression they if they lower the volume a bit they might have some half decent songs. Finally Dave Geraghty took to the stage with his band and they were really good. I had bought his album 'Kill Your Darlings' the previous week and really liked it. Unfortunately the crowd had gotten drunker and more spread out as the night went on and many talked loudly during his performance. There was also some gobshite in the audience randomly making a whistling noise by blowing into the top of a beer bottle. It was disappointing to see someone with talent and much more professionalism than the previous bands receiving such a half hearted response from most of the crowd. I think that 2fm messed up when they put the line up of bands together as ‘Hope is Noise’ and ‘Concerto for Constantine’ didn’t sit well with ‘Ham Sandwich’ or Dave Geraghty’. I really hope that Dave comes back to Cyprus Avenue for a solo gig sometime in the future. My abiding memory of the night is of my ears ringing for hours when I got home!

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mahatma Gandhi
Indian ascetic & nationalist leader (1869 - 1948)

Corrigendum – noun,

An error in a printed work discovered after printing and shown with its correction on a separate sheet

Latin, neuter of corrigendus, gerundive of corrigere to correct