That good eh?

Hopefully the weekend will improve things.

Working from home today - or supposed to be. I finished a couple of Big Things at the end of last week and am really struggling to get stuck into any one of the dozen other things that are on my list now.

I’ve deleted a lot of photos and sorted the recycling though. I’ll be sharpening pencils soon…

I did get out and do a bat monitoring session last night - part of the national waterway survey in August each year - without getting wet. There were a few pipistrelles about and a couple of noctules and serotines passing by, but no Daubenton’s which is what this particular survey is looking for.

Today will be getting the chores out of the way then - if the rain shows any chance of dying down - out to an open air Shakespeare this evening. It will be ‘Exit pursued by a very damp bear.’ I expect.

Tomorrow: third attempt to get these shelves up. It has been postponed twice so far.

Sounds blissful to me. I can’t recall the last time I had a complete weekend reading.

They always say that you should stack up everything that you think you’ll need and then put half of it back in the wardrobe. The problem is working out which half, of course.

Hope it all goes well anyway and that you have a good time.

Another week to recover - yes, I often feel the same!

The play is A Winter’s Tale so a bit odd for the time of year, but the weather might be fitting…

Hope that you get through the day OK one way or another.

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Rosetta Stone …or Shibboleth???

One of those mornings where the fruit, the cereal AND the milk all ran out while getting breakfast, so the worktop was strewn with open boxes and containers and debris by the time I had filled a bowl. Plus the other half’s usual morning tea wasn’t there so I had to guess which of the dozen other fruit or herbal teas would be acceptable.

And then, we had had a new food and milk delivery thing and they had left it all (how many boxes? can we really eat all that? what the hell are half of these things?) over by the woodshed, and it’s raining, so a damp two-part excursion to retrieve it - and I needed some of that milk.

All before I had actually eaten anything or fully woken up.

Stuff going to work. I just want to get back under the duvet now.

It’s my SO’s birthday tomorrow, so we are off out to her chosen museum followed by a meal - and, apparently, potentially picking up a chest of drawers in between.

Nothing much lined up for Sunday, but I have agreed to do a mock interview for a friend sometime in the next few days. The real one is on Weds.

Some might say the lawn needs mowing again, but with rain a foregone conclusion, that’s out of the question now. What a pity.

Pizza tonight, putting up shelves and then a meal out tomorrow night. Anything else will depend on the weather.

I don’t know how widely it is being distributed, but I went to see a 50th anniversary remastered version of Rudolph Nureyev’s Don Quixote (1973) over the weekend. I know pretty much nothing about ballet, but it was very impressive.

I also saw You Hurt My Feelings (2023) which was a thoughtful one about support and truth in relationships that prompted some discussion afterwards, as this kind of film should.

TV: Shane Meadows’ The Gallows Pole: This Valley Will Rise - teetering on the edge of farce at times, but definitely entertaining; The Righteous Gemstones - season 3 continues the saga of the awful OTT family and still does the trick; Ruby Speaking - really wasn’t sure about this, but surprisingly entertaining.

Yup - and rebooted everything else too - and the router again just now. Upload speed seems fine, but download is appalling. It was slow last night but even worse now. I think I need to speak to my ISP.

• I have a cold. Not terrible, but it’s there.
• We had a power cut yesterday and the internet has been slooooow since then - no idea why.
• Last batch of updates on an old Linux Mint laptop has borked the resolution.

So, I guess that I am looking forward to getting all those resolved.

Oh yes, and my SO’s birthday present delivery is delayed too. Still a couple of weeks though, so hopefully not too long.

So that’s my Monday morning moan.

There are plenty of things that still need doing around the house and garden, but stuff it. I am going for a hike on a footpath that have not so far done since moving here.

The forecasts are saying that the rain should hold off until this evening at least and I am feeling virtuous 'cos I mowed the lawn after work yesterday and sorted out the drivers for the server so that the wifi is working properly and there aren’t powerline blocks and cables trailing around any more.

emergency repairs don’t consider shit water backing into your shower an emergency….

The local water authority would probably take a different view, so you could give them a call - or let the HA know that you feel duty bound to…

I typically use Faith in Nature shower gels and get refills. I’ll often go for aloe vera or teatree or similar, neither of which have much of a smell at all, but they do a blue cedar, I think it is, and a lavender and geranium which are both pleasant and rather more noticeable. The l&g is a bit too floral for my preference though.

To be honest, I will often just go with whatever the refill shop I am passing next happens to have to hand these days, which is quite often not Faith in Nature at all.

Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones is probably one of the highlights at the moment. The characters continue to be as awful as ever with Edi Patterson’s Judy having a particularly good arc at the moment.

Otherwise the first episode of Jayde Adams’ Ruby Speaking was enjoyable, despite some poor reviews. I will be giving it another look.

I have just finished Silo, which was the best dark SF for a while, and I am very happy to have Strange New Worlds back: lighter SF and my other highlight at the mo. The season opener was a bit wobbly, but the two eps since have definitely been winners.

I have a day full of a single meeting. There is an outside chance that it will be quite interesting, but I fear that it’ll probably just be a frustrating slog.

Tomorrow I will be fixing my Plex and Calibre server, which won’t currently boot. I don’t think that I have lost any data/media, which are all on external drives, but may need to swap the system drive out and re-install. Until them we are living like savages, huddled around a single hard drive plugged straight into the TV.