Saturday night found us at the previously mentioned and now infamous 2009 Blog Awards, where for those of us attending the Ladies Tea Party, copious amounts of food were wonderfully catered by Fuel at the Cork Airport Hotel.

Score one for not having to cook.

Next morning, it was breakfast ala hotel with about 100 other hungover bloggers, and God bless whoever was back there in the kitchen, because it meant I didn’t have to cook it. Hurrah.

That afternoon, in an act of unprecedented forward planning and sheer genius, I had booked Bite Size to cater a family luncheon to celebrate John’s birthday. Not, you understand, because I fail at domesticity; I am perfectly capable of turning out Sunday lunch for 12 people. I am not, however, remotely capable of turning out as much as toast on four hours of sleep and a massive booze and debauchery fuelled hangover.

In fact, I couldn’t even manage coffee (which is just as well as we didn’t have any). In answer to my prayers and a public plea on Twitter, the absolutely god-like Sam Kidd from Sam and Dan’s actually brought me a huge steaming carryout of java. To my door. With a smile. I nearly wept into the cup.

The catering from Bite Size turned up an hour later, when I was just about ready to face the world again, and it was tremendous. Their canapés are like little works of art, the dinner was massive, and we ate gloriously well on Sunday. The guests all ooh’d and ahh’d and dug in, and I have to say that for a dozen well-fed eaters, it was excellent value for money.

Not to mention that we also feasted on leftovers all day Monday, thus escaping yet another day of cooking, which was just as well because I seriously needed the entire day for additional recovery time. (I think I drank my own body weight in tea, water and 7 UP in a futile attempt to re-hydrate.)

Alas, today all systems returned to normal. The last leftovers went to the dog, the last cupcakes went into various happy eaters, and the last of the manky bits went down the insinkerator, thus ending my three day kitchen holiday.

But if I win the lottery, let me tell you: personal chef. All the way.

Mike Kane called me on Wednesday night to say he’d bought tickets, was dateless, and since I was the designer of his shortlisted site, we were going to the Digital Media Awards. On Friday.

Far from being excited, I was deeply irritated. Because here’s the thing: if you’re a woman, you can’t just get a buzz cut and turn up in a penguin suit. Black tie events require Herculean amounts of effort, and I now had one day – Thursday – to do all of the following:

• Buy a frock
• Buy a dress bag for said frock
• Buy shoes
• Buy a wrap
• Get a haircut
• Get my nails done
• Unpack 16 boxes to find my grown up coat
• Remember how to put on make-up

Also, I hate this shit because I do not have a magical fairy godmother, and there’s always a very real danger that unless the shopping gods are on my side, I’ll arrive at the ball looking like a Teletubby wrapped in tulle.

Luckily, the stars aligned and Debenham’s had the perfect frock, the haircut doesn’t suck, and the shoes are truly ace.

Now I’m excited. I don’t even care if we win.

You are cordially invited to join us for New Year’s Eve Festivities as we welcome in 2009, hopefully with something between a whimper and a bang.

• There will be wine, beer and bubbly. If you want anything harder than that, bring it, although we may bust out the scotch at some point.
• There will be food. It will probably be yummy. (Oh hello, winter carbs!)
• There will be peace on Earth and goodwill towards men.

There will very likely also be music, count downs, noise makers and all that good stuff. We would love to have you, so please RSVP in the comments. You are very welcome to bring people along; just let me know how many, so I can plan accordingly.

Where: 18 Gilabbey Street, Cork, Ireland
When: 9 PM until sometime after midnight
Who: You, and whomever else you would care to bring
RSVP: In the comments, as soon as possible :)

You know that deeply irksome trend where people make charitable donations on your behalf instead of giving gifts? Well, we’ve done that very thing with you in mind, dear Internet. You were going to get coal in your stocking, but instead we’ve stuck a few bucks in the g-string of the following very worthy online organisations this year.

• Wikipedia: Does anyone not use Wikipedia? There is simply no better, more accessible or better resource when you suddenly need to know who the hell Lansana Conté is at 4 o’clock in the morning.
• Electronic Freedom Foundation: A lot of current issues including DRM and network neutrality emanate in the US. A donation to EFF helps to fight the good fight on the front lines of the battle for electronic privacy and freedom.
• MySociety works to make government open to the public – transparent, accessible and accountable . The code base it’s built on is similarly open, and is what John is using to bring some of this kit to Ireland.
• Scarleteen: Because abstinence only sex education simply does not work, and no matter how good your relationship with your mum, you probably don’t want to be asking her any questions that include the word “lube.”

