From Ronan Kirby’s write-up of Skycon, about my lightning talk at the con:

“Also, if anyone has a tape of this talk, there could be money made selling it to an energy drink company for commercial use.”

I was convinced I had escaped this meme, until I got tagged yesterday, by APL… The idea is to tell you five things you don’t already know about me… Of course, I’ve no idea any more who’s reading this (as evidenced by some feedback Stephen got, about my “Clusterfsck” post) - so all guarantees and warranties are hereby explicitly disclaimed, to the extent permitted by applicable law

1) When I was young, I really wanted to be left-handed. I thought left-handed people were really far cooler than their right-handed brethern, and several times tried to teach myself, with varying degrees of success, to write left-handed.

2) Although (and because) my first trip to Vienna was one of the most amazing weeks of my life, I’m terrified of returning to the city.

3) For three weeks one summer, while at summer camp, I wore a plush beanie dog on my head all day (not while sleeping), every day. Meals, sports, studying, socialising, discos - all were done with a little beanie-baby dog on my cropped-short dyed-green (fading to yellow) hair.

4) Before writing this post, I spent a few minutes explaining what is possibly the world’s cutest fork bomb, to some first years. This was explained to me when I was in first year, and I installed linux on my laptop just so I had a machine to try it out on. (It’s a shell command, and goes something like

:(){ : |:&};:

although the second space can be removed - it’s just in the above to prevent WordPress adding smilies.)

5) Almost three years ago, on 29th February 2004, I asked Stephen for the first time to marry me. He said no - but persistence paid off in the end

My victims? In no particular order…
diamond
bigbro
tyrion
braz
froodie

There can only be one possible reason, as far as I can tell…

I’ve just gotten engaged.

At half past eight this evening, I asked Stephen to marry me, and he did me the honour of saying yes.

My mother requested slightly more notice before the wedding than she got for the engagement.

My father is planning on putting an announcement in the paper - because otherwise, how will his friends know?

My sister - who, on today, her 18th birthday, no longer truly qualifies as little - wants me to wear a traditional wedding dress.

We have not yet gotten rings.

There is shock, awe, and amusement.

God has matched us. Who am I to say no?

On Friday, Stephen’s latest Komplett order arrived in the office. He was due to have dinner with me after work, and duly did (including the tastiest chocolate brownie of all tasty chocolate brownies), leaving his laptop and the boxes to be picked up later. Mark phoned to say he was en route from Roscrea, and we headed out, to pick up the stuff… Or we would have, only Stephen’s car wouldn’t start.

Once Mark arrived, we jump-started Stephen’s car, headed to the office, picked up the stuff, and brought it back to the apartment to sort out. Mark brought his stuff out to his car, borrowing Stephen’s keys to let himself back in… We watched a small bit of Zoolander, and generally just took things easy. We realised at some point that the laptop was still in work - but oh well, he wouldn’t need it unless he was paged…

9am on Saturday, Stephen’s pager went off. Eep, panic, runaway! We got out of the house, closed the door, and realised agh! No house keys! Anyway, such is life, taxi to the office, page dealt with, laptop collected, and back we go to the house, to meet the landlord. We arrived at the house a while before the landlord was due, and suddenly Niall rang. Turned out, he hadn’t gone to Galway the night before - so he was in the house! Huzzah! Keys were collected, there was pointing and laughter, and Stephen offered Niall a lift back in to work…

Only Stephen’s car wouldn’t start. Bugger. Neither would Niall’s. Uh oh… Anyone see a pattern starting to emerge? Niall explained that he had a battery charger, so we decided to dig that out later, and Niall went off to work.

The next mission was a driving lesson - so off to my house, where my car wouldn’t start… Oh, what a weekend! Stephen tried to start it rolling down the hill, to no avail, so he pulled in at the bottom of the hill, and drove dad’s car (which, praise the Lord and pass the tambourine, worked!) down to it, to jump start it… The lack of connectors on dad’s jump cables was only a minor issue, once Eoin was persuaded to actually hold the cable against the battery contact, rather than just wave it in the right general direction… We got my car going, and left it running while Stephen returned dad’s car to the driveway… He was just about to reverse in, when mum got home. Much laughter and some explanations later, we returned to my car, and headed off for a drive, in the hope of recharging the battery a bit.

Back at Stephen’s house a while later, Niall realised that his battery charger was in the boot of the car. The centrally-locked car. Whose central-locking only works when there’s enough power in the battery… So we weren’t getting that charger any time soon!

On Sunday morning, we waited at the bus stop to head into town (Mission 1: buy a jumpstarter/battery charger). And again, Stephen’s pager went. Out comes the laptop, and he spends the entire trip into town trying to get it working. No joy. Cafe Insomnia on Nassau St advertised wireless - so we went in and bought drinks - but again, no joy. Eventually, the kiddies shoe department in BT2 yielded the necessary, and Stephen sorted out the problem.

So onward and upward to St Stephen’s Green, in search of Argos and a battery charger. Until the pager went again… Oh, what a day. I sat around, watched some can-can dancers, played Big Brain Academy, collected an Argos catalogue, and generally looked busy until it was all fixed… Dinner was definitely on Stephen, including a tasty strawberry margarita for dessert, while he tried to get online to send his on-call report (eventually giving up, because he couldn’t get it going).

Next weekend is Skycon… Oh please, please, let it be a little bit more relaxing than that!?