There’s been a bit of a mix-up, this is not the official date… See the update for more details.
Stephen and I have now set a date; we’re planning on getting married on 2007-11-09 (Friday, 9th November 2007, for those of you not yet using ISO 8601).
(Ok, the title is slightly misleading. But I figure few enough of you will know what it’s even about, so that I’m relatively safe)
While discussing 3,200 line shell scripts and adding logging thereto, I introduced Stephen to the concept of a bus factor, for approximately the eleventy millionth time (my suggestion was to add the log, ideally a nice big one, to roughly the centre of the developer’s head).
We decided that our relationship had a bus factor of zero. If he were taken out by a bus, there’s no way I’d be able to keep the project going on my own 
Which led to the question of what language he was written in anyway, which took all of about four milliseconds to decide.
Prolog.
He’s all about truth; he’s logical to the point of being really rather annoying sometimes; and trying to understand him will probably result in your brains turning into scrambled eggs.
…but I’m pretty sure South Africans are just genetically programmed to barbeque.
Brett and Rayola dedicated their new baby, Morgan, to God this afternoon (after a bit of on-again, off-again about the exact timing). Of course, this meant that more or less the whole church descended on their Malahide garden for a ‘braai’. The barbeques were charcoal, and none of this European ‘grilling’ business - this was through-and-through barbequeing, with plenty of patience, charcoal that’s gone almost white, and smoke - lots of it! I’ve been home for several hours now, changed my clothes and washed my hair, and I still can’t get that sweet, charcoal smoke out of my nostrils. While I love the simplicity and speed of a gas barbeque, this was truly the real deal! And with three barbeques up and running, an obscene amount of meat was prepared - and being that Stephen & I were the ethnic minority there (I didn’t work it out exactly, but a significant majority of the people around were South African of one description or another), Jan did a great job of educating us on what all the different things were, and giving me samples ahead of time 
Boerewors (”farmers’ sausage”) is a hugenormous sausage - so big, that it’s rolled into a sort of spiral. Thick, fatty, yum. It’s made of beef, and several suggestions to the effect of “they just put the whole cow in, horns and all!” were made - it’s chunky, minced beef, with some amazing herbs & spices. Tasty good.
While the food was cooking, some South African sweets were going around - turned out, they were just fruit, mashed up with some sugar, then dried out a little. Jan wasn’t too sure what each one was, but I took an orange one, and the flavour of real, nothing-but apricots was just intense. Stephen had one too, and enjoyed it, although Jan had told him he thought they were the peach ones; when Stephen found out they were apricot, he decided he didn’t want any more
That was ok though - he had to save some space for the meat - several kinds of pork, lamb and chicken were all piling up in trays beside the barbeques! Although, to my potato-shaped eyes, it looked like there was nothing but meat, we also had some seriously yummy cornbread (I don’t even like corn, on its own, but this was good. The sweetness of the corn actually really complemented the slightly yeasty bread), and stywepap (almost like slightly dried/hard mashed potatoes, made from ground up ‘mealie’ [maize] meal) with sous (a tomato’y, onion’y, slightly spicy sauce). What a culinary adventure!
All I can say is, “Om. Nyom.” Congrats to Brett and Rayola, on their beautiful, healthy little girl - and the same to Bruce and Luisa, with Daniel. May God bless them, every little (and big!) one!
I’ve been wanting a Lensbaby for as long as I’ve known about them - and now I finally have one! I’ve played with it a little, but real experimentation is probably going to have to wait Time for me to go back to studying…
Playing with kites has been a lot of fun - I even have my own now, although I haven’t had a chance to test it… Stephen bought it for me in the little puzzles shop in Camden Town - it only took me hours to find the place again, but we had fun looking around the place, on our London weekend!
I’ve been terribly delinquent about posting my photos for the last few months… Now that I should be studying for finals, I’ve caught up on the whole backlog though!
This was taken from just in front of our hotel, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where Stephen & I went snowboarding/skiing for a few days in March.
So much has been going on, and yet so little… My FYP demo was postponed for a week from 5th April, due to illness, but went ahead on 12th April. I was quite happy with the presentation & demo, and absolutely thrilled with the comments I got back - it was really well received. It’s so nice to have done something vaguely useful, practical - and to have a complete, functional program at the end. I’ve since, finally, completed the report, and handed it in - I found out on the Monday of the last week that the CSLL projects were due on Friday, not Thursday, but ended up handing it in on the Wednesday anyway. The sense of relief is immense!
