Monday April 20th A gorgeous sunny spring morning. I was up early and took a little time to take photographs in St Stephens Green.
The big news of today was that Sun bought Oracle for 9.50 a share. As Jan works there this news effects us, we’ll have to wait and see what happens with this over the next few months. At lunch time I went for a walk along the canals and enjoyed the sun. I took pictures of little clusters of tiny daisies growing in the grass.
I was thrilled to find on my walk home the park was filled with happy picknickers lazing in the sun. I watched some old Italian guys attempting to take pictures of pretty girls sun bathing, probably to take home to show their mates. We cooked a yummy chicken stir fry and discussed what to do next for Ginger Robot, Jan worked on a design while I did some Sys Admin for it. A very productive night.
Tuesday April 21st
After work I went for a drink with Laura at the Ely bar on the Canals. We discussed the next OSSBarcamp, and what we’d like to change this time. For one I’m going to add a registration module, rather than using blog comments, maybe some threaded commenting to encourage discussion too. The afternoon was just beautiful and I sipped my Champagne out on the terrace in the sun. Some other girls joined us and we wore sunglasses and enjoyed the view across the water.
We continued on in the restaurant next door, for the Ireland Girl Geek Dinner. I got to meet some new people this time and had some great food and wine. Amanda Scott gave a talk about taking charge of our careers, getting us to plan the next step we want to take and an action item as soon as this week. mine is to learn more about Django to work on my next open source project. Martha showed off her Roombas, talking about the educational value of owning one as well. Luis and I caught the last train home. As I walked home I noted the beautiful scenery ‘Large beautiful cherry blossoms on a clear navy spring night but add to the images of the future in my thoughts.’.
Wednesday April 22nd
Again a gorgeous day, I stopped while in the green just to take in the view, enjoying the colours of spring and the silence from the traffic outside. I am worried that so many people have commented that this is our summer. After work I wandered up Grafton street, I was curious why there were hundreds of people lined up, I assumed a football match had special tickets for sale. I found out later that they all were there to hand in their resumes for jobs at Londis, a common convenience store here in Ireland.
That night I booked all our accommodation for our trip to Scotland in August. I’ve booked mainly hostels, including a haunted castle where Jan and I will have to sleep in separate dorms, SPOOKY. It’s going to ROCK. I’m looking forward to the Isle of Skye and our hostel that’s walking distance from Loch Ness. Let alone being able to pick some more Fringe shows back in Edinburgh with Miki and James.
Thursday April 23rd
I joined my workmates over at the Barge for a farewell for one of our workmates heading to South America. We discussed her trip and I can’t wait to do the same thing myself some day, maybe 2011 for my 30th. Some girls joined our group early in the night and wanted to do a demonstration of the makeup line they were trying to sell. Most of the girls jumped up and moved out of the room leaving the girls to sell to a group of mostly guys, they even suggested breaking the eye pencil in half to split costs and that the guys might want some bronzer! We ran out of beer before we ran out of daylight, so I had a safe enough walk home. A saxophonist was playing jazz as I walked up Grafton Street. I walked through some low lying mist towards home but could spot the dark navy sky above me.
Friday April 24th
A miserable day with plenty of rain and fog. I upgraded my laptop to Jaunty Ubuntu 9.04. I edited pictures of New York and got an order in ready for my next scrapbook. I signed Jan and I both up for a 5 mile run in July held in Pheonix Park. We have a lot of work to do to be fit enough for that.
Saturday April 25th - ANZAC Day 2009
Jan and I jumped up early and went for a run. This is very unusual for us, but we had fun though Jan finds my pace a little slow. We went to the Woolshed who’d promised an ANZAC day tribute, but unfortunately they delayed it until more people would fill the bar. Instead we had our own minute of silence remembering those lost to the pointlessness of war. We did enjoy some Australian treats as well, a lamington and a Coopers Beer, I bought some Cheezels for later.
Jan and I went shoe shopping, hoping to find us both some new sneakers for our jogging sessions. Jan found some cool Nike airs and a pair of summer sandles for GUADEC on the Canary Islands. I found nothing. All the womens shoes seemed to be for show rather than practice. I just want the same as Jan found, but black and in my size. One shop only had shoes that went up to size 5 womens! I’m a size 6, who knew that was so large.
Me eating Cheezels THE RIGHT WAY! :D
We met up with the group celebrating the release of Ubuntu Jaunty at Jimmy Chungs restaurant where we ate some yummy things including mango pudding. Later we crossed the road to Messr McGuire’s for the official launch party. Quite a few people showed up and we had a really chilled afternoon. We looked at the sunny day outside, over the Liffey. We had a few pints, and many laughs with everyone. I won third prize in a quiz about Ubuntu, but unfortunately the cool brown shirt was far too big for me to ever wear it so I gave it away.
I love this image of Maciej marking our papers with the great features of the pub behind him.
There’s some more great pictures in Lauras Jaunty Release Party Collection
It was only 8pm, still daylight, and unfortunately our night was nearly ruined when a severely drunk guy decided to urinate all over the floor of the train carriage then walked up and down the aisle waving his penis around. Luckily he decided to do this moments before our stop and we (and everyone else on the carriage) jumped off, and security were making their way up the platform.
We spent our night relaxing, watching TV, we’ve found The Big Bang Theory which is fantastic, it’s about a group of academics who hang out in a share apartment in California, many nerdy jokes, and situations we’ve found ourselves in at times.
Sunday April 25th
Today we got so much done. Although we started slow with popcorn and TV and relaxing. Our weeks groceries were delivered and we cooked for the whole week. I made some ANZAC biscuits, Jan made salmon tartlets, a lemon chicken and new potato bake, and some white wine and shallot chicken to have on salads later in the week. OOOH yum it’s all delicious and so healthy, our fridge is also now filled with colourful salad veges ready to finish making all these meals. YUM.
Later in the afternoon Jan and I went jogging again, this time doing an extra interval on a slightly longer path. I was envious of Jan having new shoes though, can’t wait to find mine. On the final stretch we noticed the Kilbarrack shops has a new gym that has opened, it turns out they’ve got a great deal where we can just pay for 7 days at a time, and not pay if we’re not going to be there! That is amazing. We both want to sign up soon, I can’t wait to use the exercise bikes.
I’m so proud of us going for these jogs, we started slow so should be able to keep it up and make it to the race in July fit and ready! I think the gym is a sign.
