Inexplicably, today I have broadband in the new house. No warning. 11 days early.

Teh internets missed me, that's what it is.

So, yes. Have you all been behaving while I've been away? I'm gonna go read the LJ backlog now and see so there's no point trying to be all demure now.

We moved in, with loads of wee things needing doing, and some big 'uns too, but it's getting there. Still no carpets for the top floor and cleaning the tiles post construction is proving a pain, but we're getting there. Pics of the story so far are up on my facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12292&l=ab3cb&id=526327842

It'll be finished for Xmas. We think.

On a clear day - hell on an average day - I can see Mount Errigal in the west and then turn and see the town of Buncrana nestled at the end of the valley to the east. That's a span of some 30 miles as the crow flies. At night it is profoundly silent up here, and there's hardly a light to be seen. It's very cool. On the other hand we're on the slope of a gentle valley, and for gentle valley read wind tunnel. The wind comes in from the west like a train, lifts anything that ain't nailed down and at night it screams in the various vents around the house exactly - literally and exactly and uncannily and freakyassed scarily - like a screaming child. Kat loves it, I'm scared of it.

Anyway, I am back. I am once again receiving emails. I am once again on MSN. I am no longer freaking out about when we'll get into the house. I am no longer freaking out about my upcoming exam, it having upcomed and went and the less said about it the better. I am no longer teaching two courses at once and barely keeping head above water. I am no longer dreading my 33rd birthday, that boat having also sailed in the interim. I am settled, once and for all (coz I is never moving again no matter what, they will have to bury me in the garden).

And yes I missed ye and no I didn't bring you back a present.

The chaos still reigns, but come hell or high water we move tomorrow into what should be the final home for a bloody shitload of years. Internet access ends tonight, therefore, to be reinstated...sometime. Broadband is only a very remote possibility it seems at new chez nous. Sod. Ireland sucks.

Anyway, I will not be answering emails (like I ever do) except intermittently. When I return, proper regular posting returns with me and pics of the new chez nous in all its hodge podge glory.

Be nice to one another while I'm away. Don't break anything.

In the heart of Letterkenny, from whence all geekdom had been driven, its exponents exiled to the likes of Dublin and Belfast, and good riddance too...in the very heart of Letterkenny there has opened an honest-to-Gaiman comic shop.

A dedicated comic store: monthlies, graphic novels, manga, collectable figures.
In Letterkenny.
Run by a zealot, an expansively chatty comic zealot, who opens the books and reads them to you enthusiastically from the very second you step inside.
It is small: smaller than a garage, smaller than your average box room.
But it is nonetheless an inexplicable geek anomaly come suddely into my newly restored home town, which - as far as I had ever been given to understand - hated geeks.

I've thought long and hard about how this could have happened and the logical conclusion is that I am warping my immediate reality to make living here forever possible. Thusly, tomorrow I will be blogging from Letterkenny, where the new Harry Potter film is being shot, the site where calorie-free full-fat dairy milk chocolate was first invented and where masked, winged, telekinetic, sometime invisible, fireball wielding, master of disguise and cybernetics genius superhero DMan calls home, true believers.

I'm almost in France and I'm not bringing my phone.
Don't be phoning me.
Ya die, I'll miss ya, you wuz cool, don't be phoning me.
I win the lotto, text my wife. Don't be phoning me.
Don't be texting me.
I don't have my phone.

Laters.

I didn't die. I did stuff.

However, you should only look under the cut, in order to see what I was at, if you care at all about houses and have the broadband for big images.

Otherwise I'm just not dead.

Another review for Brian's book, here.

How much do I love this?
Check the Boss Key.
Slackers of the world unite.

Though still awaiting release, my mate Brian's first novel is starting to get reviews. The Poisoned Pen stores in the US have singled Borderlands out for their Hardboiled and First Mystery club recommendations.

