Ryan’s Ramblin’

Merry Christmas everybody. I hope you all got what you wanted, and you get to spend the day with your loved ones. I got some kickass presents from Liz (Firefly on DVD, LA Rush for the XBox, and a trip to Rome! Woohoo!)

Merrrrry Christmas!

I can’t believe it’s the 21st of December already. The shortest day of the year! Woohoo, it’s only getting longer from here! In fact, apparently tomorrow will have exactly 1 second more daylight! (according to Weather Underground). Note: Toronto gets a full hour and a half more sunlight every day! No wonder the Irish drink so much!

Remember when you were a kid, and the month of December was the longest month of the year? Whatever happened to those days? Not that I’m complaining - I’m much happier that Christmas arrives quickly, and that the cold months go by quickly… It’s just strange.

Time magazine just announced their people of the year for 2005. Bill and Melinda Gates, and Bono. Some interesting company they are keeping - check out the historical Time Person of the Year. Hitler and Stalin are in there with Queen Elizabeth II and John F. Kennedy. Of course, Time Magazine selects its “persons of the year” as being the most newsworthy person of the year. If Hitler and Stalin weren’t on the list, likewise JFK and QE2, it would be quite shocking. Of course, in today’s climate there’s very little chance that someone like, say, Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden would be made person of the year, because people are too stupid to understand what the person of the year selection actually MEANS.

Yuck. Monday morning. I had a pretty fun and eventful weekend, so being back at work already is the stinkers. It was a real drag to get myself out of bed at about 7:45, but I managed to get showered, shaved, and even get a protein shake into me before I headed out the door. I love that our new crib is so much closer to work. It rules. Totally. Not having to walk to and from the Luas every morning and night is so awesome.

Any way… the weekend! Friday night, I went out for drinks with folks from work… it’s my first time really socializing with work folk, and we had an awesome time. Shared a cab with Liz into town (it was her work Christmas party that night), and as it’s the busiest time of year for Christmas parties, traffic was INSANE. And this was at 7pm! We even managed to get into an accident in the cab on the way in! Two stupid girls running across the street to get to their bar, and some jackass stops too suddenly to let them go by. Granted, they were pretty enough little hoochies, but JESUS. Sure enough, while our cab was able to stop in time, all you could hear about 3 cars back was SCREEEECH! BANG! SMASH! *thump* into our cab. No damage to us though, and both myself and Liz were fine, so our cabbie just up and left (after resetting the meter, what a good chap). Off to Market Bar then, where WAY TOO MANY pints were consumed. The place closes down at about 12:30, so myself and two of the guys wandered outside… “Hey, let’s go to Ri-Ra!” shouted one, as he stumbled off in completely the wrong direction. We wandered for 10-15 minutes, and once we finally decided that we were certainly in no state to be able to actually FIND the place, we instead went to Capitol. After another while there (I remember rocking out to a Bryan Adams song at one point, but not much else) Liz called me, and she was heading back from her work Christmas party, so I said I’d meet her and we’d share a cab home. After my 2km stumble over to the Jurys Inn in Ballsbridge (where her bus was dropping her off), I sat around and waited for a while, sending drunken text messages to Dave and Chris. I must have sent a lot, because I only have 0.16 left in call credit on my phone! Whoops! Then Liz showed up in a cab with her friend Janet (whom we call Janeet for some reason), we dropped off Janeet and made our way home. Drank much water, ate some toast, and collapsed into bed. Ooofah.

Saturday, I wasn’t in very good shape. Four pieces of toast for breakfast just to try to settle the stomach, along with an advil, and about a pint and a half of water, and I was starting to feel a bit more human. We waited around for a couple more hours, as the NTL cable guy was supposed to be arriving to fix our TV. Motherfucker never showed up, and we found out why after waiting on hold for an hour with NTL: our appointment, despite being told quite specifically that it would be for Saturday December 10, was actually for Saturday December 17! Sweet jesus. I’ll have another post shortly to tell about our woes with NTL and Eircom due to the move. We decided to hop on the bus into town, and get some shopping done. Not really too much shopping actually got DONE, but what can ya do. Met up with Sandra and Nikki for a bit of coffee and chats (note: Liz ordered a mocha, I ordered a hot chocolate. We couldn’t tell the difference between the two). Then back home, was feeling QUITE awful, so I collapsed into bed for an hour while Liz got ready to go out again. It was her friend Caroline’s birthday. I figured it would be a tame enough night, as we were just going to a pub. Well, I managed to maintain some level of sobriety (only about 7 or 8 bottles of Heineken consumed), but Liz decided to hit the pints early in the night, and let’s just say that we were SHATTERED come 1:30, when we caught a cab to go home. At least we didn’t end up going to Toast with some of the other girls. Stumbled into bed around 2:30 or so, which was pretty respectable. Out COLD.

