The Annual Family Picnic, originally uploaded by NoirinP.

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Last Thursday evening we went out for our usual family picnic… Unfortunately, due to various people’s schedules, we didn’t leave the house until well after dark, and by the time we got to our usual picnic spot, the combination of the leftovers of Hurricane George and the generally equinoctial weather was truly a sight to behold…

We almost managed to have our picnic anyway, but frankly, the place smelt like a public toilet, so we reconvened to the kitchen table to enjoy our fish’n chips

Stephen moved up to Dublin on Friday, amid much squee. After I’d handed over my certificates from the year in Germany to Carl, I met up wtih him, and we visited the Papal Cross for a bit, before joining Colin, Mary and a friend of theirs for a tour of the State Apartments in Dublin Castle (as part of the Dublin Culture Night) - it was a lovely tour, although when the guide pointed out that the chaperone’s gallery wasn’t needed when the ballroom was used nowadays, as “we trust our politicians”, a minor fit of giggles engulfed our party

Next stop was some brew-culture, with various Googley types in the Porterhouse, before heading home to bed.

Saturday was time for a visit to Athlone to move some of Stephen’s more useful stuff to Dublin, followed by some gorgeous smoked salmon sushi with various nonado folk, back in Dublin. I was quite surprised at how tasty it was - I’d only ever tried a small piece of someone else’s sushi before, and this was a whole lot better… I’m still never going to get over my “you can’t put something that big into your mouth in one piece!” though

Sunday was a mostly quiet day, including a visit to St Mark’s, and I’m hoping the rest of the week will turn out to be similar…! Yay, oh yay, for holidays.

The first Dublin Culture Night is on this Friday (22nd September). It’s not quite as cool as the Lange Nacht in Munich, where museums were open til the wee hours of the morning, but it’s really great to see something like this happening in Dublin. (Apparently, Temple Bar has had smaller ones for the last two years - but this one covers the whole city.)

Various cultural venues will be open late (til 9pm), and have all kinds of cool things going on - exhibits, tours, shows and so on. Details are in the programme, and whatever you’re into, you should definitely check it out, and go along if you can!

Turn up, make it a success, and here’s hoping we have many more

I’m home at last.

Colm found an apartment the second day we went looking, via an agency of cowboys. Thankfully, after he’d paid them a prince’s ransom to go away, it turned out the landlord was a charming guy, and much easier to deal with. It’s a gorgeous place - you have to go up two “ladders” to get to it, but it’s well worth it. There’s a view of the harbour, a little outside terrace/balcony, a lovely big, bright sitting room, and the usual bathroom, bedroom & kitchen. And oooh, the shower. Nicest shower I’ve found, outside my own house - hot water, plenty of it, and ooooh such pressure! Mmm (Ok, yes, I’m weird.)

The second week in Leiden was spent mostly fixing up the apartment a bit (covering the beautiful white couch, for one, since everyone knows white couches are spill-magnets), and meeting interesting people Had a lovely Indian meal - nyom - with a bunch of Colm’s workmates one evening, which was fun… And then on the weekend, we headed up to Amsterdam, to do some beer-tasting with a few Dublin lads. That was tasty If only beer didn’t make me drunk… We had some seriously yummy beers though, before it was time to head back to Leiden.

For those of you keeping track of the re-runs of Noirin’s World, Colm and I broke up before I headed home on 12th September, for dad’s birthday. It was really nice to see everyone, and although the Aga died for a bit, we had a lovely dinner together. Thankfully, by the next morning, the Aga was back up and running. Unfortunately, on the next morning, I discovered that my wonderful, lovely FYP plan had fallen through… Grrr, argh!

My job in the Zoology dept started on the Thursday, and I had a quick chat with a few people about various alternatives for an FYP. Thankfully, there’s still some time left before college starts, so hopefully I’ll be sorted by then. Unfortunately, said time isn’t getting any longer, and fourth year really is starting to loom ominously…!

The weekend was spent between Limerick and Athlone, and was awesome. There was Wild Onioning, and Mark came dangerously close to having three sandwiches! There was FireFly watching, and blood, guts & gore… There was learning about handling large pythons (one handler per five foot of snake) while enjoying yummy Italian food… There was breakfast with Diane, who protested that she hadn’t been hippified, while enjoying her vegetarian panini, and telling of hammocks, tents, and adventures in the desert… Lydia turned 14, there was gorgeous weather and a barbeque… River of Life was awesome, and amazing, and inspiring. Naomi, a Canadian who’s over here for 8 months, was super cool… There were walks in the most gorgeous weather, and magic mushrooms found in the grass…

The weekend was unexpectedly prolonged, when I returned to Limerick on Sunday night, to help with Stephen’s impending move. On Monday there was rental of a van that was still in Dublin (according to the computer system), and subsequent filling of said van. Couch, table, beanbag… Guitars, CDs, shelves… Clothes, boxes, books… And finally, and at the very last minute, a rather large chair, that we’d somehow overlooked… Oops!

Stephen drove back to Athlone, started unpacking the van, brought me to the bus station, and came back to discover that the van was fully unpacked - a neat trick if ever I saw one I got home on Monday night, tired, sick and cold, and slept through half of Tuesday…

Now it’s time to get going again, tune my harp, and generally get back to the normal things of life… These blogs are troublesome things y’know.

Oh lazyweb, I need your assistance.

I’m looking for some organiser/to-do software. I want lots of things…

The easy ones:

• MacOSX client
• Handles recurring appointments, untimed to-do items etc
• Syncs with Palm
• Tasks/appointments can be viewed online

Those are all things iCal can do for me right now, with more or less tweaking. (Actually, I’m not sure about the Palm syncing - but I’m sure there’s some way of subscribing to the iCal file or some such…) So, now the tricky bit…

I really want some kind of heads-up-display of upcoming appointments/due items/length of to-do list. Something that sits in the corner of my screen, and tells me I have four classes today, an email to reply to before tomorrow, and 10 todo items. Something like the “Bugger” app that goes with Product Studio, in Microsoft. (Bugger has a little box that sits in the corner of the screen, with a red square beside the count of open bugs assigned to you, and a yellow square beside the count of resolved-but-not-closed bugs assigned to you. When a new bug is assigned to you, a little notifier window appears in the bottom corner, like the MSN Messenger “Your contact has signed in” thingy, with information about the bug and a bit of the bug description…)

So, what do you prescribe?

(Alternately, does anyone know where I could get a decent second-hand brain?)