Just a quick one to say two things:

1. My brother David is running the London Marathon this weekend
2. MY BROTHER DAVID RUNNING THE LONDON MARATHON THIS WEEKEND

Fecking awesome, I’m so impressed with how well he’s done in training for this (not least the lack of alcohol since the start of the year and, oh yeah, the occasional MASSIVE RUN (most recent was about 18 miles!!))… go David!

He’s running for Down Syndrome Extra 21, a charity which helps to promote equal opportunities for people with Down syndrome and offer support to them and their families. It promotes public awareness of Down syndrome and encourages and helps local support groups.

If you want to help this great charity through sponsoring my brother to do this amazing feat then please head over to his JustGiving page and donate:

http://www.justgiving.com/davidscullion

Anything would be appreciated. Thanks in advance from myself, David and those with Down Syndrome across the UK.

Toodles :-)

Pat

Yes, as one would clearly predict from the title of this blog, I’m writing on behalf of one Mr P. Scullion to let you know that there’s gonna be a bit of a drought blog-and-online-radio-show-wise from him for a few months.

“He still does blogging?”, you might ask, and you’d be right to cos he’s rubbish at keeping his blogs up to date (Oi! - Pat). However, the difference now is that he’s not going to be spending time half-writing them, or starting to write them and getting distracted, plus he’s not going to be spending many hours of a weekend preparing for and doing online radio shows.

Instead of that he’s going to be concentrating on a project he’s working on that involves both himself and myself, which he feels is of muchos grandos importance-os.

Can’t say more than that at the moment, but if you speak to Pat directly I’m sure he’ll explain more…

Righty, that’s that for now then. Have a lovely rest-of-winter, Easter and spring and both Pat and I will catch you again in a few months!

Toodles,

Squage (and Pat)

Well, something that’s not happened since I went to Oz in 2006… that’s right, I’m leaving my department at work! Goodbye Technical Services!

There’s one key difference:

Last time, despite actually leaving the company outright and going to the other side of the world, I came back to the very same department (albeit in a different role). This time I’m permanently leaving the department! *

What’s more is the distance involved in my move. I’m not just going to the other side of the world, oh no: I’m going to the other side…. of the corridor!

I KNOW!

Literally 6 metres from my current desk, the change of environment may be too much for me to take but I’m hoping I’ll be ok. Basically, I’m moving to another department to do some cool stuff for a funky and very useful web based system designed to help our customers. The cool stuff involves Oracle, WebLogic, funky web front end stuff and Linux/Unix. I’m looking forward to it!

Two days to go in TS, then I start next week (as I’m off on a long weekend to go to see Jersey… in Jersey! Sam and Spence from Oz, who’re On Tour at the mo are coming over too so it should be an awesome weekend!).

Right, that’s all really. Just an update from my world.

Toodles,

Pat

* Probably.

You do? Excellent! Because that’s what’ll be happening on Squage Radio!

Here are the details:

Show: SQUAGE PARTY!
Date: Sunday 17th February 2008
Time: 6pm - 8pm (GMT)
Direct Link: http://www.squage.com:8000/squage.mp3 (Available from 5:55pm)

An alternative direct link is available here if you have issues playing the stream the normal link (Winamp, for example, doesn’t like streaming from the normal link).

Requests are, as always, welcome - either email me (pat at squage dot com) or use MSN if you know my details :-)

Pat

I’ll get round to it I promise! Got lots of other things on at the mo but I promise it’s on its way…

Anyway, I’m writing this post to say that I’m actually doing Squage Radio live shows again (only occasionally, mind). From now on I’ll be posting a new note about each show - including a link once the recorded version’s online for you to download if you miss it.

I’ve recently done three shows - two party shows and one chillout show.

They can all be found here: http://www.squage.com/liveshows/, which is where all recorded live shows will sit in future.

(We’ve started this post with a side-comment extravaganza - Pat) Yeah probably not the best way to begin is it? (Nah, makes you look a little scatty and odd - Pat) Makes me, eh? This blue alien blob who somehow lives with you and is currently typing onto your keyboard, yeah? I’m the one who’s scatty and odd? (Um, shall we move on? - Pat) Yes, let’s. Take two:

Hello!

This past week has been a long one for Pat, but despite being a bit ill towards the tail end of it he’s not had too bad a week. Let’s have a look at the past few days’ worth of photos:

Monday

Yep, this has really been the theme of the past two weeks. Amazingly, Pat’s surpassed his usual lame level of gym attendance and, even I have to admit, has done pretty damned well this past two weeks. 5 times to the gym last week and 4 times this week (he was sniffling and snuffling last night so made some lame excuse about needing a lie in this morning (Boy did I… - Pat). He’s already down from 30 stone to 28 stone! (Oi! - Pat) ok ok I’ll be nice this once… he’s actually managed to lose a few kilos since the start of the year. Hopefully the snowboarding will help it keep coming off!

Tuesday

Pat’s been busy using my beautiful looks to create some custom “Squgs”, which have been dished out to some of his friends and have been making people happy (at least Pat’s hoping they have been - the reception’s been good so far, which is not at all surprising - I mean, who wouldn’t want a mug with my face on it? Eh? EH? Exactly). Pat has said cryptically that this is just the beginning of something big this year - maybe he means he’s going to be drinking lots of beer from Squgs and get back up to 30 stone again… (Yep, I think if I take a couple of T-Shirts from the suitcase I can put Squage in the hold… - Pat) I mean, er, yes! Pat’s going to do exciting things art wise this year!

Phew.

