Hmmm, I haven't posted in about a month! I suppose I've been busy, but I can't think of a huge amount of things that I've been doing.


I lived in a hotel for a month, while my house at home was getting fixed/done up, and just moved back there yesterday. The hotel was a strange place to live in, as it was a hotel - and really didn't seem like home at all. Moving will take about another week or so, but everything's actually in our house now, we just have to sort things out and put them where they should be!

I was sick for all of last week, with a severe Kidney infection. I got antibiotics (not penecillin cos I'm allergic) which proceeded to give me almost every side effect possible - from delirium to sleeplessness, to ultimate drowsyness to nausea and headaches, and throwing in being very sensitive and getting upset/annoyed at a lot of things. I got cabin fever from being in the hotel for too long on my own! Unfortunately I had to miss the WARPS Weekend Away to Kerry which I had organised for almost 40 folks. I wish so much that I had been well enough to go, but I was just too sick. I've seen the pics, and it looks like people had a great time though! I'm gonna have to make up for it at Itzacon and Leprecon!

Turns out the reason that the room was spinning recently because I have vertigo. I now have pills to help when that happens again - which it invariably will! I haven't slept well for the past...almost 3 weeks now. First I thought it was cos of Warpcon busyness and such, then cos of my illness and then...maybe cos of not feeling settled in the hotel? I slept in my own bed last night for the first time in a month - and surprise, surprise, I *still* didn't get proper sleep. My arm began trying to kill me yesterday for some reason unless I held it in a "sling" position. No idea why...but it seems a little better this morning. All of my other joints ache though, and I have no idea why. Maybe I'm just getting old :P but it's unlikely that's it! Maybe it's an aftermath of the antibiotics...

Warpcon was great! Of course, busy busy being beer faerie, but I can't complain.
My main duty for the whole weekend was to give beer to folks. I made the job a lot easier by compiling GM Packs for those doing RPGs and LARPs for us, and I put beer vouchers and tea/coffee vouchers into these - along with dice, con booklets, pens/pencils, sweets and lollipops, and different types of paper. That meant that all of the GMs had vouchers to begin with...and also all of the trolls were given vouchers. The rest of my job consisted of sorting out the Club and the DJ (thanks a million to hedgetrimmer who did a brilliant job, and had most of us on the dance floor all night. The Club - the Voodoo Lounge in Cork, were very good this year and did almost all that they were asked to do - including moving back the pool tables (shock and horror!) and even giving us a few free bottles of cheap champagne. They didn't set up an XBox and such as they had promised, but most people appeared to have a great night - with plenty of insane crowdsurfing, notably of Gar, John Kovalic and our RPG coordinator Mark, all of who ended up almost clinging to the rafters of the ceiling of the club!

I also ended up helping with a lot of the Auction organisation, mostly just backstage stuff but some stage stuff too. It seemed to be a lot of fun, and we raised between 7000 and 8000 euro for charity. John, most generously, gave us the *entire* takings from his stall for the weekend, which I think added up to around 1600 euro, and added that to the charity money!

Our new special guest this year was David Nykl, from Stargate:Atlantis, who I had met on my weird and wonderful travels in Oz last year and invited to come along. I think at the time he didn't realise that I was actually serious about inviting him over and that I ran the con last year, so he just played along, and he was glad to get the chance to come over when he realised I was actually serious about it all! :) We were delighted to have him too - and I'm glad that most everybody found him to be as lovely and as down-to-earth as I was sure they would. He won our coveted Warpcon Drinking Award for having drank absolutely everything that was put down in front of him on Friday night - and a LOT of drinks were put down in front of him that evening, and for the rest of the weekend.

We took a trip to the Blarney Stone on the Friday after Warpcon, as I hadn't been up there either, and Karen had never kissed it. So myself, David, Steve and Karen headed out there, on a really wet day! Strangely, it must have been gamer day at Blarney Castle, cos with the horrible wet weather, they were doing almost no business, and as we wandered around the almost empty castle, we spotted two more girl gamers from Cork across on the other side of the walls! Had yummy mexican food that evening in Cork and then I headed off to Dublin for a weekend of doing nothing and relaxing a whole bunch. That was really well needed!

I can't think of too much else right now, trying to catch up on work I missed last week! Busy busy busy...