Monthly Archives: November 2008

Evolution?

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An open-day to remember

Today was the university’s Open Day, during which secondary school students come to see first hand what the college has to offer to it’s potential new students. Technically, the Open Day is two days cause it runs on the Friday and the Saturday. The clubs and societies have a marquee in which we can show off what we do and try and get some new recruits for Clubs and Socs Day. So in the marquee it was us (Amnesty Soc), Epic Soc (the trilogy of comedy, film and drama) and a few of the GAA clubs. The day seemed to be going pretty well, our stall was getting a good few interested people, then the guy who was on the stall with me got a text telling him that the canteen was on fire. We thought this was a joke at first, but upon looking out the door of the marquee we could see a long plume of white and grey smoke coming from the direction of the canteen.

Infront of the canteen not long after word spread about the fire

Within an hour the clear winter’s day blue sky above us was half clouded with black filthy smoke and we could see black shards of debree or something caught floating in the air above the canteen. Standing outside of the marquee it sounded like Halloween night, with the continuous pops and bangs of a fireworks display. These weren’t fireworks though, one of the guys told me that it was the slates on the roof exploding off the roof with the heat of the fire. No long after we could see the flames rising up with the smoke into the air, before that it was only the smoke. The flames didn’t get any higher in the air and couldnt be seen for much longer. Black smoke

More smoke

The thing about the slates possibly explains the black debre in the the air. Aside from the pictures I have a video taken from outside the marquee watching the smoke, you can hear the poping of the slates, but towards the end of it, there’s a more shattering bang, which I think might’ve been the windows. After the fire had been brought under control and we’d finished for the day we went to see the firemen were walking around the smouldering remains and the extent of the damage. The canteen has been completely gutted, and the new extension onto it had only just been completed. The extension itself seems relatively unscathed, perhaps a little damage to the roof where it’s connected to orginal part. Where the kitchen was and the main body of the canteen have suffered the most. The windows were gone, the roof has completely collapsed, with the bare exposed beams pointing out like the bones of a charred carcass.

Smouldering remains

In the spirit of the Maynooth Experience, those of us involved in Clubs and Socs continued on with the show, going out into the stationary crowds, who’d been moved back to the John Hume building to stay a safe distance away from the fire, to encourage them to come into the marquee to see the performances. It was a bit difficult getting people to turn their attention back to what the college had to offer, people can’t help but watch a disaster. Like the saying about the train wreck goes, you just can’t take your eyes off it, but eventually the crowds started to filter down. The rest of the day went on without a hitch. From what’s been said on campus, everyone got out of the canteen safe and sound. No one knows yet what caused the fire, but the presumption is that it was a kitchen fire that got out of hand. This is possibly going to have so many more knock on effects than just putting the canteen out of action. The sports complex shares the same building with it, so there might be damage done to the sports halls and the storage room with all the clubs gear and equipment. We won’t know for awhile yet.

At least there weren’t any casualties.

Turkey Day ’08

It is Thanksgiving here again. That happy day as we sit and eat Turkey! We had the entire family here, all the sisters and one brother, the other disappeared somewhere. So food as far as the eye could see, and all are well. However as we sit and eat I am quite thankful right now for what we have, despite the fact that there are challenges, there are days where I would argue, but as a family we are together, we have our home, my job and our health. There are so many others who have significantly less.

If you feel less than grateful right now watch the news and see how those poor families in India are being torn apart through the mindless acts of terrorism, and those from outside India who have lost family and friends.  

Puke @ 4 AM

So the joys of parenthood say that I should have fun @ 4 AM.  Saturday @ 4 AM I was at Walmart buying stuff for Boo. Then last night (Monday) @ 4 AM he is in our room throwing up. WOW. What a day. Worked from home to try and keep up. I do not talk about work deliberately here folks as I am boring enough, but it was a challenge and a half today.

I had hoped to get the blue computer up and running with Vista, however the disk I made from my MSDN seems to be a dud so will download it again and try again tomorrow night. The media system is not ready yet, as much as I keep hoping one of these weekends to get it done. Although this weekend gone I did get on top of the laundry and a good amount of time to getting the storage room sorted. Now I have some space to work in.

I want the media system done as soon as I can and need to reformat the drive to do so. But before I do I need to rescue an application and key from it. So with any luck tomorrow has more time for me. I also need to write the family letter for the holidays. It is Christmas folks! But as not to offend others we need to call it a holiday. They can call it whatever they want but heaven forbid we call it Christmas. We can’t even say heaven forbid in case we offend. Well – welcome to my blog if I offend read the back of a match box. I make no apologies for my faith!

Recommended Movies:

Kung Fu Panda
The Last Legion
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Quantum of Solace

Gas Prices

Okay, someone has yet to explain to me how I was paying about $80 for a tank of gas give or take a few weeks ago and now am paying just under $30. So the demand was so high we had to pay nearly $4 a gallon and watched as our standard of living dropped. We watched as food became more expensive as the cost of transporting became higher, we watched our other home products dependent on the petro chemical industry became more and more out of reach due to foreign oil prices.

So someone tell me how did we get here?

Follow the white rabbit

So this weekend is looking nice and hectic. I’ve got to work on my Alice in Wonderland costume (I’m going to be Alice), have an essay on interventions for developmental disabilities due the day after the tea party and i’m meant to be going to a Japanese film festival thing tomorrow with Sinead. Plus I’m intending to make flyers for the tea party.
On the plus side mom is going out to lunch with friends tomorrow in the new hotel in Clane. Dad has another chest infection though. He was coughing a good bit when we were out to lunch yesterday.

Other than that, it’s getting dark and miserable, but the leaves were dry on the ground today, so I got to stomp through them on the way down to the campus to put up the posters for the tea party. Oh, yeah, as part of our mental health campaign month we’re having Mad Pride the Madhatter’s tea party as our big event. Should be fun, we’ll be going around campus promoting it in costumes on Monday.

Alice

Broken Arms and Baptism

So in order to try and catch up on news here is what you have missed.

B (one of the twins) broke his arm a few weeks back and is now in a cast. He has a buckle break in his left arm which is funny and L (other twin) has a similar break from the water slide a few months back. (see the post). So he has a glow in the dark cast and will have it for another 5 weeks.

Then last weekend we had the baptism for the twins. Since they are eight they were able to be baptized.  It went well, and with B we had a splint as the doctor knew what we were doing and worked with us. The day went well and was nice. We had friends over to help us celebrate after, one in particular was nice to see and that was Brother H. If he reads this I am sure he will know who he is. He had had a serious motorcycle accident only five weeks previously and was able to come down to us. Due to his misadventures he was the center of attention as we listened to the progress he had made medically and how serious his injuries were.