Wednesday

Ok so there’ s not actually a daily photo here. If there was one it’d probably be of the odd painting in Prezzo that he and Ruth from work were pondering over for a while. Here’s an “artist”’s impression:

Doesn’t quite do it justice somehow. (I dunno, looks about right… - Pat). Man, I think I’ll try to do some artwork this year too if that sort of thing can get bought by restaurants…

Thursday

Packing for BOARDING! Yep, as Pat ended up feeling crappy yesterday he ended up not going out to London (which was sucky as he was looking forward to a decent catchup with Andrea and Sinead (We’ll def. meet up on my return, ladies! - Pat)) he decided to make the most of his evening by packing.

As a shocking result, he actually managed to get 95% ready for a holiday with a full 36 hours to go! First time for everything… (Oi… actually, no, fair enough - Pat)

And yep, that is me indeed. And yes, I need a bath. Gonna have a snow wash next week :-)

Friday

Pat’s definitely not gonna be missing the journey to work.

So, right now… Pat’s all packed (aside from a few technical items - he’s still charging one of his camera’s batteries and is about to sort out the music on his MP3 player) and really, really looking forward to tomorrow’s day of traveling, starting at about 8:20am and ending about 12 hours later via a bus trip, an airport, a plane ride, another airport and another (long) bus ride to the picturesque resort, 2,500ft above sea level, ready for some serious boarding, chilling out and fun having. And maybe sitting in a hospital bed. (Oi! Don’t jinx it! - Pat) Hey that’s not jinxing, jinxing is saying something like “Pat will definitely, definitely not get inj”(-Ok ok ok ok ok - Pat). :-)

Have a great week and we’ll see you on the other side - plenty (and I mean plenty) of photos to come!

Toodles,

Squage (And me! - Pat)

Well, it’s been a good weekend and a bad weekend this weekend (wow, there were a lot of “weekend”s in that sentence weren’t there weekend weekend weekend?)… let’s start with the bad:

• Ate take out pizza, a fried breakfast and lots of popcorn

• Drank 3 bottles of beer on Friday and 4 on Saturday

And now the good:

• Ate take out pizza, a fried breakfast and lots of popcorn

• Drank 3 bottles of beer on Friday and 4 on Saturday

Yep, it seems the “no alcohol” regime fell on its arse this weekend and frankly the diet seems to have popped out of the window for a couple of days. I’m feeling rather guilty and annoyed at myself on one hand but on the other hand, but on the other hand I did go to the gym 5 times last week - plus with boarding in a week’s time I think January 2008 will be an overall “WOOH” as far as losing weight / getting fit’s concerned.

Oh yeah, plus this weekend was great fun! I was at Lev and Jess’s place in Laaandan and had a great laff as ever - Lev and I played an awful lot of Mario Vs Sonic on the Wii and finished many a 4×100m relay or 400m hurdles by falling onto Lev’s sofa and trying to get our breath back for a minute or two. Mental, knackering fun :-)

We also saw the excellent and very harsh Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, which is well worth a watch - superb performances from all involved and a real emotive thriller all the way through. Great stuff, and it also made us think of how funny it would be if the credits had “We Are Family” played over them. Not really sure why, it just seemed so inappropriate to be hilarious at the time. See the film and imagine it playing over them and you’ll see what I mean :-)

Aside from that we did some recording of some bits and pieces for a potential upcoming project (using this amazing professional studio):

What with Squage being left at home for the weekend, Lev couldn’t do a SQUAGE FACE so had to find an alternative:

Basically, twas a great weekend with lots of catching up and chatting about all sorts - always a pleasure to see you two :)

Ok, off to do some ironing… if that’s not living the dream I don’t know what is (NEWS ALERT: Pat has no idea what living the dream is - Squage). Oh ha ha.

Bye!

Pat

That’s right, following my 3 hour lessons in Milton Keynes snowdome, I’ve decided to up the ante a little for the remaining lessons: Jimbo (from work) and myself (and Squage, natch) are heading off to the south of France in just over a week for a week of Snow Boarding fun amoungst beautiful scenery! In the words of Peter Griffin, it’s going to be freakin’ awesome:

The Chalet.

The Resort.

This is the connected (massive) Les Arcs

Fortunately James and I have been down the gym 5 times this week and planning at least 4 next week too, so we’ll be in some kind of fit state to give it a go! I’m still gonna ache like a bastard but you know what: I don’t care. It’s going to be SO worth it.

Expect a full report on my return :-)

On in the mean time, today is the return of the Daily Photo. Today it’s of two stuffed toys on Reg’s desk at work:

Ride ‘em, IUM * Monkey!

Toodles,

Pat

* IUM = Image Utility Model. Basically it’s a printer leasing scheme, but as it’s at my place of work it needs to ensure it’s got a TLA **

** Tasty Lumpy Artichoke

What a winner! We were impressed that we’d both managed to achieve this, given that the earliest time either of us had been awake for the 2 week preceding had been about 9:30am. And that was early.

Even better still, as the schools are still off the roads were almost empty - so we bombed it in and made it to the gym at bang on 6:30am - just in time for it to open and give us maximum time in there before work!

Just in time for it to open… on a normal day, that is. For it is this, the week starting the 1st of January 2008, that the guys at the gym have decided to open at 9am for the next 3 days.

So that left James and I sitting in his car in the pitch black, dressed in gym kit and (myself anyway) unshaven and messy looking, wondering what the hell we should do now.

Luckily there are showers in our work’s building itself, so we went to the work car park and made our way to the building entrance… only to find that I’d not brought my pass.

A diversion later I got myself signed in, visitor passed up and in the building.

I’m now showered and a bit more alive than at 6:30am… but given that I’m at my desk over an hour before I should technically be starting work, without a pass and feeling rather tired given getting up far earlier than I would’ve if I were just coming into work today, that’s not much consolation.

Things, as D:Ream once rightly pointed out, can only get better.