The highlight of this weekend was the Therion concert. Therion came to Dublin with a 7 man stage (2 female sopranos Katarina Lilja and Lori Lewis, 2 vocalists, drummer, bassist, guitar player), which was probably the densest stage I’ve ever seen so far. All the members are great showmen/women, and each one has his/her own act, either inciting the crowd, being funny or being just a treat to eye and ears. The funniest member was the blond gothic freak Snowy Shaw (Notre Dame) who had his own subshow during the gig.

They started the show with Mitternacht Lowe the first song on Gothic Kabbalah. Most of the songs were from this album, since this was the album tour that’s more than understandable. There were some problems with the sound at a certain point, especially during one of my favourite songs Perennial Sophia. My favourite songs of the concert were “Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah” and “To Mega Therion”, which was the last song they played. After a lot of shouting for an encore, they came back and played a Manowar cover version. I didn’t recognise the song but since all Manowar songs are pretty much the same sing along structure it was easy to lalala and jump to it.

After the concert we stayed over drinking some beer, and all of a sudden I spotted the girls from the band buying beer. We met the rest of the band who were welcoming photos freely, and we even attempted to get some snaps with the phone. The results weren’t spectacular but at least I’ve got proof that I was there. I made the amateur mistake of not taking a pen with me so I didn’t get an autograph. Piihhhhhhh.

I vegetated for the rest of the weekend. I watched almost all the Rugby World Cup matches and wasn’t impressed in the least by Ireland playing Georgia. Ireland barely managed to win and had a bad time trying to overcome the strong determination of the ex Soviet nation. Meanwhile both New Zealand and France made a complete mess of their opponents Portugal and Namibia respectively. Probably the most balanced game of the weekend was Tonga against Samoa, the Pacific Islands derby. (Interesting note: Samoa > Tonga in size and population. Both Islands are bigger than the dot but have less population). Yesterday evening we went to the shopping centre and I couldn’t resist the lure of the sushi belt. Delicious sushi dinner, even though the sushi belt isn’t the cheapest way to eat sushi.

This work of art was drawn during a game of Pictionary with my pals back at home. It's too good not to share especially when you know what it's supposed to be.

Be bold and try to guess. If you manage to guess I'll promise to send you a present whoever and wherever you are. You're allowed 3 tries, and it's either a person, place or animal. Obviously people who know the answer (i.e. where present that night) aren't allowed to play.

Update from the comments:
It's 1 word. But it's not a bat and definitely NOT my country ... LOL! It's closer to a bat than it is to my country, if that maybe of any help to anybody :)

My new baby is here!! Wooohooo!! It arrived 10 days ahead of the estimated time. This morning I knew it was going to be a great day. I was a bit surprised at the size of my little beast but then again it's still a cute little black laptop. Ok, maybe cute is not exactly the word for it.

Anybody venturing a guess on what madot means? Maybe a small hint, it's a title of a brand new song from Ajattara. How that may help you is still a bit devious.

I'm back from my second more-than-a-weekend holiday of the year. Lately these types of holidays have been to exotic foreign lands but this time I spent the holiday in the dot. It was much better than expected considering the destination. Today my lack of enthusiasm for life, lethargy and discombobulation (I just felt like using the word) are the proof that it had a good holiday.

This week I haven't updated the blog at all. When I loaded the stats for the last week and compared them to the previous week I noticed a drastic decrease when there weren't any uploads. I guess this is a good enough proof that the best way to attract visitors to the blog is to write in it.

My only current interest is reading "The lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch. This book really sucked me in, even though I was a bit skeptic of reading a new fantasy book.

Today I finished the work my work in the dot and now I can start enjoying the holiday to the full. Work was ok, everything went ok so nothing to write about really. I've also finished a couple of family chores so all is set for the holiday to start tomorrow.

Tomorrow we're going to host the Slovak for a week in our house. This is definitely the most anticipated event of the last 8 years, which is saying something. A 2 month house scrubbing, cleaning and refurbishment project was undertaken by dad (and to a lesser extent mum and brothers) in my absence. I dare say the house is now unrecognizable. Long stalled maintenance has been finished, loads of hoarded things have been thrown away, and new implements for her use have been purchased. Tomorrow we're going to see the final result of his labour. This is probably the first time I mentioned dad in this blog but he deserves an honourable mention considering the effort.

The blog is most probably going on break for the next week or so.

I'm leaving for my September "holiday" two days earlier. I managed to combine some work I've got to do in the dot with my personal holiday. This way I'm hoping to keep my free time my own and not let work creep in as happened before. Making an extra buck doesn't hurt either.

Blog News: I've created a new section for in the inbox this week posts.

The time has come. I ordered the Vostro V1700 yesterday, and it has the honour to be my first personal laptop. I spent an hour on the phone with Dell to complete my order but now I'm sure I made the best choice from the list of options and budgets. For a second during the call I was tempted to consider the luxurious, XPS range but it was way out of my budget. The upgrades from the original spec were the battery from 6-cell to 9-cell (give you an extra 2hrs) and the graphics card to the 8600 GT. I downgraded the support from 3-years to 1-year.

The only problem with this is that I've got to wait for a maxium of 4 weeks for the delivery because there is a shortage of parts in most of Europe. At least I'm on holiday for 2 of the 4 weeks so it's not such a big deal.