Over on Gnattering.com, its Entertainment Thursday combined with a Thursday Thirteen on Keanu Reeves - actor or robot. 13 Keanu Reeves films, from worst to best. I've left out huge chunks. But these are the ones that stuck with me or will haunt me to my grave.

So come and play with the Shinys.

Today I discovered that it is impossible to buy a single cassette tape anymore. I eventually got a pack of 10. I need 1 for the Boy Wonder's piano teacher to record about 10 minutes of music. We may never need to buy cassette tapes again. Seriously.

Oh, and I saw one of the anthologies the alter-ego is in on the shelf in a major bookshop here. Yay! Turned it face out. Went back to admire again it a little later. Bookshop staff might think I'm wierd now.

Here's just a quick link to Mike's site where he writes about the piece that has been accepted by Poor Mojo's Almanac(k).

All very exciting. I thought I would link back to Mike's site where he links here so it becomes and infinite circle that either drives everyone insane or destroys the world.

Speaking of which, my son is in work with me this afternoon so if I seem distracted... Nah, he's watching Ice Age on the library computer.

We went to a wedding in Galway this weekend. It was the first sunny day of the summer here. We has some problems. The kids stayed with most gracious relatives and we set off in (what we thought was) plenty of time. As it turned out Moate and the Galway ring road had different ideas. At 3.10 (heading for a 2pm wedding) we gave up and went to our guest house instead. We then joined the others at the reception. At least we made it that far!

Irish wedding receptions are strange affairs. Firstly, you always drink too much champagne. Always, even if you aren't drinking. By that I mean you cease to make sense and giggle a lot. Fortunately I was drinking champagne so at least I had that as an excuse. So we're all best friends with someone (a) your partner works with, (b) you haven't seen in over 10 years and only met by accident in college because you thought they were someone else (c) and the guy who works for a government watchdog committee who used to keep a very close eye on the company I used to work for. Seriously. I sat next to him, talked, asked what he did, said "oh, I used to work for a blah blah blah type company" and he said "Oh, you mean X" He was right! 

The food was lovely. The music was excellent, although possibly aided by the wine. And before you know it we're all on the dancefloor spinning around to the Proclaimers and the Pogues having forgotten that we are no longer 18 and People Will See!

The other thing I don't get about Irish wedding receptions. New York, New York.

Why?

It's not like the couple are emigrating there. (anymore)

So why?

But every wedding disco (and work christmas party, and new year's party) seems to end with everyone in a circle, arm in arm, with the happy couple (or random couple) in the middle while we do a chorus line impression to New York, New York. 

WHY?

We all pretended to sing the national anthem and then The Irish Rover, which is apparently a cue to fling people left and right and pretend you can do Irish Dancing. 

Having forgotten that we are no longer 18 and People Will See!

Love Shack was fun, until the DJ (who was far too young to be doing this gig, and was using his Apple Mac anyway - as a child of the 80s, used to decks and large pieces of mysterious equipment, this totally freaked me out) cut to another song before the "Bang bang bang on the door" bit. A travesty!

Seriously though, this is my only complaint for the night. It gets the Most Fun Wedding award for this year. As I don't have any others lined up, it's kind of a shoe in.

Other than that, The Lost Rose will be up online at Haruah soon, (Yay!), I got a rejection for "Old Friends" from ASIM (boo!) and sent it out again to IGMS (um... there isn't really a word to describe the sound of fingers being crossed, although there should be).

And that's it for now.

R