Well I've gone and done it. I've set myself up a brand spanking new blog.

Please come and visit from time to time. I'll be checking back in on you crazy kids regularly.

Thanks to everyone who read emer_the_lemur. It's been an important part of my life for a long time, and I feel close to anyone who has shared it with me.

And with that, *ping* Cornelious disappeared.

I'm back after an uncharacteristically long livejournal break. I went to post once or twice and I couldn't. Even my last post was decidedly half-arsed. I have had this livejournal for over 5 years. It charts every bad date, every break-up, every delicious decent into love or lust, countless drug and alcohol fuelled weekends, numerous crap and badly paid jobs, the shows I've been in, the friends I've made, the mind-blowing experience that was my arts degree, the disillusionment that was was my masters, my acceptance to do this PhD, all the little highs, all the inevitable lows, and a whole lot of mundane shit inbetween. I suppose I could sum it up like this: changes of address and changes of heart, fleshed out by time and place and circumstance.

When I started keeping this journal I couldn't play guitar or use semi-colons. I had the long blond hair of my childhood. I had a skinny little frame and no menstrual cycle. I knew nothing and felt everything. I still write crap poetry and have a Joni Mitchell habit, but y'know, I'm different.

I don't know how much I have to say here anymore. Mayhaps this is just a whim and I'll be back on the livejournal wagon within a week, but yeah, I've been a-pondering, and I think it might be time to start a new blog somewhere else.

I'll keep ye posted.

I gave my second ever lecture. It was on postcolonialism. It was nerve-wracking, and then it was over, and now it's an accomplishment.

My lover came to stay for six days. We had fun. Then he was gone. I was sad for a bit , but  I'm okay again now.

So far today I've written some stuff. Now I'm going to read some stuff. Then I have a meeting. Then I need to draw up a lesson plan. Then I need to review a book review and send it to my editor who will proceed to review my review of the book review. Then I need to tidy my bedroom.

Wednesday. Hump Day. If I were in Paris with Mari and Agnes we would be going for crepes and it would be wonderful.

I need to make something that isn't writing or I'll turn grey and cardboardy and soggy.

I just work and work and get fuck all done. How can it be taking me this long to write a lecture? Why did the editor of the journal that I worked my ass off for all last week snap at me today when I told her I needed to wrap up our two and a quarter hour long meeting? Because she's really not very nice, that's why. I have an advisory session next week and I have written nothing since my last advisory session which was in January. I don't know how I'm going to explain my way out of that one. I suppose I'll just have to work like a mo'fo' between now and then to have something to show the grown-ups. I am covered in spots. Like covered. My fringe was all in my eyes but I didn't have time to go to the hairdresser, so I cut it myself and now it looks ridiculous. The second keynote speaker for the symposium I'm organizing expressed his interest then neglected to confirm his attendance and I keep getting his out-of-office when I e-mail him. I am tired. I am cranky. I am frustrated. I am a PhD student.

My lover is coming tomorrow. I'll probably end up being horrible to him and then he wont love me any more. Or else he'll see my spots and fringe and shrink from my hideousness.

I saw Watchmen. It wasn't as good as it should have been, but it wasn't as bad as the purists make out. I enjoyed it, not as much as I enjoyed the book, but I enjoyed it.

On Saturday morning I bought myself flowers from Tesco. When I got home I had the house to myself. I went out into the garden and cut a few camelias. I came back inside and put on some music. I took all the flowers out of their wrapping and removed the greenery I didn't want. I chewed or snipped the stem ends so they would drink up all their plant food and stay beautiful for longer. I made two arrangements. I took my time. I made one in a patterned ceramic jug. I matched the shades of the flowers to the pattern on the jug. I put long stiff delicately flowering pink and purple stalks at the back, bulked up the front with yellows, whites and greens, and allowed the camelia's to curl, pretty, pink and petally, out from the sides. It flowed. I don't think I've ever made a lovelier flower arrangement. The second one was more sparse and unusual. I used thick juicy stemmed flowers. They wouldn't all fit it a vase, so I used a pint glass, which allowed them to spread out. I built the whole thing up around greens in the middle. I made a circle of tall purple flowers around that, then punked the ordered elegance with a spray of yellow carnations, a large dyed pink daisy and one small headed skinny rose. I put the arrangements in the sitting room, the one in the jug beside the fireplace, and the one in the pint glass beside the television. Every time I looked at them they made me happy.

When I got home last night I found that Fi, thinking to herself 'these should go in a vase, not a pint glass, oh look they don't fit in a vase, I'll take half of them out then' had taken everything except the purple flowers from the first arrangement. She put the purple flowers in a tall vase, then she shoved the other flowers in on top of the first arrangement, squishing it all into awkward clumsy ugliness. I nearly cried. I genuinely nearly cried.

I just got a call to say that my wonderful friend Brian is coming to stay with me this evening! Brian! Eeeeeee! I love surprises.

Support the people of Northern Ireland in their efforts to restore peace

www.petitiononline.com/peaceni/petition.html

Fuck the IRA.

Three guilty days late,
Lemur hunts for excuses,
Shamefacéd, finds none.

First you tell me I'm your coco baby,
Then you tell me I'm a butcher boy,
Then you tell me that you been around,
But you never done nothing wrong.

This is the trampoline of psychological disorders and you are Narcissistic 2.

When we hitched out to the countryside
It felt like the Galway city kids inside of us had died.
We had to play couple in the local pub,
And I played guitar
And you played cards
And you even won.

Florescence flickered in the haze above
And in the polluted bay,
And it felt as though I should
So I said what it felt right to say.

Missing red velvet on summer nights;
Ya know I love ya right?

O darling there will always be traces.

I didn't know that lies could turn into truth,
Didn't know I'd be on the radio singing to you.

I swear if you dare to harm her,
I'll find the chink in your armour,
Fuck your tears and you ardour,
I'll hurt you then hurt you harder.

If I stole these lyrics come and get them.
If I stole these lyrics come and get them.
If I stole these lyrics come and get them, yeah.

Watching Ireland beat England at rugby is even better when you're watching the game in England surrounded by big miserable rugger bugger Brits. I don't know why, but it is.

I went to a postgraduate seminar on Marxism Today. Not today. It was on Marxism Today, but it was last week. That can be read allegorially. Soooo last week. That said, apparently there's been a surge in the sales of Das Capital recently, what with all the polititians helping their banking buddies out and leaving everybody else to languish in Dole queues. I enjoyed the Marxism Today seminar. Everyone was very well informed and passionate. It was at the London School of Economics. Afterwards we went to a posh bar for drinks.

Yesterday I gardened for most of the day. Weeded and pruned roses. There were a few crocus and snowdrop casualties, but it's best to get the dandelion roots up, isn't it? It was my first venture into the world of horticulture since I don't know when. Probably since I was a child. I like to imagine that I have inherited my Granny's green fingers, and that some day I'll have a garden like hers with a tomato filled greenhouse and every sort of a flower.

I went to see a play called Shunkin a little while ago at The Barbican. It was Japanese historical S&M with puppets. It wasn't as good as everyone in the audience seemed to think it was.

I've been having a lot of 'I'm stupid and everything I write is crap' days recently. They seem to have replaced 'I'm fat and ugly' days.

My Mammy called to tell me that our dog is pregnant. They're not sure who the daddy is. I suspect that Penny (the dog) sneaked off with Thyona (the cat) for ovum-fusing implantation treatments. Puppens! Yay!

Seriously though, those two are constantly engaged in cross-species gender neutral sexual relations, and remember Jurassic Park? Life finds a way. Oooh, I hope Penny's not having dinosaurs.