test please delete

[NickFitz]

Shopping done!

I waited until around 13:00 but the poor Corolla was still a block of ice, despite the ambient temperature being up to 1°C and it having been in direct sunlight for at least an hour. Despite that, it started first turn of the key! And then… sputtered and died

I figured this was just due to the cold and cranked it again, and it took a few seconds but then it fired up and ran OK after that. So I left it warming up while I went round scraping all the windows.

Traffic was bad going across town to Big Sainsbury's, but it gave the car plenty of opportunity to warm up properly. Once the shopping was done it started first time again, and also after I'd filled up.

So although I still think there's a possibility the solenoid on the starter motor may be on the way out, the car seems OK for now

Lunch has been a couple of garlic and herb chicken thighs from the still-slightly-warm food counter, with a bag of plain crisps

And when I went down to the car, I scattered a load of mixed nuts in their shells (walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts) over where the squirrels seemed to be concentrating their attentions, and a load of peanuts in their shells over where the corvids had been hanging out shortly before, as apparently they like them and can easily get into the shell. Unless the crows and magpies came back sharpish, the squirrels will have had those too I expect. But with luck everybody got something suitable

[DoctorStrangelove]

^^^ Millenni Om

[NickFitz]

Tea has been spag bol

This was accompanied by Trucking Hell, the last of the extant episodes. I'll have to find something else to watch

It feels like it's been quite a productive day, all in all. This morning I dug into some SpriteKit/Gameplaykit stuff. Then I got the shopping done. And after that, back to the game stuff and tried a new approach to an idea I'd been mucking around with, which worked even better than expected! So that was gratifying

[WTFH]

Mad Max the Spannerhead was at the vet today for a routine check up. He’s now up to the correct weight for an ESS, but is more muscular and lower fat levels than average. He’s also got an umbilical hernia which probably needs an operation to fix. Apart from that, The Wife is leaving me tomorrow*


TFBSZ



*she’s off on a “work” trip to the Caribbean for 10 days.

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was The Card Counter (2021) which was good, but very, very bleak

Early night now as I have to go to the dental hygienist in the morning

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

Morning all

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Fog! Thick (by local standards) fog out there this morning!

Freezing fog too, as it's currently-5°C, and today's expected high is -1°. The barometers are up though, at 1017/1025mB

I'm going to have to leave for the dentist's quite early, as I need to de-ice the car then cautiously navigate across town; I expect this fog is even thicker down by the river, which I have to cross to get there

[xoggoth]

Off to me volunteer thing in woods. If not here tomorrow I probably froze to death.

Bah! Couldn't make it as couldn't close me driver door. Hopefully just mechanism frozen up and not an actual fault.

[NickFitz]

Dentistry done, and home again!

The car started first time, and didn't splutter and die either. And the frost was very easy to clear compared to yesterday, when it had a thin layer of quite hard ice on the glass. I assume that's from previous frosts thawing and refreezing but as the glass was all clear and dry yesterday, this morning's frost just came away at the touch of the scraper

On the way over, I discovered that there's an association football match today. They close the road past the stadium when that happens but I was early enough that they hadn't done so yet, so maybe it was a good thing that the appointment got changed

Normally I can park close to the surgery, but nobody in the surrounding streets had ventured out of their homes this morning, so all the parking spaces were taken by still-frosty cars that live there. I ended up by the park a few streets away; only a two minute walk, though it still seems like a terrible imposition

Coming back, I popped into Iceland and got some Greggs stuff

And so home, and back in time for Monkey Life!

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Saturday.

Dry.

Grey.

Wanly sunny.

Chilly in here at 9.8 deg, 8 deg in the kitchen,7 deg in the leanto.

1026 mBar, 30.297 in Hg, 769.6 Torr, 14.88 psi, (up from 1019 last night), 55% RH.

Meanwhile on the 19th of December 2019, those long gone days of innocence, DaveB had left over chilli for lunch whilst I had chilli out of the freezer for tea, followed by eps of Angel S5 of which I had no recall whatever, whereas NF found it unusually dark, cold & wet.

Oxfam book donation trip to Swansea: X5 down (including an extra trip around a roundabout when the driver thought he was driving an X7) and X7 back with a driver who knew he wasn't driving an X5.

Lunch: brunch.

Entertainment: bits of The News Quiz and the 13 o'clock news <click>.

Walk (unabbreviated) walked. Quite gloomy though it was very sunny earlier.

Tea: soup: couldn't be arsed to do anything else.

Entertainment: PM.

Book. Other book. Other other book. Book.

Last 40 minutes of "Contact (1997)".

Massive Engineering Mistakes: Italian Bridge collapse 2018: covering steel cables with concrete isn't A Good Idea, even though it lasted half a century before killing 43 people. But hey! they died on tv. Bridgeport Connecticut L'Ambience collapse: poring the roof slab first then jacking it up isn't altogether A Good Idea, especially if you're one of the 28 fatalities. The Heron Road Ottawa bridge disaster: lack of diagonal bracing in the falsework: 9 killed 57 injured. Sydney opera house: poor acoustics.


A shot of that Aldi Single malt: nice enough, followed by a shot of Gran Marnier. Very nice enough. Nearly seeing double now (it doesn't take much).