In church news, we booked out a 96-seater theatre in the Virgin UGC Cineworld complex for the opening of Amazing Grace (ok, we were a bit late - we did it on Palm Sunday), and invited anyone & everyone along. Then, a few days before the event, we got bumped up to a 150-seater theatre, so Sean, Daniel & I went out to St Stephen’s Green, and handed out the extra tickets, the day before. Rosie was great - initially, I invited her; then suggested she bring Ian along… On the Saturday, she asked if it would be ok to bring Ellen too - and by the time it came to it, she had Sam as well!
I got baptised earlier the same day, by Jason & Stephen, and it was a really lovely event. My folks didn’t make it, as they were out of town (the initial plan was to do it the Sunday after Easter), but we shared some cake later on
We spent Easter with Stephen’s family - Amanda & Ian were over from Glasgow with Emily & Jodie, and it was lovely to see them, meet Ian & Jodie, and play with the girls We had a barbeque on the Saturday, which was a lot of fun, and I drove us home on the Sunday evening. It took a while, and tempers frayed a little bit towards the end, but we managed, Stephen was an excellent assistant really, and I can’t believe I drove all the way from Athlone to Dublin! I drove Lydia, Stephen & David to church on Easter Sunday too - there was much giggling in the back seat when I started off, but knowing David, I decided I just didn’t want to know what was going on… Better that way too - when we got to church, he showed me the “Easy Guide to Preparing Your Will” that he’d found in the back of the car!!
In travel news, skiing was a lot of fun - Stephen & I did a two hour private lesson on snowboards to start off with, but he got far further than I did, and really, I just wasn’t having fun with it, so for the second two days, I ditched the snowboard and stuck to skis. When we got to Garmisch, there was hardly any snow on the runs down into the valley - dad and I had been able to ski all the way back to the village when we were there last year. But that evening it started snowing, and by our first morning on the slopes, it was beautiful - champagne powder snow, and plenty of it. Zugspitze was closed, because of the snow, and the associated avalanche danger, but Hausberg was plenty to keep us going for three days. We got into a rhythm of doing a couple of runs, stopping at the Ski Bar for a drink or some food, and then doing a couple more, which kept us going nicely through the days. The hotel was just beautiful - Gasthof Drei Mohren - and I’d recommend it to anyone.
We had a day in Munich at the end, and despite the dodgy & smoky hotel room, it was lovely to be able to show Stephen the places I had frequented. I do miss Munich - I had some amazing times there, and it’s a gorgeous city. We went out to Dachau, and did the brief tour, which worked out brilliantly, as we had the docent to ourselves, and she was able to impart a lot of information that might otherwise have been missed. It was intensely frustrating to see the American kids who thought they were at Disneyland, posing for photos in the bunks and crematoria etc - but reassuring to see the Wehrmacht cadets, learning about what had gone on. Man’s inhumanity to man is almost incomprehensible, and I think seeing where such awful things were done, reading about what happened there, is something that everyone should at least consider doing at some point in their lives - these things still go on today, they’re not over, and they mustn’t be forgotten. (That said, I have been to several concentration, labour & extermination camp sites - and I’d really be quite ok with never going to another.)
I’m sure I’m missing bits in between, but the most recent trip was visiting London with Stephen. He went over for work for a few days, and I joined him after that. We stayed with Diane and Matt, had a lovely Indian, a somewhat bank’y party (with great pizza :)), some OCD behaviour with a giant chocolate coin, a picnic in Leicester Square, Ben & Jerry’s, Camden Town (where Stevie bought me a kite), Harrods (with more ice cream), and a trip to the British Museum… I was so upset to find that the Reading Room of the British Library was closed, and, on asking if it would be open the next day, to learn that it wasn’t going to reopen until 2009 (although I’m not certain of the veracity of that information - it appears it may be reopened temporarily at the end of this year, for an exhibition of the Terracotta Soldiers, which we’ll just have to back for)… We did get to see some fascinating artefacts though - the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, an Easter Island statue… It’s incredible to be able to get so close to things with such long histories, and fascinating stories attached.
We’ve had all kinds of little adventures really - kite-flying at Sandymount Strand (and hours spent untangling lines ), rock-climbing/bouldering in a park we accidentally discovered in Dalkey (thanks Lesley, for bringing us out that way - she had an interview), writing Python scripts together (what nerds are we!?), watching more TV than I ever thought possible (’Heroes’, ‘Over There’, ‘Yes Minister’), enjoying some really good food together - growing, and living, and learning. I love that boy
