I woke up in a pretty bad state this morning. The entire back of my throat was swollen. I could not speak properly for a good couple of hours. I suspect the smoking on Wednesday night of catching up with me. I went to bed about 10pm last night, I was just shattered and out of it and I needed to sleep. So I did for a good 10 hours and I felt a lot worse. I feel alot better now. My throat is still raw and it hurts and I hope it shall be better tomorrow.

Anyway Shaun of the Dead was excellent and I highly recommend that you go and see it as soon as you can.

I’ll go into the INS radio thing more tomorrow I think. I need to be there tomorrow night before commenting on it. For now I really need to get some sleep and hopefully be back to my normal chirpy self in the morrow.

It would however be really nice if the new fucking washing machine would get there. I am very close to being out of clothes!

Last night was the launch party. An advertising campaign costing about 20 million pounds kicks off anytime now, the software is officially launched and my god did we party. The beer was flowing and free and good and cold. We drank solidly from 6pm when we got there till 11pm when the bar closed. There was smoking of cigars, live muisc, impersonators, card games and much much more. There were collegues over from Dublin, up from Bristol and flown in from Waterford. There was about 400 people there and it was one of the best parties the company has thrown in a long long time.

It was very social which I think is the key. There was entertainment but there was also space and time to stand around and chat. Having the teams we work with there from their repsective bases was really cool, finally getting to meet some of the key people, the ones we talk to on the phone at least twice a day. It was all good.

So I got home last night and I found some neurofen beside my bed. Popped a couple of them before I went to sleep and then another couple as soon as I woke up this morning. Into a long hot shower and into work late and I don’t feel half as bad as I should have. It’s a quiet day here, as expected. No-one is really doing anything. I have a meeting later this afternoon for an hour or so and that’s really all I have to do today.

I have some Metallica going on right now and it’s good. It’s hitting the spot perfectly. Tomorrow afternoon I’m working at the ICA helping out some friends of Alex’s with a radio project of some sort and then I’m off to see Shaun of the Dead with the V in the evening. It should be good fun. There may be V clubbing afterwards but I’ll have to see how I feel when the time comes around. I am very glad that I don’t have to get up for work tomorrow, I can stay in bed till whenever.

Oh yes, in case I had not mentioned it, 4 day weekend!!! No work for 4 days. I have stuff on for most of tomorrow, for Saturday night and for Sunday from mid afternoon. Monday I have nothing and I’m looking forward to it.

Today is dragging by really slowly, it’s unreal. Post lunch tiredness has set in and the rest of the day is going to drag on and on and on. It’s a bit shit really. I may head along to the Fitz tonight, I had intended to but I’m not sure I will be up for it. Going home to play Eve for a while seems much more appealing.

I am in the process of re-reading the excellent Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. I want to actually stick with it and pay attention to it this time. I didn’t read it as throughly as I could have the first time around and I want to work through them up to the new one that I got a couple of months ago. So far so good, I hope to get some more read over the coming few days.

– Recent events have shown me how important it is to keep the friends that I have. I don’t want to loose touch with them, I don’t want to argue with them over stupid things, I want to be their friend and I want them to be my friend.

– I was not upset (much) tonight by some news. I would have been a short while ago. I was more upset than I should have been and more than I thought I would. I need to stop that, I really do.

– Some of my friends I miss a lot. There are some I stopped talking to because I did not know how to deal with them. I still may not, it does not mean that I miss their friendship. I guess it means that I valued myself more at the time, in some cases I still stand by that.

– I heard from a friend last night that I had not in a while. It was late and I did not get the voicemail till this morning. Some of the blog meant something, some did not. I will not be in the USA anytime soon and to be honest I don’t want to be. That’s mainly due to the rules and regulations of the current administration there, I refuse to submit to the procedures involved in entering the country these days. At the end of the day, they are not right and I like 99.9% of others have done nothing to deserve them. I am not the most political person in the world but I know right from wrong.

– Tonight was a great night. I met a couple of people that I have worked with fairly closely over the last few months for the first time and it was all good. The party in itself was one of the best I have been to, the crowd was great and I have a hell of a lot of time/respect for some members of senior staff.

– One of my friends, nay one of my cute female friends expressed surprise at my single status fairly recently. It was one of the nicest things anyone has said to me in a good while. Thanks Lis 🙂

– I shall more than likely make my first V Thursday DU in a while tomorrow. I am burning a DVD of stuff for it right now.

– I have sent some text messages tonight. I need to follow them up with email in the morning. I shall email myself a note now so that I remember. I am quite glad my boss had lots to drink tonight.

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says:

“And who could blame them. The further down they went, the closer they got to the Captain” Revelation Space – Alastair Reynolds.

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?

Nothing

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

I’m watching Deadwood episode 3 right now

4. WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what time it is:

23.00

5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?:

22.55

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?:

The dog moving around

7. When did you last step outside? what were you doing?

My flatmate and I took the dog up Primrose Hill

8. Before you came to this website, what did you look at?

The V

9. What are you wearing?

Denims and a black top

10. Did you dream last night?

Yes and it was very disturbing.

11. When did you last laugh?

Probably on the tube talking with my boss on the way home.

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

A mirror and a wall tapestry of some sort.

13. Seen anything weird lately?

Um, no I don’t think so.

14. What do you think of this quiz?

It’s more interesting than the usual ones.

15. What is the last film you saw?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?

A house somwhere

17. Tell me something about you that I don’t know.

I shall be continuing my education very shortly on a proper course and all

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

Kill off a hell of a lot of people

19. Do you like to dance?

Yes, but I’m not any good at it.

20. George Bush: is he a power-crazy nutcase or some one who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?

Power-crazy nutcase

21. a: Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her? b: Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

a) Jen
b) Daithi

22. Would you ever consider living abroad?

I already do.

I spent most of the day so far at an off-site planning metting for the next while. It was actually quite interesting and managed to answer a lot of the questions and the confusion which had been going around about the documents we had seen. Some really cool stuff in there and some things I’m looking forward to working on.

I have just realised that I do not own a copy of Nevermind.

That’s pretty disgraceful.

A lot of people on the V’s recent Top 5 Movie thread listed the very new Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. So I’m watching it now. I didn’t see it for the first hour or so, it just didn’t click and then all of a sudden (when he makes it rain inside), boom! I’m with it and it has got it’s moments of greatness. It’s similar in theme to Vanilla Sky and invokes quite a similar mood I think. Anyway worth watching.

Gotta go sleep.