I’m working up very slowly, but I hope surely, to setting up a new blog. Louphoria will still exist, but for fun things and maybe the odd picture, or maybe I wont use it and figure out something else to do with it…like I said, slowly.

I want a new look, new name, new(ish) content, something more clean and crisp and something to underline the fact that things have changed since I started writing this blog. It covers a period of time, with certain concerns/events that I feel I am moving forward from, in some ways. I can’t write in my own name either, for a lot of different reasons, just trust me, it is true.

Oh, and I don’t want to have to come up with titles anymore, unless I think of a really witty one. I hate having to come up with one. I don’t do forced creativity, without grumping about it anyway.

I can’t give a time span, but you’ll all get an email anyway (and I’ll post about the sending of the email here, so if you don’t get one, let me know).

Night all, x

I just don’t know what to write about any more. I used this blog to discover myself, (unwittingly), after a period of serious lostness while I made mince of my soul working nine to half five in big-business-land. I used it to take a deep breath and ask at the end of every day ‘what struck me, what’s there that needs to be dealt with, what will ease up like smoke in water, which emotion will it be tonight?’. I haven’t needed that lately. I do all my processing in my head (sometimes bouncing ideas off Benny). I’m not as obsessed with wringing it out onto the page as precisely as I can, the better to communicate my truth as directly as possible to whoever might stumble across this blog.

I find it hard to write with an audience in mind. There was only ever one person I had in mind for a long time at the start. Now it’s lots of people and I can’t write with each one in mind, though I try to, amazingly. This is no ones fault but my own of course. I’m writing what I think is expected of me and I’m censoring myself because my real name is on this blog. The other blog just doesn’t do it for me (the layout, the name, I dunno). So it’s a boring conundrum that I’m avoiding making a decision on.

The most important thing to me over the past few months has been the commencement of my search for an insight into the spiritual (?) side of life. It’s not even spirituality though, the simplest way to put would be: those things which don’t sit well with the culturally accepted understanding of reality. It’s been a real fight at times, trying to process what I’m learning, transforming myself. I’ve been feeling my way through it, taking it as it comes. I haven’t wanted to write it down. It’s too much to write down, it has to go into the giant filing cabinet of my mind or maybe wait around in the inbox for a while frankly. Maybe now that I’ve started thinking about how to write about it some ideas will come to me.

It didn’t feel like the kind of thing I wanted to wrestle to the ground and strap down in words that could hardly begin to cover the experience.

Anyway, I’m probably repeating myself, I can’t remember if I’ve already said some of this a month or two ago or whatever. I’m rusty.

***

Other news in brief (because my ability to generate long and interesting sentences is gone rusty too):

Training tomorrow so no two day weekend for me, sniff.

Benny has started baking (a lot) and today the kitchen was full of delicious soda bread smells along with my delicious lasagne smells (courgette, aubergine, chestnut mushroom and green pepper tomato sauce, tofu ‘ricotta’ layer [silken tofu, fresh basil, lemon juice etc. whizzed in the processor], topped with ‘cheese’ sauce [using nutritional yeast, cornflour, olive oil etc.). We were both delighted with it. It was my first vegan lasagne, so we were delighted that it turned out to be really delicious. I want to make it for visitors, put it that way.

I’ve been spending a lot of time stumbling through vegan & vegetarian websites. It is a passion. I also have another huge order of magical shiny cookery books in with Amazon (I saved up my fag money again, I love not smoking, no, I really do, quite aside from the money, but that’s another story).

The Daly Twins (Sasha & Millie) are sitting beside me on the arm chair luxuriating on my old blue throw. They’ve been getting really picky over their tinned food lately, which is highly unusual behaviour (mind you, Sasha is getting a bit plump so maybe no harm in his case). Otherwise they are their usual happy, whingey, playful little selves. Millie is now wandering around murmeeping about her ball and the fact that no one is throwing it up the stairs for her.

Right, beddie byes time. I’ll play bally with Mill while I’m brushing my teeth (it’s the routine, every morning and night).

http://makeanimaltestinghistory.org/the-march.php?lang=gb

You get to see you’re little self join the visual march to support making changes to EU animal testing laws

Please pass it on to others/blog it yourself if you see fit.

Several times in the last week or so I have been compelled to reflect on the simple human truth that when people are preoccupied by a problem, they are not thoughtful towards other people in the way they normally would be.

I won’t give any examples, for privacy sake, but I wanted to share this thought for two reasons:

If you are preoccupied yourself, and not interacting well with people around you, does it point to a problem that you haven’t confronted within yourself?

If someone you know, or anyone else is acting in a selfish way, please consider my words in your own thoughts and actions towards them.

***

The sun is blistering here on the west coast this past few days. We walked on Aughris beach yesterday and sat on the rocks looking out at the waves, baking ourselves and eating a fruit lunch. Delicious, all of it.

I realised the other evening in the kitchen that I have an odd habit of always tapping out a tune with the spoon I’m hitting off the edge of the saucepan to dislodge whatever’s stuck to it. Any aul rhythm will do. I think it’s just that I hate loud banging noises, a bit of percussion is so much more acceptable. It’s an amusingly ‘happy’ sort of thing to do though, like whistling or singing or whatever. I must be in a good mood lately, though I think I’ve been doing the rhythm thing a long time.

Funnily enough, a lot of the people that come into the library think I’m the life and soul of the party too. I smile a lot. I find it disarms people and it doesn’t hurt. I’ve also learnt though that there is such a thing as being too nice, some people really will just take advantage of that. Needless to say  I can’t elaborate on that here, or even in t’other place.

Gary, you wanted a kitty update. All are happy. I should have written this at the other place so I could elaborate, but I’m too tired to do all that signing out, pasting shite right now.

Sigh. The laptop just put itself into standby without warning. The battery is plugged in, I’ve adjusted the energy saving settings. I ended up having to stick with XP and after two format reinstalls, (Dell drivers have a certain order they need to be installed in apparently, also, I had serious issues with Firefox hanging to the point of pretty much crashing the whole thing),  so I’m just thrilled at the thought of figuring out what’s causing this. Feel free to pipe in with any ideas.

Oh, also, Randy, Tom, thank you for the advice on Ubuntu. I meant to answer back in the comments but once it goes past two days it seems pointless…there was a problem with the wireless card not being recognised (I ran it from the cd to test it out), there was a convoluted method of arsing about with getting the windows drivers to work but I was advised against it. I have an Inspiron 1501 and it seems from googling that I’m not the first person to encounter the problem.

Bed beckons.

Night all, x

I stumbled across these earlier…made me homesick