Reply to: test please delete

[xoggoth]

Managed to finish today's toothpaste inspection before rain got heavy. Need me phone to track location and take photos and swipe screens just don't work when they are wet. With GPS on, runs out of charge in about 2 hours thanks to that stupid Google update. Fortunately got a decent little portable charger for a whole £11.33.

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

Rainy grey day here

It’s a touch milder with it though, at 7°C which is the high for the day. The barometers are down again at 1000/1007mB. And the rain, though quite light, is expected to continue into the evening and possibly start again before sunrise

I see I didn’t remember to record last night’s viewing, so here it is: the major motion picture premiere was The Family Plan (2023) on Apple TV+, mainly because they’ve just released a sequel and that reminded me that I’d not watched the first one. This is along similar lines to Nobody but done worse: family man turns out to have previously been a secret government assassin, his past catches up with him, so he reluctantly kills everybody. The first hour tries too hard to be comedy, and fails for the most part; it could have been cut down to twenty minutes establishing the situation and getting the plot started. The second hour is a bit better, but could probably have been trimmed down by ten or fifteen minutes too. The film also seems to be suggesting that suburban American life is the best of all possible ways of living for all involved, and I have to say it seems like an absolute nightmare to me

To follow that, a rewatch of Man on a Ledge (2012) which is good, but not as good as Phone Booth

[ladymuck]

^^



Afternoon all

Dull, overcast, wet. Currently 7 degrees ('feels like' 4) and that's the high for the day. Barometer down to 1017 mBar.

Sunrise 07:31; Sunset 16:03 GMT

Lazy morning. HWMBO and I have cocktails and dinner with friends this evening. He wants to visit Forbidden Planet on the way there so we're just working out what time we'd want to leave.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Om.

So far from the Glory Days of TPD and CUK when there would have been a fierce fight for the privilege of an Om or a PALI.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Saturday.

Grey.

Dark.

Sunless.

Damp.

Dreary.

But, looking on the bright side:

Chilly in here at 13.7 deg, 11 in the kitchen, 9 in the leanto, 9 deg in the saltinghouse.

1010 mBar, 29.83 in Hg, 757.6 Torr, 14.648 psi, (down from 1019 last night), 57% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 2nd of March 2020 LM and scruff liked the moonwatch, LondonManc had a runny sandwich, Brillo popped in, NF did the Monday links, and it was hailing out of a blue sky onto me.

Was about to go for a walk but it's drizzling so screw that.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: FOOC.

Bit of the Australian customs thing: chap burst into tears when found with injectable steroid in his baggage, but all his pills were legal and there was so little steroid in the container that they just let him go, also the usual Chinese undeclared "food", sadly no frog fat, and some rawhide African drums that had to be nuked.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the wan sunshine and grey gloom. Met a woman I think used to work in Siliconix though I didn't ask if it was she.

Tea: soup etc. Nice enough.

Entertainment: PM.

Maigret.

WWII in Colour.

History's Mysteries.

Dear old Adolph's DNA again. 4+1.

Arctic coldwar thing on Alba 5/6.

[WTFH]

Morning all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been ribeye steak, fried onions, and chips

It turned out to be a thick-cut steak, though I hadn’t realised that when I bought it last week. Some antisocial customer had completely messed up the steak display, presumably searching for The One, and turned it into a lucky dip where you couldn’t be sure if the next thing you picked up would be ribeye, fillet, or sirloin. After the third attempt, I noticed there was a ribeye one shelf up with lovely marbling, so just grabbed that one without noticing its extra thickness

[NickFitz]

Shopping done!

Not-as-Big Sainsbury's seemed a bit busier than it usually is in the morning, so I don’t think I’ll be rearranging my schedule permanently

On my return, I found a further email from the management company giving more details about the ongoing watery woes. It seems it may be the stack pipe itself that’s the source of the problem, so they now have to commission an investigation of that

For lunch, I got a Pukka sausage roll, which has just finished heating up in the air fryer. So I’m going to eat that now

[NickFitz]

Just realised this was a pali! Sorry for the late acknowledgement NF

I hadn’t noticed either!

I was probably too annoyed by the disappointing flimsiness of the Netflix documentary, which had the ingredients to be a really good series if only they had a little less contempt for their viewers

[NickFitz]

Having waited in all morning, no plumber had arrived. According to the original email advising me of the matter, this meant that they might have been coming tomorrow morning instead and nobody had told me

I emailed the management company to check what was going on. It turns out they were here this morning, but it seems they found the source of the leak elsewhere so didn’t need to come into mine after all!

It would have been nice if they’d just knocked on the door or something to let me know I was off the hook

Anyway, now I know the place - well, my bit of it - isn’t about to be washed away in a flood, I’m going to pop along to Not-as-Big Sainsbury’s to do the shopping. I don’t need much, but the main thing I’m lacking is anything I fancy having for lunch, or sufficient materials for lunches next week

[ladymuck]

Tea has been cider-braised pork and chips

This was accompanied by E1 of Spycraft on Netflix, a documentary series. Unfortunately, it’s from the USA, so it’s utterly lacking in depth as they assume viewers are incapable of either taking in complex information or paying attention to any specific subject for longer than a minute or two. So they either say the same vague thing several times in different ways (“drones let agencies look at things from the sky”), presumably hoping one of them will stick, or they start talking about something interesting (the Thing, various US covert operations from the Cold War) but they don’t stay with it for more than a couple of minutes, during which time they’ve imparted about as much information as you’d expect to get from the first couple of paragraphs of an article on the subject

Just realised this was a pali! Sorry for the late acknowledgement NF

[ladymuck]

It's cold in my little office. I've had to put the fan heater on, in addition to having a blanket over my legs.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Friday.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky with high cloud.

Cold in here at 13 deg, 10 deg in the kitchen, 4 deg in the leanto, 1 deg in the saltinghouse.

1023 mBar, 30.2 in Hg, 767.3131 Torr, 14.837 psi, (up from 1019 last night), 48% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 2nd of March 2020 LM got wet on the way to work but the barbour jacket worked well, scruff popped in, along with Churchill and NF, whilst WTFH was looking at watches again, whereas I found a nice reference to the 1918 flu.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the sunshine. Still took 3 miles before I could feel my fingers again.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: more wailing & gnashing of teeth on R4. Woe! Woe! and Thrice Woe! The End is Nigh!

Tea: chilli con carne and rice. Getting more difficult to get the rice down my throat these days.

Entertainment: PM.

The Nazi programme: S7 E1 Barbarossa.

Taggart S3 E1,2,3 "The killing philosophy". The crossbow murders one.

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Clear sky, sunny. Cold. Currently 1 degree ('feels like' -2) with a high of 5 expected. Barometer up to 1027 mBar.

Sunrise 07:30; Sunset 16:04 GMT

Slept well, woke up feeling more awake than I have for much of this week. That won't last, of course.

Last day of work for a few days. HWMBO and I are off gallivanting for three days next week. Only 6 flights coming up: a 90 minute visit to Dubai, and an afternoon in Warsaw.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Sunny start today, but cold with it: -1°C (no “feels like” specified) now, and a high of 4° later. It’ll be slightly milder over the weekend, in the sense of not dipping below freezing. The barometers are ebullient, being up to 1014/1023mB