If you’re looking to give in the spirit of the season but don’t know where to drop off your hard earned dollars, euros, or drachmas, you might consider the above. Organisations like these can take a beating during a recession, but unless you’re planning to give up your internet connection, your digital rights or sex in the face of economy, we hope each of these organisations will make your 2009 a better place to be in some way.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

We’re beginning to vaguely think about the new year here on Gilabbey Street, and we are pondering perhaps having a party of some flavour. Since, you know, everything is closed and there’s sod all else to do.

Since you, dear Internets, would be invited, please let me know which of these two events you might prefer to attend:

We’ll do neither if there isn’t enough interest, but assuming there is, I’ll add a new post with details accordingly. Comments welcome if you have any suggestions!

PS: By “brunch” I mean a complete civilized hour, like say noon or 1 PM.

In about 12 hours, I leave for glorious, rainy Italy, where I’ll be for a week. I’m sure it will be delightful – after all, it’s Italy, so who cares if it’s raining? – but right now I’m mostly concerned with finding clean underpants, locating my passport, and remembering what flight I’m getting on.

John will be observing Eimear the Wonder Dog’s protest hunger strike while I’m away, and providing emergency support to clients in the event anything goes seriously wrong, which isn’t that likely. You can reach him at john [at] handelaar [dot] org, and he also has the super secret MAXroam bat phone number for me while I’m away. Honestly though, I don’t know how useful that’s going to be, since nearly every call is likely to be met with “Dude, I’m swimming at the bottom of a bottle of Chianti, I don’t have a clue.”

To my great surprise, everyone including my mum is whinging for good old fashioned postcards. Since I find this amusing in a Victorian kind of way, I’ve decided to launch Operation Postcard Florence. If you want one, just fill in your name and address, and it’s quite likely a missive from Italy will turn up in your postbox in due course.

Marriage has utterly ruined me. I mean, using the yardstick of the “ruined woman” I was pretty thoroughly ruined prior to marriage, but nevertheless, getting married has had a number of unfortunate consequences I couldn’t have predicted.

I spent ten years living on my own, and while it was very enjoyable and rewarding in many ways, it was also exhausting. Living on your own means you have to do absolutely everything for yourself, from figuring out how to network the house to remembering when to take the rubbish out each week. Or every other week – I never actually got the hang of that.

In any case, while it’s great to be entirely your own pilot, it is also exhausting. So when I joined my life to another human’s for the rest of my natural days, I immediately and happily offloaded half the stuff in my head onto my husband.

After all, I’m fond of telling people, there are two of us. Surely each of us only needs to know how to do half the things in the world.

While this is a great plan in theory, in practice there are some pitfalls. Namely, your spouse going out of town and effectively leaving you with half a brain to once again run a complete life.

That works just about as well as it sounds. Two years ago, when John was in Edinburgh for a month and the housekeeper was on holiday in Poland, I had to Google up an owner’s manual for my hoover because I literally could not work out which bit was the on switch. Last week, standing in the middle of Tesco for the first time in months, I had to ring John to ask which aisle the tinned tomatos were in. Then I had to ring back 20 minutes later to ask what brand of butter we buy and where they hide that.

Tonight, after having worked a 16 hour day that started at 4 AM, I was absolutely desperate to snuggle up on the couch with the dog and a blanket and watch The Fellowsip of the Ring, which I’ve never seen and have had from Moviestar.ie for three weeks, but John (probably justifiably) refuses to watch.

Except I’m watching recycled television instead. Because like the punchline to a bad joke about women and technology, I cannot figure out how to make the DVD player work.

Come one, come all, to the greatest show on Earth: the 2008 US election. We’re quietly getting excited about an Obama win over here on Gilabbey Street. Me and Election Projection Stats Junkie Nerd Boy are gearing up for a long night of election returns on the fourth of November, and you are cordially invited to geek out with us and color in happy little blue states on your very own electoral map.

There will be Obama Family Chili, Baked Alaska, stars and stripes cupcakes, beer, wine and plenty of fuel for late night revelers. Obviously, you’re free to go home well before the California results start to roll in after 5 AM, but we’ll be up all night. At that point I’ll be weeping with unbridled joy or lighting my passport on fire, but either way it looks like it will be quite a night.

Assuming we can gather up at least half a dozen people for a couple of hours that evening, we’ll add party games like Pundit Bingo, Who Wants to Be an American Citizen, and an electoral vote sweepstakes. You are welcome to bring your pyjamas, and we’ll bundle you and your teddy into a taxi when you’ve had your fill of election night fun.

