Drive back to Dublin with a stop in Limerick was quite okay.

Called in next door to visit Assumpta, Stan, Lisa, Kevin and Conor later and had some nice wine and junkfood.

The drive back from their place to Soest is perfectly straight ..... or is it? I eventually have it figured out by this last visit.

After Paris we went south and camped. Visited Chatruse early one morning, ....

Hotel de la Chancellerie, Fontainbleu. Next day we explore the castle and grounds and the town. Lovely large + hotmilky coffees for breakfast.

McDonalds on the way down just before the Belgian border. First night in Amiens camping.

Daire giggles sometimes if we talk into his tummy and sometimes just if we talk or sing to him. He has a very satisfying deep chortle ... great fun! He rolled for the second time yesterday! (from front to back) And he's beginning to get stronger and lift his head up sometimes to see people. He can really talk! Baby-talk to us, or just to whatever wall is handy sometimes too.

goede taggghh (here starts a message written in a _very_ special language created by me! It comprises of a phonetic derivative of a vague rememberance of german and dutch equivalents of english words...)

ich hoffe das du hat meere dan asparagus (spargle auf Deutsch ;) wenn ich besuche sie!! velichteee wir konneen Italian kuuchen machen!

or .. your flight to that country ye don't know about :) or ... right 27th? em, I think it's a weekend too late :(

Oh, and about the goddamn country ... everybody managed to slag me off .. nobody actually told what country you're in, soooo????

Yes I did, I distinctly remember!
The place? The Netherlands! It's on our address! You sent us stuff! And the Netherlands isn't a code the postal service understands as ... oh yeah - that must be for that weird James person :-). Netherlands, Pays-Bas, Niederlande, Paises Bajos, Olanda, Ollandia, Nederlanderna, Alankomaat, Paisos Baixos, Nizozemsko, Nizozemska. You do remember we're living reasonably close to Amsterdam yes? In a place also called Holland! You know, "le pays bas" or something? People speak Dutch here, there's lots of water, dams and windmills, and CLOGS, can't forget them. Lots of canals and barges and thin long streets with tall thin houses with really steep staircases and pretty step/decorated/bell/whatever gables with a wee hook on them for getting the furniture in the windows. The land is very flat, there's lots of cows and also pigs too (tho you don't see them). And if you're out shopping these's loads of cheese - Gouda, Edam, you know, Dutch town names. And there's loads of liquorisce around too. Some mariuana/cannabis always found floating in the air in the cities along with interesting red-light districts, and, well, does that cover it? Nope forgot bicycles! There's loads of them too fying around with the locals perched on top.

... no parachuting for us over here .... maybe we could rig up a little one for Daire .... he'd probably enjoy flying down from upstairs onto the couch ..... .... hmmmm .... maybe not :) But the little lad is still happily gurgling, snurfling and in general making baby-like noises. "Wug!" Also looking around at everything in amazement, slight shock or wonderment. Mummy and Daddy are utterly charmed by all of this of course ... greeting even the slightly more unsavoury noises with cries of "Ohhhhh! good boy!" etc..... :)

He got his passport photos taken and we visited the politie yesterday to get all the applications, waivers, forms signed and witnessed .... I wonder do theymake baby passports in small cute baby-size or boring normal size? It should be funny to see it anyway.

"I'm reduced to typing with one hand only as in the other is this tiny red struggling baby. He's quiet right now but you should've seen him moments ago! His, yes it's a boy!, his name is Daire Coleman - second name either James or Oscar."

Born on Saturday morning, 2:30, 3.5kg and 52cm. Where were _you_ at 1:30?

"oops -= struggling a bit .... he wants to see what's happening! as well as being reduced to one hand I'm now alsohalf-way down the chair! A bit uncomfy. You should see him! He's so small, he's quiet alot ... but is quite a handful too."

Well since then we've been enjoying ourselves :-) And believe it or not we're managing quite well - helped by the excellent system they have here. ........ Baby is getting along pretty well, sometimes even sleeps more than 5hrs straight. (amazing apparently)

He definately doesn't like being naked. He had his first tummy-tub bath today and made DECIBELS of noise before being immersed .... but he quite liked all the warm water.

