Meeting Crystal Swing

St.Patrick's Festival Big Wheel

Bumper Cars!!!

The Leprechaun Museum - a work in progress

A Fez in the post from Morocco

Darragh as Zonad

Clark Kents is Supermans

Joss Stone tries to make a music video…

Cryshtal Shwing

Update: we’ve been immortalised (heheh) on Dave’s Dublin 98 blog along with some seriously awesome stuff! http://www.dublins98.ie/onair/shows/morning-crew/scary-halloween-costumes/

In the past week/10 days I’ve seen a fantastic production of The Rivals at The Abbey, saw David O’Doherty record a fantastic live gig at Whelans and got to go along to the wonderful Bugs Bunny on Broadway at the National Concert Hall.

In between and around all of that I’ve got to meet some fantastic new people, catch up with friends I love, move into a new house, spend Sunday in Croke Park watching a great game of hurling, eat, drink, sing & dance. I’ve got a job I love, a wonderful family and friends around me and we’re all in pretty good health.

I’m not bragging. I’m just high as a kite & realise that I can’t take any of this for granted. I’m incredibly lucky and grateful for my lot in a time when so many are probably struggling to find the motivation to get out of bed in the morning.

I’m off out for a crazy day of adventure and (hopefully) fun with a wonderful fella.

Whatever you do today, I hope you have a great one. Sure maybe even see you out there

Keeva Hurley, GSGC. Photo by Paul May.

So much blogging to catch up on both here and on Culch.ie will probably be burning the midnight oil tonight. Here’s a start:

• Gardiner Street Gospel Choir were off the scale brilliant on Saturday night at The Helix, DCU. Everyone I went with and spoke to seemed to be on a buzz after it. Amazing show & fair play to them for doing their weekly gig in St. Francis Xavier’s Church the following evening – can’t have been easy! Well done to all involved, major blog post to come including MP3s of the gig. Paul May has some great shots of the guys n gals on Flickr.
• Delorentos are offering up a free MP3 of ‘You Can Make Sound‘ over here.
• Curious Wines are supporting a great cause – donate to Lesley adn Will’s fund and you’re in a draw for a whopping €110 worth of tasty vino. These guys are cycling 300km for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Wow.
• Damien has a short, sweet &  awesome post on online interaction.
• Jeffrey Zeldman toys with the idea of a NSFW HTML tag in HTML 5.
• TypeDrawing is my latest favourite funtime iPhone app. Check the Flickr group out for fruits of users’ efforts.
• Smashing Magazine has some more excellent free fonts compiled.
• Darragh talks about the set of the latest production at The Abbey over on Culch.ie – as he says photos really don’t do it justice, it’s almost worth going along to The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant just for the set alone.

well it is...

Well I hope you made the most of the awesome weather we were blessed with this past week coz it is most certainly gone and long gone according to the forecast. Time to resort back to indoor forms of entertainment, soggy ends of jeans, damp socks, umbrellas and checking Ryanair for the price of a flight to Barcelona.

In the immortal words of Pat Shortt, “sure twud be a lovely country if we could only roof it”.

So it’s the perfect (or closest to perfect evening you’ll get for May) evening for a BBQ and as luck would have it there’s a lovely free one happening this evening in Dublin. Here’s the story (robbed from Darragh’s post):

“Jane Russell from Jane Russell’s Original Irish Handmade Sausages is kicking off the summer in style with a bit of food, chat, drink and of course some sausage samples from 7.30pm in the roof garden of the Odessa Club.”

For those unsure of where the Odessa Club is or how to find it, here’s a wee map. Be seeing you there later!

Saturday’s Tea Day for Alzheimers

I spent Saturday in Dundalk at my dear friend AnneMarie’s place where she held her 5th annual tea day to raise funds for local Alzheimers carers and patients. We had people coming and going from 11am till 10pm, the tea flowed, gorgeous home baking delights kept us buzzing & the chat was fantastic. Aside from the fund-raising benefits, it was a wonderful social occasion and gave people a chance to catch up and spend some time with each other. The day raised a tasty €1300 with another few quid to come in from folks who couldn’t make it on the day. I’m dead proud of her & can’t wait to do it all again next year!