Tag Archives: irish

Connections at the Fair

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haddayr and I were pleased to see two of our friends from our Irish Class stop by colgaffneyis camp. We introduced them and showed them around. c_nocturnum showed one of them how to wear a greatkilt, and bullettheblue sold him a bonnet that twolodge had made.

Another visitor was a computer consultant I know from work and his wife. Recognition was delayed a second because of unfamiliar dress: I had never seen him in shorts and T-shirt, and he had never seen me in a kilt. One of those “he looks familiar…” moments, then I recognized the corporate logo on his shirt.

I also saw one of my Carleton folk dance connections, who came by with his wife and child. He works for the college now, but Farmington is at least as easy to reach from Northfield as from the Cities.

Busy Week

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Out every evening ….

Monday — Irish Class

Tuesday — Loading colgaffneyis trailer, and a belated birthday dinner. See here

Wednesday — colgaffneyis Dance Guild. Also begin packing for the weekend.

Thursday — Set up colgaffneyis camp at the Minnesota Scottish Fair.

Friday — Go to the Fair. Dinner there and camping out for the night.

Saturday (All day) — The fair itself. The weather should be much better than last year.

Out sick

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Left work early with a bad cold, and am missing Irish Class tonight. I feel bad about that. I have missed two classes this April, while I only missed one in the previous year. But I have no energy, and I certainly do not want anyone else in my class to catch my cold.

No energy–other good things about Charles City which I want to mention, but deserve more discussion than I can manage now …The crossbow with the purpleheart stock in the SCA camp….the woodworker there who, like me, is a disciple of St. Roy (but he is far more advanced)….The trebuchet….the nuns with the Irish Gaelic Prayers (mia_mcdavid can say more about them).

I hate this job

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So I get home from Irish Class at 9:20 PM and check my e-mail. I am being reamed out for restoring a database from the wrong time….Well the right time did not exist. The database at that time was gone. That is why we have backups. If they want more up to date backups, they need to pay for more up to date backups. TANSTAAFL.

With that in mind, I went ahead with tonight’s tasks. These went as planned (in fact, faster) and my employer’s web site was back up quickly. I am feeling a little bit better after the e-mail conversation with the colleague who was doing her part in the night’s work: She was cordial and appreciative.

I had my Blackberry at Irish Class and could have checked it there. I am glad I did not. I was not properly prepared and felt like a compleat idiot several times (my mind totally blanked on irregular verbs), but I still came out of it in a good mood. It would have been a shame to let work spoil it.

A long day, and it is far from over

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My supervisor was waiting for me when I got in at 8 AM, to discuss a follow-up from last week’s troubles. I was working on those all morning. At 11:26 AM one of the database servers (the same one we had been discussing) crashed, immediately becoming my priority task. I will have to do some database restores from backup to complete the recovery. Unfortunately, the systems are in use all day and into the evening. I cannot start work until 11 PM. I think I can do everything from home.

Well, if I cannot start until 11 PM, I might as well go to Irish class.

Some Cleanup

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I cleaned out (somewhat) my briefcase last night. I had been carrying around way too much stuff, so much that I dared not open it on the bus. Long, long ago, in a metro far away, I counted on public transit as an opportunity for reading and study. I had lost that. So I took out most of the accumulated notes from a year of Irish classes, and pared those down to what I actually had been using–there is something of an 80/20 rule here. One pocket Irish dictionary and the smallest of my Irish grammar books should suffice for study while commuting. One other book, if I want to read something else.

After that I cleared some space on my desk downstairs. It can hardly be called “clean”, but I have plenty of space on it now. It was my father’s desk, and it is certainly cleaner than I ever remember it being in his life.