Sometimes he's sleepy ... and sometimes quite wakeful and he really examines everything - fruit bowl, faces, mirrors, lights, cupboards, escher picture! Eyes wide open - wow! and sometimes ... HUNGRY!

Over here it's very WET and about 5/6/7 degrees so not _too_ cold. I heard it was -lots (for Ireland) last night. Brrrrr! We've been going to the cinema a bit lately ... two (I think) very good films "Seven years in Tibet" and "Devil's Advocate". In the latter Al Pacino plays the evil laywer guy and he seems to really have lots of FUN being evil! And the first one has lots of nice Tibetian mountains .... but also has some things that might scare little Lucia. joke! *ow*

We're pretty much ready for anything now ... (well, anything involving a birth), got bags of baby clothes, linen, squeaky widgets ... and of course our muisjes and beschuit. FIonnuala's keeping well ... but must be a bit restless as all the baby stuff has been washed, ironed, the house is sparkling and she's refurbishing the cradle probably as we speak. (Hmmm speak? ... more as _I_ write actually ... but sure it's the turn of phrase required). It's getting gradually more difficult to cycle to the shops! (not for me silly!)

At our last visit to the midwife her weight was down a little .... which everyone says is a sign that the birth is coming ... Pieter says it'll be next week! Wahhh! :) Fionnuala is a bit nervous of the birth but I'll make sure and mind her well.

I need to forward her email ... only .forwards not enabled .... so of course instead of being sensible I hacked at some perl.

I have fond memories of this particular perl cludge as the first time I ran it sendmail bucketed the mail also to everyone in the To: and CC: lists again. Very educational. Of course the original address was also in the To: list so I'd a nice infinate loop there with a large bucket of mails being broadcast very rapidly to many people - friends, work people, family, .... ! augh! Luckily I got worried when the count whizzed way past the expected.
Fun fielding all the "hey - something's up with your mail" messages.

Lars & Kenn don't like the idea (1/12/1999)
lhecking@nmrc.ucc.ie Bah .... formail -s procmail -Y -m ./rc.filt < mailbox >log 2>&1

James Coleman paraphrased:
> Kenn Humborg wrote:
>  put sendmails to bed
>  swap diapers: cp/ftp/whatever /var/spool/mail/whoever to
> new:/var/spool/mail/
>  wake sendmails up, bottle feed with new /var/spool/mails
> (summarized with anology by me) :) (sorry Kenn!)

Just in case anyone gets misled by this analogy,
it's _not_ what I suggested.  sendmail never _reads_
stuff from /var/spool/mail.  It just delivers there.  We stop
sendmail on the target host to prevent it from delivering
a message /var/spool/mail/USER at the same time as
we do cat /..../USER-old >> /var/spool/mail/user.  That
would cause mailbox corruption and message loss.

And your description of step 2 is wrong.  If you copy
oldhost:/var/spool/mail/user to newhost:/var/spool/mail/user
you'll lose any mail already delivered to user on newhost
and not yet picked up by his mail reader.

Users get really upset when they lose mail, so always
be very careful when doing stuff like this.

Incidentically, Richard solved this problem in his case by
simply using his mail reader to 'bounce' the messages to
the new host.  And that's exactly how you should do it if
you are a non-root user.  However, I assumed that he
needed to transfer the mail for many users.

JAMES: ow, I did apologise in advance there ... y'know.
       You just didn't like the bit about the diapers, right?

>Wahhhhhhh!
>
>
>*THUMP*
>
>
>
>
>When?
Sat. Dec. 27, around 5.30pm

 Where?
Kinsale harbour .. well overlooking Kinsale harbour in a mini micra in the
cold!

> How?
er 'How'? Well, he took a nicely wrapped box out of his pocket, handed it to
me, grinned & said 'WELL?' .. the scene was romantic, can't expect him to be
romantic as well!!

> Have you a shiny ring thing?
Yup .. an 18 carat gold ring with a .63 carat diamond .. I got a thump when I
asked why it wasn't a full carat! It's quite nice, I don't think I'd have
picked any different myself .. I never really thought about it .. didn't think
I had to :}