A Lot of Laughs!

The last couple of weeks have been very busy but fun as we have been having a lot of laughs at the birthday parties of my netball friends Sharon and Kelly, taking in some of the comedy at the Bulmer's Comedy Festival, seeing another performance with some friends and going paintballing and other such things with my workmates on Friday up in Monaghan!

Last Saturday week both Sharon and Kelly from my netball team decided to celebrate their birthdays. Sharon's was a delicious BBQ at her house and Kelly's was drinks later on that night at the Capitol Bar (which happens to be just around the corner from our house) so we decided to go to both. It was loads of fun as you can see from the antics we got up to in the photos and of course a very late night for all!



There are lots of festivals going on in Dublin at the moment at of course we are getting into the spirit of things and trying to go see a few performances. Dublin's Fringe Festival runs from September 9th - 24th and is self-proclaimed as

Ireland's leading multi-disciplinary festival of contemporary performing arts, providing an annual platform for the most innovative and fresh theatre, visual arts, dance, live art, mixed media and music.

Then you have the Bulmer's Comedy Festival running from September 4th - 30th and is packed full of stand-up and other various comedy performances not only from Ireland but from all around the world. Lastly, coming up we have the Dublin Theatre Festival which will run from September 28th to October 14th - so over the next month or so there will be no shortage of things to see and do in Dublin!

We have already been lucky enough to catch a few shows in these various festivals. Last Friday week I went with my friend Sharon and her friend Gina to see an excellent two-man performance called 'Trousers' - they were touring for a short while around Dublin before heading to Broadway and it is definitely worth seeing if you get the chance!

I managed to score Johnny and I two free tickets to see the mainly musical comedy show '4 Poofs and a Piano' last Tuesday night which was part of the Bulmer's Comedy Festival and it was hilarious! Those who have seen the Jonathan Ross Show (British television talk show) will know them as the band from it. Needless to say they are four singing gay guys who made up all sorts of quirky and extremely funny songs about life in general which had us practically rolling in the aisles.

For the last few months I have been busy organising a Corporate Away Day for my department which we had last Friday. I couldn't have asked for better weather and the day went without a hitch which I was very relieved about! We all had a great time - team building activities such as archery, laser games, and team initiative tasks in the morning and paintballing games in the afternoon followed up by dinner and (lots of) drinks that evening! It was up in Co. Monaghan (about an hour and a half North of Dublin) so we spent the night in a hotel up there on the Friday night as well. We all had a ball although I am still sporting a heck of a lot of dark blue bruises from the paintballing - man it hurts!



On top of all this activity we have had three more visitors staying with us in the last week but I will leave that for the next post coming out in the next couple of days...