"Finally, after being consigned to the ghetto for so many years, crime fiction is enjoying a real renaissance in Ireland. Ken Bruen's to be thanked. In 2006 we had Declan Hughes' The Wrong Kind of Blood[...]and now Donegal's McGilloway publishes a smartly written, tightly plotted debut set up in the border country where Ireland and Ulster maintain an uneasy truce. It really impressed me."

Good. Yippee.

Great Maker, I hope I like it after all this!

The fanboy community attendant to neilgaiman.com are collectively fucking with Penn Jillette, the comedian/magician and mate of Neil's. Because Neil told us to. And, well...fanboy, y'know?

You don't need to click the link or do anything or really have read this post. But...hey, how are you? If you're the Kat - love you.

If you're Google - Penn Jillette

An old mate of mine sees his first novel come out this April from Macmillan, and since you lot are all very literate folk, I'd be very grateful if you'd support him from amongst the 95,000 other books that will come out this year. We went to Queen's together, gamed together, acted and directed together, smoked together, grumped and scorned together and he's a very funny, very articulate chap who deserves his success. His name is Brian McGilloway, and first book in a planned series of three (currently) is called 'Borderlands', an 'Inspector Devlin' mystery. Book two, 'Gallows Lane' comes out from Macmillan in 2008, and a third in the series, 'Bleed a River Deep', is already in the works.

More details can be found on Brian's website, here.

I know you're mostly genre folk, but there may be some of you who like a bit of dark crime too, or know another soul who does, and you'd be doing me a great favour, not least because the jealous vitriol I've been swimming in since I heard has done my karma some serious damage, and I need to to do something to redress the balance or I'm very likely coming back as Sadhbh's liver.

So yeah, kudos, kudos Brian McGilloway, may you soar. And may I have the opportunity to do as much for some of the rest of you very soon (fluffworld, mytholder, kshandr, kindermord, pjholden - I'm looking at you lot in particular...)

Captain Planet in Belfast

I really can't add anything to this.

Happy Christmas bad_moon_rising, may all your adventures be genuinely spiffing and heroic and dashing.
Happy Christmas microgirl, may you catch all you chase.
Happy Christmas ocultado, may your new pad bring padtastic pleasure and all your incompetent workmates disapparate.
Happy Christmas PJ, may your future(shock) be Fearless.
Happy Christmas mytholder, may you experience no more than VAT's worth more improvement, and be merely 117.5% successful.
Happy Christmas cat-rant, may you have Huggs all year.
Happy Christmas kshandr, may you never be in want of a shiny phase, a shiny day, a shiny idea. You're excellent.
Happy Christmas echoblue, may you randomly choose to move to Donegal, you're excellent also.
Happy Christmas alison, may you come with him, bringing wine and sunshine.
Happy Christmas kindermord, may you have the success I would dearly love for myself, and an end to rationing.
Happy Christmas twistedtorment, I wish you a six-pack. And a million screaming fans to show it to.
Happy Christmas time_for_tea, may you be mysteriously installed as the next Earl Grey, or Tarzan. You pick.
Happy Christmas stuartmaher, may you have fortitude, extra relatives, lots of rest, a sudden cash windfall and a boy (coz then you've only ever one dick to worry about).
Happy Christmas fluffworld, I wish you the world, and this poem by Wendy Cope:
Next summer? The summer after?
With luck we've a few more years
Of sunshine and drinking and laughter
And airports and goodbyes and tears.
Happy Christmas psysquid, may you be seldom wrong, but right again. And a ninja.
Happy Christmas coffee_lifeform, may someone finally crossbreed an anime character and a tortiseshell and give him to you for your very own. And may caffeine prove to bestow immortality in high enough doses.
Happy Christmas natural20, may your every all good get even all better, and may you prove to be Pratchett's secret lovechild.
Happy Christmas pathdoc. I wish you Christmas, every day for the rest of your life. I very very love you.

And to all, a goodnight.

Merry Christmas.

Damo-ho-ho-ho

You all have I stuff I figure I want, so: www.bookmooch.com
Provide me with a list of things I can demand of you promptly.
...
Ugh! Fine: Please...