RSVP in the comments below, and sincerely, whoever you are, we’d love to have some company on the night.

PS: I will be taking the Tuesday and Wednesday off. Because after eight long years of this horseshit, I deserve it.

I have a long but relatively tragic history with bicycles, starting in 1981 when I first learned to ride a two-wheeler. I was nine years old, and my mother had just produced my youngest sister, which was something of a disappointment as I had specifically ordered a baby brother. The bicycle was presented as a consolation prize, I duly learned to ride it, and it was promptly stolen off the front lawn of our summer house.

Four years later, at the age of 13, my school decided to take everyone in my class out of the comfortable environs of our NYC concrete jungle and dispatch us to the countryside for fresh air, green grass, and unpolluted sunshine. We were each given a choice between hiking, biking and sailing. I hate sailing and hiking sounded unnecessarily hot and sweaty, so I chose biking.

The biking contingent was duly bused off to Lancaster County, PA, which is the home of the Amish. This is important because the Amish have no cars, no electricity and thus, no phones. This became relevant when very shortly after arrival, I managed to get hit on my bicycle by the only vehicle for miles in any direction, which happened to be a very large lorry. It apparently look them 20 minutes to find a phone with which to call an ambulance, which I don’t remember because I was unconscious on the tarmac.

The tarmac was a critical turning point in my life because as it turns out, I had skidded across it for quite some distance after being catapulted from the bike, and so in addition to having broken various bits, I had managed to give myself burns and abrasions now covered in melted tar and various bits of gravel. This queued several years of steroid injections for scarring, as well as having various pieces of road spontaneously work their way out of my skin.

I was, in the aftermath of this, rather road shy. However, by 2001 I was also starting to pack on serious poundage, and so I eventually decided to do something about it. I joined Weight Watchers, and in order to get some exercise, I bought a bicycle. This was a rather stately, old fashioned bicycle complete with a basket, which I duly named Miss Marple.

I truly loved Miss Marple, and to my surprise, loved riding her too. For the first few days, I biked everywhere, and covered some ridiculous number of miles in the first week. Then I got into a right of way dispute with a car on a roundabout, which in the natural order of things, was won by the car.

Queue several months of laying on the couch waiting for swelling to subside and £10,000 worth of surgery (thanks, mum!) to take out various bits and replace them with pins, plates and definitively non-kosher elements of pig cadaver. This was followed by several more months of physical therapy, wheelchairs, walkers, crutches and a walking stick which still puts in an occasional appearance (hi, Podcamp!), especially if I am having hip pain, there are stairs, or I am unfamiliar with the terrain.

Needless to say, I no longer ride a bicycle. In fact, my husband made it a condition of our marriage that I agree to never, ever ride a bicycle again, and were I to get on a carousel that had bicycles instead of horses, I think he’d probably be legitimately worried that I’d somehow manage to pitch off it and break something. Probably something very expensive.

Despite my two wheeled travails, however, I am now asking if anyone in the Cork area has a bicycle they’d be willing to loan me. But you can unman the panic button (or bicycle horn) because it isn’t for me. The lovely and delightful Guillermo Moreno from Chile will be doing his semester abroad here in Ireland. He’ll be staying with us from the end of December to the middle of March, and we’d quite like to equip him with a loaner cycle even though the weather will be utterly miserable.

You know, for for fresh air, green grass, and unpolluted sunshine rainfall.

So, if you have a bicycle sitting in a shed suitable for a 5’7″ (1.7m) male and you’d be willing to send it to Chez Road Accident, you can do it safe in the knowledge that I will not be riding it. It will, however, be suitably stored, locked, and covered by household insurance. As will Guillermo, who I’ve already checked has travel health insurance.

Just in case.

John and I stayed up to watch the Vice Presidential Debate, and at the suggestion of Maman Poulet, we decided to play Sarah Palin Bingo. Suzy also offered up a feminist political drinking game, but once she and I realised that it was late and we were old and were going to have to play with cups of tea instead of shots, we decided it wasn’t worth it.

So bingo it was. And every time Palin used some predictable conservative dogwhistle phrase, I got to tick a box on my card. To my great annoyance, the woman banged on and on and on about natural gas, pipelines and energy independence, but never actually said “foreign oil.” Eventually, however, I was able to yell BINGO! with the predictable arrival of the National Guard.

The second time I got to yell BINGO I decided that I owned Sarah Palin’s ass. In the grand tradition of Alaska, I am now considering auctioning her off on Ebay, because I certainly don’t want her.

Do I hear one dollar?