Telegram from the Queen.

Aaah, my 100th post. Also, my 50th follower. Also, my 23rd birthday.

I am satisfied. Feeling like I've just eaten a big meal that I can still taste, hours after, with every burp. I'm sitting in my bed in my pyjamas and a Law Society t-shirt, smelling like mint after a very long hot bath and listening to my playlist. I just talked to my lady Lopez and I'm contemplating bed.

I imagined getting a tweet or a Follow Friday from the Queen, but alas...

QEtooooo : One wishes @conordarrall congratulations for his 100th blog post and for still being alive after all this time. Pity he's a bloddy Paddy lol :P #FF #Blogs

Plus, I hate her and her stupid punchable face, so I SO would have unfollowed her.

----
---
--
-

The last 24 hours have been eventful.

I went out for dinner with an old friend Emma last night. I stayed with her while looking for the Uberflat last summer and we hadn't seen each other since Christmas. She didn't know it was my birthday, so when I told her (after a while) she was mortified and took me drinking.

This bar wouldn't be my favourite in the world, but it does have a barmaid, Chess, who is ridiculously pretty, and who I've never had the courage to ask out. Emma and I chatted and drank, and when she stood up to leave, she looked at the barmaid and said, 'You should totally ask her out' extremely loudly, so that in the wake of her exit, Chess was looking over. We eventually got chatting, and getting quite drunk, I asked her out. It was smooth...

Chess "Oh I don't usually date customers, I'm sorry"

Me "Oh no, it's alright, I never drink here if I can help it"

-awkward silence

Chess "Okay, so where should we go?"

Me "Um.............the zoo?"

So yeah, I asked a beautiful women to go on a date with me to the zoo. Perfect work, maybe next time that happens I'll see if she wants to go visit a recycling depot. The good thing is that I got the date, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was because it was my birthday and I was (technically) drinking on my own so she took pity. We'll see...

She is VERY nice though.

----
---
--
-

TODAY, I woke up a bit hungover (read: very hungover) and stumbled into work, bleary eyed and useless. I didn't tell anyone that it was my birthday apart from a few of the guys who I've made friends with and my buddy Sean whom I got a job for. At about 3, the Big Guy came over and stood right next me.

Oh shit, he can smell that badness seeping out of my pores and wants me to clear my desk

"I've got a problem sunshine"

"Um, you do?"

"Yeah, I don't like it.........when people who work here don't tell us it's their birthdays and make us check Facebook!"

"Wha-"

He pulled out a few bags from behind his back, he had bought muffins for everyone in the office to celebrate. It was lovely. I was a bit embarrassed but hell, it was such a nice gesture. It's little rays of sunshine like that that make the place eminently bearable.

Also, another little ray, the Prohibitively Mean Secretary (PMS) got fired today. She's a compulsive liar, and had been causing a lot problems by lying and not doing any work. I'll miss her 8-hour-long monologues that chart her real-time thought process. The absence of that tinnitus buzz of shite that pours out of her mouth will be sorely noted.

ANOTHER little ray of sunshine. My ubercool uncle/godfather/musician Brian called to wish me a happy birthday and tell me he likes this wee blog, was thrilled to hear it. Then Mamo, my granny, called and we spent 20 minutes chatting about blogging.

It was surreal: in the meeting room, stinking of stale booze, the shakes, exhausted, on my birthday, with PMS leaving for good, holding a muffin, chatting to my gran about blogging. She thoroughly approves of it, but I've warned her off reading. My description of things and post titles (think HGFLMcP and the Work Life Skullfuck for example) do tend to have a bit of swearing in them sometimes. She wants me to collate all my posts together and try and make a book out of it. I'd love to do that, but the writing needs to improve I suppose.

-----
----
---
--
-

I write a little notebook on the commute to and from work. It's like an old fashion version of a blog that is in a little book made of paper that you type in by using a pen. I keep my notes in Irish so the nosy cunts can't read over my shoulder (and it's also private, and looks vaguely intellectual) and I just found the last thing I wrote, without thinking, as my train pulled up to the station

Is fíorr a rá go dtéim ar strae in ámanna, ach in aineoinn na crúachtáin a thiteann ar an bhóthar anseo agus ansiúd, ag déanamh iarracht mé a bhrú as an slí, tá an t-ádh orm go bfhuil mé in ann léim thart orthú agus leansaint ar aghaidh.

I think that's true, but only a handful of you will ever know how much you've done towards this, or what it means to me. Most of that handful aren't allowed to read this blog, and the others are too polite to stop reading :)

So, not the best of 'Century's and hardly deserving of my lovely 50 followers, but frankly the best you could expect after 23 years of baths and pizza. Maybe age brings wisdom; I know for a fact it brings grey hairs, a beerbelly and obscene levels of rage.

Perhaps the next hundred will see me finally get to punch my beloved racist, let's hope so.

Con
xx


ps - this is what I'm listening to as I try to go to sleep, it's such a beautifully mysterious piece