Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Popped over to A+F's last night to have a game of Dominion. As it was our first game together and our first 4-player game of Dominion we chose the first game set of kingdoms and got stuck in.

There was a lot of early Duchy buying, as it turned out mostly from F. I was convinced that he was buying too soon and would clog up his deck.

We all managed to get some sort of engine together despite the predations of multiple militias and trundled along quite nicely until the duchies ran out. That put a bit of pressure on to get those provinces before two more decks were exhausted. We bought as best we could, still hampered by the militia on and off but all too soon the estates and smithies were gone and the game ended.

Final scores: F 39, me 29, Sam 27 and A 21. Clearly the duchies didn't hinder F much!

I've been attending a course on Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007 this week up in Dublin. It's actually looking like this application will prove useful in my work, though I'm slightly worried that we'll discover bucketloads of problems with our servers once we start proper monitoring on the server estate at work. Mind you, now I know enough to turn of the alerts!

It's odd to be back in Dublin at Christmas time. The place is swarming with shoppers and the glow of Christmas lights and shop windows in the gloom would blind you if you weren't intent, as so many seem to be, on heading to your destination in an crazy bustle.

It's odd to be away from my wife and kids, if only for a few days. I forsee BIG hugs tomorrow night when I get in. I'm going to be hit up for a backlog of bedtime stories by Rowan, I suspect.

I miss them and will be glad to be home. I hope the train's on time.

[edited to remove stupid email double post etc.]

and baffle others.

I was just on the phone to my mother and she told me that she had been looking, without success, for a very long zipper to repair a much loved winter coat. Hickeys in two different locations in Dublin were no help (one was closed down, the other had no such zips). She eventually came across a place on Dorset Street near where she grew up.

It was called Ken's Trimmings.

I now have this image of Ken, an old gaming and college friend, now globetrotting aid worker, leaving behind a little shop filled with hair, finger nails and such.

I think I need to get out more.

We're up in Dublin for the Easter holidays (bless my third level institution for their week off for staff) and to visit mother, brother and sister in law. Taking advantage of my mother's offer of baby sitting we headed out to a friend's place to watch the new Doctor Who, eat pizza and catch up with a gang of friends we don't get to see all that often. Living in Cork really has us out of the loop of the circle of old college friends.

( Possible spoilers )

We then had dinner. sammywol and I had Thai, along with another of the group, while the rest had pizzas. Some of the pizzas were upgraded! I think this just meant that the mozzerella was proper buffalo-sourced, but maybe they were pizzas v2.0 in other ways. The thai stuff was delicious and I snarfed my pad thai up in no time. Despite this I managed to embarrass myself with the banoffi AND the baklava too. Or I would have embarrassed myself if I hadn't had those glands out when I was six.

Conversation was on the hysterical side of odd, and I remember an involved discussion that arrived at us taking the decision to start a new website after the model of Book Crossing. We, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, are going to launch Pants Crossing on the unsuspecting world. "I hope these pants give you as much pleasure as they gave me. I like to feel there's a little bit of me in every pair of pants I pass on."

Back today from Dublin after a few days visiting family and friends. My brother and his wife are leaving Ireland soon to live in Thailand for a year so we were keen to get to Dublin before they left. They've both been the ideal uncle/aunt couple to my daughter and I wanted to make sure they had a chance to see her again before their Asian adventures begin.

We also were able to catch up with some old friends too. Saturday night we met Angela and Fintan in the pub and caught up with news stretching back months. Dublin is too far away when you've got a toddler; we don't get up anything like as often as I'd like. William also made it to the pub later in the evening, and I was delighted to see him looking so well. He really seems to be enjoying working in Ireland again (albeit still travelling like a maniac) and the newly-married life sits well with him.

On Sunday William invited us out to see Steph and have brunch. We were fed, entertained and generaly made most welcome. Rowan turned on the charm like a pro. William certainly seemed smitten. Nothing like sharing a couple of games of Donkey Konga on the Gamecube to make friends quickly. William generously offered to take us up to the Phoenix Park while giving Dizzy the Dog some exercise, so we also got some fresh air and playground time in; Rowan was all in favour of this.

Sunday evening turned into an impromptu tea and cake session when Lisa & Brian and Ian & Irene dropped over. More catching up and general reconnection.

The train journey back today went well and Cork was much as we had left it. Unfortunately we didn't manage to leave sammywol's virus behind and she's still feeling rotten.

Oh yes, Livejournal suddenly likes us again. Or at least doesn't throw away our IP packets unopened. Don't know why. Good, if puzzling, news.