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  <title>bubbles_66</title>
  <subtitle>bubbles_66</subtitle>
  <author>
    <name>bubbles_66</name>
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  <updated>2005-06-13T22:11:14Z</updated>
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  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:bubbles_66:1694</id>
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    <title>10 slices of toast &amp; jam please !!!</title>
    <published>2005-06-13T22:10:26Z</published>
    <updated>2005-06-13T22:11:14Z</updated>
    <content type="html">Keavy arrived in Prague Sunday, I love see her smiling face when we have been apart for a time. I think she is starting show signs of being pregnant, its only 13 weeks so it might be my imagination. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I know she’s pregnant and I am sure she know (I think!!), and ALL our friends and acquaintances  know, but we can wait to its visible to everyone. I want people in low flying planes to look out there windows and say “is that women pregnant ?” I guess Keavy would have to be very very big for that to happen.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have Keavy in Prague with me for the next 2 weeks so we are going to make the most of it, with luck we should not have to leave the bed room until next Tuesday, ohh errr.</content>
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  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:bubbles_66:1425</id>
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    <title>When is life life.</title>
    <published>2005-06-07T23:28:17Z</published>
    <updated>2005-06-07T23:28:17Z</updated>
    <content type="html">Monday was a very special day for me and my wife Keavy (Irish for gentleness, beauty, grace ). She is pregnant with our child and Monday saw us attend the 12 week ultra sound scan.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There are a lot of mixed emotions around an event like this, excitement at seeing the life you have both created and fear that life might not be there at all. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Like most things in life it’s the waiting that gets to you, once the sonographer started the ultra sound scan we both begin to relax. Seeing the heart of our unborn child beating feels you with a over whelming connection with life and all things good in it. We had  created life, a human being, another conscious in the universe.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But when was it life ? when sperm meet egg, first cell division or when the fetus nervous system developed, when ? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don’t believe we haves souls in the biblical sense, but I do believe we are more than the sum of our parts and cognitive process. So will it be when the fetus is capable of cognitive thought ? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For me and I think Keavy there was no rational point were we could say this bundle of cells in side her was a human being. During the scan they carried out a test for Down syndrome, if it had been positive would we have elected to terminate the pregnancy  ? no probably not. But why, this is just a fetus, it is not sentient, self aware ? all true but to us, its parents it is life. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Like many couples we have given the unborn child a name, we chose Avatar meaning essences or spirit. Avatar may not be a fully sentient human being but he/she is the essence of one, Avatar feels the universe, and the universe feels Avatar.</content>
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  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:bubbles_66:1194</id>
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    <title>bubbles_66 @ 2005-06-06T01:38:00</title>
    <published>2005-06-05T23:38:30Z</published>
    <updated>2005-06-05T23:38:30Z</updated>
    <content type="html">&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=507034"&gt;View Poll: #507034&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:bubbles_66:746</id>
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    <title>Guess who's come to dinner</title>
    <published>2005-06-05T00:33:55Z</published>
    <updated>2005-06-05T15:56:36Z</updated>
    <content type="html">Free of my soul and anything else that I felt could hold me back I felt I could really take on corporate life, become a real player. I was comfortable on the poll, I knew the rules, my face was known, I had arrived. But then something happened, something unexpected, I started to feel how should I put it, fake. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would set in meetings and hear talk of strategy and tactical advantage and I would find myself smiling, smiling at how seriously we all took ourselves as if we were saving the world instead of actual sucking the life out of it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But how could this be ? surely soulless as I was this could not happen but it was. Suddenly I felt stupid, like a school boy caught peeking in the girls changing rooms, I had had my fun but now I was embarrassed. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And that’s when it dawned on me what had happened, some how when I least expected it my soul had found me again. It must have escaped from its jar and tracked me down, like a 500lb bomb it dropped on me from a great height it exploded with the words I AM BACK. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My soul was angry, it could not excuse me for what I had become and it had remembered all to clearly what I hoped to be. Suddenly I found myself thinking of all those ideals I once had, try to make difference, friends and family before work, the belief that god or no god the universe is an amazing place. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That’s when I knew I had to just let go of this poll I had become so attached too, just lean back, release my grip and fall. Fall back to that place I had started from, the place where I could see the corporate world for what it is.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So this is where I am now, living in the corporate world trying to summon the courage to walk away but its hard, oh so hard. You become used to the life style, travel, perks, the money!!. I know its not going to be easy but I am willing to try if not for my sake, for the sake of my unborn child and the soul mate who has walked beside me for the last 12 years. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the words of Vigil. “It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.”&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I start to climb..</content>
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  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:bubbles_66:419</id>
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    <title>I can see my house from here</title>
    <published>2005-06-04T01:46:40Z</published>
    <updated>2005-06-04T01:57:27Z</updated>
    <content type="html">It was my birthday last week, I turned 39 the last one before the big 40. I don’t know why we say its big, a 1000 is much bigger number but I guess that not a birthday many of us are destined to celibate, unless your Cliff Richard.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At 39 I did not expect to be living Prague anticipating be a dad for the first time. The truth is I was not sure what I would be doing at 39. Its not that I have drifted, I always had a basic idea of what I wanted to do ether an engineer, electronics and such or a solider, firing high velocity rounds at complete strangers.  I decided in the end engineering would be safer as it has less chance of complete strangers firing high velocity rounds at back.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So after a couple of false starts and small amount of drifting mostly done around the impromptu camp site at Stonehenge I became an engineer. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As time moved slowly on so did I, screaming and kicking at first. I vowed never to sell my soul, never to bow in front of the altar of big business. I could see the greasy poll for what it was, fake, a false God… slippery.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But humans are curious creatures and after standing at the base of the poll for some time I began to wonder,  would it be that bad if a climbed just a little way up ?, how greasy was it ?, could I see my house from the top ? So navigating the pile of broken souls and lost dreams at the base of the poll I begin to climb.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At first the climbing was hard, I felt awkward like a baby rhino on tight rope expecting any second to fall. But then something starts to happen !! your confidence grows, you start to like the view as you get higher, but most importantly you learn how to climb… Tricks like putting you ear to the poll to capture that all important snippet of info you can use to make the guy in front jump, or using the person below you as a rest or the one above as a climbing aid. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It was this point  I released souls are like old men, they need love and care, laugher, the touch of an old friend and the occasional medications. Most important you don’t take old men to place were the air is rare and its very rare on the greasy poll.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You don’t notice it at first, souls don’t complain much, they just start to slow down the higher you go. They respond less quickly and it becomes hard for them to react to things they use to love and enjoy. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And when the sound of your soul gasping and coughing becomes to much you decide to place it somewhere out of site, not safe, just out of site. I decided to put mine in small jar, I don’t think I even put any air holes in the top!!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then one day, one fateful day as you climb the poll desperate to find any advantage you decide to jettison anything you don’t need, and that when you do it .. as you throw off friends, family, dreams, you find that poor gasping old man and let him go and you don’t even look him in the eye when you do it. And down he falls.          &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So now your free, a lean mean corporate back stabbing machine, you can do anything, no one can stop you, your on your way to the top.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;So 39.. never imagined it, who dose.</content>
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