Woke up at 9:45, myself, and read for about half an hour. Liz got up at 10:15, much the worse for wear. We decided we’d best get cracking if we wanted to get some Christmas shopping done. We figured we would beat the crowds with the Christmas rush. Well, we arrived at Liffey Valley around 11, and it was ALREADY jammed. Not so bad that we couldn’t find parking, but the parking lot was at least 3/4 full already. Into the mall we went. It was quite a productive trip, actually - we pretty much finished up all our shopping (well, we didn’t do any shopping for each other, obviously). I bought myself a copy of The Chronicles of Narnia complete version (not the hardcover one I linked, but I can’t seem to find a link to the one that I bought there). I can’t WAIT to read this again, as this was one of my favourite series of books as a kid. I was devastated to find out that my mom gave our copy away. After shopping, we came home and wrapped all our presents (the tree looks fantastic now - pictures to come soon enough, I swear!), watched Stuck on You which was a lot of fun, then veged in front of the TV all night. Maid In Manhattan was on, and I’m man enough to admit that we watched it. I’d never seen it, and it was enjoyable enough. This is going to be a crazy week though, with stuff going on pretty much every night from now till the weekend. Oog. Oh well, Merry Christmas and all that! You can sleep when you’re dead!

This is a bit more interesting than how much change I have in my pocket - this morning, I got (ok, it’s on Liz’s cc, but I am the one that actually did the work) Robbie Williams tickets for his concert here next year! June 9 baby, at Croke Park. Apparently, the tickets sold out in 20 minutes - but I still managed to get ours about 45 minutes after they went on sale. Perhaps some bounced purchase attempts? I dunno. After I got mine, I was unable to find any more available on Ticketmaster. So, let’s say at the VERY longest, it sold out in 45 minutes. For 80,000 tickets, that’s an average of about 30 tickets per second! If they really did sell out in 20 minutes, that means that the actual rate was about 67 tickets per second. And to think, when Liz and I were chatting yesterday, she didn’t think the tickets would sell out by 9:00 (they went on sale at 8:00).

What’s crazy is, if you announced this concert in Toronto, he would be lucky to sell out some place like the Amphitheatre. Robbie Williams is HUGE over here, and practically nobody at home has even heard of him. I can’t wait for the concert - I may not love all of the man’s music, but I will admit that he’s got some catchy tunes, and from the live performances I’ve seen, he puts on a HELL of a show. Never mind the fact that I’ve never been to an event with 80,000 people before, which promises to be astoundingly crazy.

One of the great things about Dublin, is that pretty much every single big-ish convenience store has a deli-type counter where you can get fresh sandwiches made, or buy salad or hot food. It’s cheap, and the sandwiches are definitely healthier than going to, say, McDonald’s. I went out to grab a sandwich for lunch today, but upon getting to the store, realized I had no money in my wallet. Oh well, I’ll just hit up the ATM - OH CRAP! Out of service! Whatever will I eat? Oh, hold on, I usually have change in my pocket, let’s see what we have here… Oh, yeah, I have enough for a sandwich. In fact, I have €27.98 in change in my pocket! Jebus! Damn EU and their crazy coinage (note: I am fully aware that Canada has a ridiculous amount of coin-money as well… but not only does the euro come in €2, €1, 20 cent, 10 cent, 5 cent, and penny coins, they also have a 50 cent coin and a 2 cent coin! Yaaaaar!).

See how exciting my life has become? EXCITING! People will be interested that I have LOTS OF COINS IN MY POCKET! Hrmm. I need to start finding better things to write about, if I’m only going to be writing every couple days.

This weekend, Liz and I moved into our new crib. I have to say, I *LOVE* it! This new apartment is pretty much the nicest place I’ve lived, well, since I moved out on my own. Washer, dryer, dishwasher, full fridge and giant freezer (which is a good thing, since we spent a CRAPTON on food to fill it), WARM, an AWESOME shower, underground (technically, though our spot is sitting under an open grate) parking, and just all around generally kick-assedness. I love it. I love that Liz and I are finally able to have alone time in our own living room without worrying about anyone else being around. It is just, without a doubt, the best apartment EVAR.

Karla Homolka now has zero restraints on her life. If you don’t know who Karla Homolka is, she is the one who helped her now-ex-husband Paul Bernardo rape and kill 3 (that we know of) teenaged girls, INCLUDING HER OWN SISTER, back in 1990. Upon her release from prison (after only 12 years, the sweetheart deal she made with prosecutors before they found the videotape evidence damning the both of them), she was put under a series of restrictions. Those restrictions included not being able to contact Paul Bernardo, not being able to work with children under 16 years of age, and being forced to check in with police once a month. Now, she’s free as a bird! I’m not overly concerned about the “having contact with criminals” garbage… or even the checking in with police. That really wouldn’t accomplish anything, as far as I’m concerned. However, I have GRAVE CONCERNS about her being allowed to work with minors. She’s already proven that she enjoys seeing young girls raped, and allowing her to work in such situations is absolutely INSANE. Hopefully any future employers will be vigilant enough to catch onto who she is, despite changing her name. The Quebec judge who struck down these restrictions has set a very dangerous precedent, as far as I’m concerned.