Today Was A Good Day

The weather and a crackin' picnic by the river inspired me to post some photos of the day and borrow from photos of other days. Will try and arrange more picnics and post more often for the rest of the Summer.

Before And After

Gunther and Bunty And Hard Bolied Eggs

D has taken to making up songs as she plays the guitar. She'll choose a theme, add some words while she tries out a few melodies, and then pick a bit she likes and turn it into the chorus. It inevitably ends up with us all joining in and then falling about the place laughing. Today she wrote a classic :


"This is a song about when me and S escaped in a balloon..... It's an instrumental one." That's a direct quote. Sometimes we wonder where in the name of God she gets her inspirations from. She listened to this (obviously very attentitvely) in the car earlier today and it seems to have made an impression. She has always had a thing for balloons and Gunther and his multi-coloured hot air balloon regularly rescues her from mountaintops at the end of lots of her bed time stories. So yeah, 3 years old and already writing conceptual / improvisational instrumental pieces. And she's already gone electric. We're such proud (and completely terrified) parents.

Buke and Gass

Wheeeeeee! Shanty

Some days off work so some mild adventures, photos and the ongoing search for the perfect wheee!

Bolo

MutElla Fitzgerald

Swingin'

I Wish I Was Swingin'

I wishawishawish I was Swingin'

Ad placement

Divilment At Rest

"..Way haul away, we'll haul away Joe..!"

There's a funny story attached to the hat. When I was in Seattle it was snowing and I needed a functional, warm hat to cover my head while walking in and out of the office. So in a sale in a gale , I picked up a wooly hat which covered my ears and it was indeed functional and warm and I thought no more about it. When I came home D took an inordinate shine to this blue wooly peaked hat and of course I told her I'd shopped high and low for this very special hat for my daughter. Since then D and the hat have become inseperable. Aswell as the obvious fashion statement (or sub-clause) it makes, it serves many additional uses. She can be seen above using the hat to keep her hair out of her eyes while eating her breakfast. And also using it as an authentic prop in her Makem and Clancy routine.

Pentatonic Free Jazz

Saturday morning discos have been going unplugged for the past couple of weeks. It's not easy playing along to Kanye West with a Fisher Price Xylophone and a small red guitar, but sure, if it was easy everybody'd be doing it. Some more photos from this truly unique session below.....

Anyway, eat up!

This song needs a melodica solo...

Technical difficulties

Bressist in Balaclavas

Getting off to a bit of a slow start this year. I've been travelling a bit with work and have been pretty busy. I didn't bring my camera on my travels either, which isn't like me. But I did get home to celebrate the 3rd birthday of the lady of the house.

Same cake, over and over

...and indulge in a spot of outdoor breakfastin' with some kids in balaclavas...

Nevermind the Buzzcocks... GO MUSK OX!

From scienceline.org [Credit: Len Radin, Flickr.com]

Interesting and entertaining podcast describing the evolution, environment and prospects of the Musk Ox. Their story is a fascinating one and, as one year turns into another, the contributors' big-thoughts-in-deep-time theme gives a timely dose of perspective to our own selfishly introspective species.

Only the children can save us now.



I've been listening to On Point for a long time and rarely have I heard Tom so fricken excited! I'd encourage everyone to listen in to hear a great broadcaster in full flight on what turns out to be a disarmingly intriguing topic.

An On Point primer can be found here.

"Yah we do!" :)

Happy Christmas

Some random and wholly un-Christmas-y images from our house this holiday.

Our Christmas tree after some mulled wine (this is actually our Christmas tree)

Christmas Morning Chocolates

Whaddya mean elves don't do polymers?

Diddle Diddle Dumpling...

Sunlit, sedate Mutella indulgence

Devotchka - Mutella's Darkside

Lost Weekend

Just back from a lost weekend in a hotel in ......Dublin. We've done that before, hit Dublin as tourists, but never as tourists with children. It's lots of fun and highly recommended for those of you out there who have ambitions to see other European cities with kids but haven't gotten round to getting those tiny travellers their passports yet. The occasion for our staycation this time was Christmas Lights/Christmas shopping and also because it's the last weekend before I start a new job.


Highlights were :

D's first ever gig...

...the Christmas lights (of course), the Christmas markets, gingerbread lattes, Christmas carols (piped and live), buskers with trumpets, homemade Macaroons... Sweeties from Greece, train rides (the luas and the German merry-go-round), family movies on king-size beds, hotel breakfasts (the girls had rice krispies, fried eggs and Dan O'Chocalade - M had the best mushrooms she's ever tasted), Diego as gaeilge, my first walk down Talbot street since I got my confirmation suit in Boyers, snowsuits and spacehelmets, and like any good Amish family hittin' the city together, new shoes for everyone.

Some of the more forgettable moments included surreptitious, un-clean, pink plastic gifts to the girls from troubled Luas passengers and a massive wasabi malfunction where D tried to ingest a golf ball sized lump of wasabi on the QT before her head exploded and gave the game away.