life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

There has been a huge harvest moon the last few nights; low and orange. Almost as bright as day, you might think (it's not; your eyes adapt). We went for a moonlit walk.

Gillian's wedding was yesterday. I went up to it with Christopher and his wife. I wore my long black skirt, black velvet pumps and a green cardigan. Everyone else seemed to be more coordinated between the various parts of their outfits, but oh well.

The service was in Cloughmills, and Peter Jemphrey took it. Not that he had that much to do with the marrying bit, becasue they had their vows off by heart and said them themselves, instead of going 'I will'. Their rings were engraved with 'Psalm 34:3 Love Phil (or Gillian). Her brother Peter was giving her away and the younger boys were ushing (a word we have invented), and Cameron was also doing filming. They gave out little tubes of bubble blow with a heart on the lid, so we had bubbles instead of confetti. It was the first wedding at the church, and they had the new building all finished in time. The entrance is all glass, so there wasn't any surprise when the bride came in. We could see eveything as they were taking photographs outside. Gillian's dress was strapless (as they all are these days) with a full skirt, a sort of golden cream colour, with her hair all curled and flowers in it. Her veil was longer than the skirt; the bridesmaids had to keep rescuing it. They were in a dark pinkish-red, and so was Gillian's mother, except in a suit, natch.

The part of weddings between the ceremony and the reception is always a little dull. We went to the hotel and had tea or coffee while the photographs were being taken. We stopped off for a packet of peanuts on the way. I met Gillian's grandparents (her grandfather knew mine), and the Hamiltons from Galway. Billie though that I must br Christopher's sister or cousin. Phil brought Gillian a little tub of Pringles and fed some to her. Then he made two into a beak and tried to kiss her with it. I took a photo of them doing that because it seemed more normal for them than a lot of the poses they were doing.

Our tabel at the reception consisted entirely of people who had lived in the Donegall Raod house at one time or another, and their SOs. The meal was stuff that they thought most people would like: leek and potato soup, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, potatoes and vegetables, then a choice of profiteroles or passionfruit brulée for dessert. I almost exploded. Their cake was partly chocolate and partly jam sponge, rather than traditional fruit cake. Which was sensible as far as people not liking things was concerned. It still had marzipan and white icing, so Christopher ended up with extra icing.

Several more ex-Renwick-ites turned up fro the evening party. The buffet was mostly traybakes and sandwiches made by friends. By that time I was getting pretty tired so I didn't dance much, just sat at the table that was surrounded by people I knew (we just kept adding more and more chairs as more people arrived) and tried to talk over the music. Gillian had detatched her veil by this time, I don't know how, because when people hugged her earlier, it made her head go back because it was so securely fastened. I was shedding some green fluff from my cardigan earlier in the day, where the seatbelt had rubbed it, so I didn't hug her then.

They've gone of to a Greek island, whereabouts forgotten from my brain, for the honeymoon. I still can't quite believe that she's married.

The DVD drive on the computer is broken. It won't open, and at start-up a window pops up (screencap below)



It's suddenly become a lot more urgent because my dad decided to buy broadband, and we can't install it without a CD/DVD drive. Help, anyone?

Gakked from slemslempike

Cut for images:

( My Interests Collage! )

From richenda

You scored as Zwingli. You are Ulrich Zwingli. You believe that bread and wine are mere symbols of the absent Jesus. You believe in interpreting Scripture reasonably. </td> Zwingli 75% Calvin 75% Luther 38% Catholic 0% Unitarian 0% Eucharistic theology created with QuizFarm.com

After disposing of msscribe, bad_penny now is doing Cassandra Claire and the plagiarism thing. This fandom was founded on teh crazy.

The weather has well and truly broken; it's done nothing but rain for four days. We laffed when we saw that the people in number 45 had sown an enormous lawn (c. 1 acre), but they have been vindicated and I expect to see the thing turn green any day now. They are something of a joke to the other inhabitants of the townland, because last year they decided that they didn't want the great heap of topsoil that was left after building their house, and they paid contractors to carry it away, and dumped it into a bog. Now they've decided that they'll make their garden, so they have bought 20 lorry-loads of topsoil, at an estimated cost of £2000.

I'm trying to buy a wedding present for Gillian and Phil. Having left it hopelessly late (I lost the wedding invitation which had the list number on it), I'm having to make up an assortment of cooking and kitchen stuff. I must get up and fetch my credit card.

We went for a walk tonight and saw four buzzards. They hunt over the bog in the valley, and as well as soaring they were flying low and quite close over us as we walked, crying so much they sounded like seagulls.

And my sister has made an apploffee pie (like banoffee, only with apples.)

The Irish weather has done that thing it does every so often, and is pretending to be the Mediterranean. It's almost unbearable in work, and it's too hot to eat proper meat and three veg, especially by dinnertime. It's all scratch suppers and ice cream on the grass in Donegall Square, and long evening mostly spent gardening. Our flat rate internet is pretty low; it's fortunate that that coincided with the good weather. We were lifting 16 million stones in the front paddock, and the loose soil was starting to blow away in the wind. My little brother was driving the tractor, which seems all wrong, even though he's now old enough to drive it on the road.


It thundered half of last night, and poured with rain. When I went to bed I was so hot that I fetched up an ice-pack that we put in the cool-box and wrapped it in a tea towel and took it to bed with me. I could see lightening flickering, but it was far off. Then a couple of hours later I was woken by the thunder and the rain, and I had to jumpup and shut the window before my curtains were soaked. It was lovely,damp and coolish, this morning, but by the afternoon it was hotter than ever.


I'm rereading Georgette Heyer at the moment, much to the surprise of my colleagues, who thought that my library consisted solely of science fiction. I can never quite decide whether my favourite novel is Friday's Child or Sylvester.