Denis 2, Boredom 0

It's been a busy few weeks for me, so much so that I've had little time to enjoy photographing toys, blog, or do very much online at all! In particular, the last two weekends have been jammed with excitement and fun!

On Saturday the 20th of October, I was home in Tipperary at a wedding. Not my own! No, this was for a friend of the family that we've known for years. Although she's from Coventry in England, her parents are Irish and her fathers family is from the area. She wanted to get married in the small parish church of Killea, the village I'm from. It was a great day, and both the Bride and Groom looked amazing. I spent most of it babysitting their daughter, who was simply adorable. She's only 15 months old, but so well behaved throughout. I was surprised when she took to me so fast, and spent most of the day in my arms. I guess it helped that I brought her brightly coloured toys she can safely chew on.

The meal was great and after a break to watch some big rugby match, we went back in for the dancing. Woo! I'll tell you, I could have danced through until the sun came up the next morning! It was a blast. I just had loads of fun. And I got to dance with a bridesmaid! I took loads of photos up until the music started and then I was far to busy jumping around looking like an idiot to stop to take any more.

Which was exactly what happened this weekend as well! I was having so much fun, I have no photos at all as visual aides to relate my awesome weekend through! For the October Bank Holiday weekend Claire and I travelled to Dublin for GaelCon... and to escape the Cork Jazz Weekend.

This year, Claire and I decided to do something different. Normally, we go to GaelCon, meet friends, go into the city, shop, go to the con, hang out for a bit, sit around bored, get the bus back into the city, go to the hostel we're staying in, go to sleep, travel back to the con and so on and on. This year, Claire and I booked ourselves into Clontarf Castle, where the con itself was on! This made some huge differences to how the weekend unfolded right away. No travelling once we reached the hotel on the Saturday morning. No having to leave early to get the last bus to the hostel. No pressure to go anywhere. In fact, for the first time I can remember we didn't leave the castle for the entire day on Sunday! And we got awesome all-you-can eat breakfasts in the hotel. How can you possibly top that?

And we played games! Claire tried to get into an RPG in every slot, I tried out a few, though not every slot, and while we weren't playing organised games, we were playing games like No Thanks, Guillotine and Tsuro in the main hall with anyone that walked past. All in all, it was a busy, eventful, fun weekend. Add to that getting to meet Lynn and Graham for the first time in ten months, hanging out until 2am with Mulcahy, Killian, Fiki, Sarah, Farrell and Lorna in the lobby telling stories and gasping for breath between fits of laughter and getting to meet a tonne of new people and you could say I had the best damned convention of my life!

Right now I'm exhausted! I hadn't even recovered from the wedding weekend when we left for GaelCon! Next weekend, Claire is heading back up to Dublin for another wedding, and I'm here in Cork. I plan to keep up the great run of weekends with a gaming night in my house on Saturday, and possibly even Friday and Sunday evening! Well, at least Saturday. Maybe Friday will be drinks in the Well. If you're reading this and around for the weekend, just let me know! I'm sure we can fit you in.