How much?!
Afternoon at Mickey D’s. £16.47 is $20.45. Ow. I can remember when we both ate for £5.
What’s a meal at the golden arches set you back in America these days?
I was the pig who had the Big Tasty which, I have to admit, was both big and tasty. For a McDonald’s, anyhow.
This is the second time we’ve eaten at this one in the last year. The man who drifts around wiping tables and greeting customers looks like Mike from Breaking Bad.
Older. Grizzled. Tattoo’d. Unfailingly polite. Looks like he won’t take no shit.
The thought occurred to me that he was, in fact, hired muscle. I wonder if it gets spicy at McDonald’s sometimes…?
p.s. Kitty was much better today, but went out this afternoon and has been gone for an unusually long time now. Still we worry.
p.p.s. Kitty is back. Seems fine. Hail Bast.
May 23, 2023 — 7:45 pm
Comments: 18
Flat cat
There she is, everyone – my one hen! In the absence of Spoon, this is the remains of my flock. This and three roosters. Don’t worry about her, though – she’s little and quick. She doesn’t have any unwanted chicken sex.
I’m late tonight because kitty isn’t himself and I’ve been trying to work out if he’s really ill. He was limping on his right back leg a couple of days ago, and now he’s just moving stiffly and subdued. I tried without much success to get some Metacam down his neck (kitty Ibuprofen – to my surprise, I had a bottle that was still in date).
If he’s still logy tomorrow, I’ll take him to the vet. Have to get a new cat carrier, though – the old one has been a chicken house since forever.
May 22, 2023 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 4
The white fluffy month
The farmer next door has for some reason herded his sheep from the big field behind us to the small field in front of us (they do this by driving Land Rovers at them and honking). This means lots of sheepy noises this evening.
For the record, sheep do not go baa. They go AHHHHHHHHHH! Which is pretty funny, to be honest.
May is my favorite, and not just because I indulge myself the whole month. All the various thorn trees explode into poofy white flowers (mayflowers, as it were) and the fields are full of poofy white sheep. It’s purdy.
In conclusion, AHHHHHHHHHH! Have a good weekend. The fête season starts tomorrow!
May 19, 2023 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 6
Whoa!
Did you see this? A company called Magellan used remote-controlled submersibles to take 700,000 high resolution photos of the Titanic to stitch together a complete 3D model.
They don’t say what they intend to do with it. I suppose it’s too much to ask that they put it up on Sketchfab like archaeological digs sometimes do, so I can play with it. They’re making a making of documentary, anyway.
Watch the video at the top of the BBC article, at least. Though, as usual, the Daily Mail article is more fun, including trivia about the inventory:
There were also 800 elderdown quilts, 12,000 knives and 12,000 forks, 19,000 spoons, 400 sugar basins, 500 cream jugs, 1,000 finger bowls, 12,000 cups and saucers and 1,200 teapots.
As well as the champagne, the drinks on board included 1,000 bottles of wine, 850 bottles of spirits and 150,000 bottles of beer.
Food included 75,000lbs of red meat, 25,000lbs of poultry, 11,000lbs of fresh fish, 40,000 eggs, 250 barrels of flour, 40 tons of potatoes, 800 bundles of asparagus and 36,000 apples.
Also, I was once made fun of for my spelling of whoa. Or maybe woah. I can’t remember which one I used. Anyway, I asked the internet and it told me:
Whoa is the original spelling. The spelling woah emerged more recently. The earliest evidence of woah in writing is thought to come from online message boards in the early 1980s. Indeed, the increase in the use of the spelling woah is often associated with digital communications.
May 18, 2023 — 7:01 pm
Comments: 12
Har har
Actual headline: “Council fills in potholes after residents paint penises around them”
They initially tried to scrub out the penii, but that just made the potholes worse, naturally. Oh the huffy tone of the local council. See, this put pressure on pothole repair crews, who were expected to fill different potholes that day.
This was in Uckfield, Sussex earlier this week. It’s near Piltdown. Yes, that Piltdown.
May 17, 2023 — 7:11 pm
Comments: 10
Woopsie doodle!
So you know that biofeedback dingus I bought? I bought two of them. Here’s how that happened.
I asked Ebay to show me Buy It Now listings, because it was my birthday and I wanted my toy now, now, now. The first listing to come up was £30 cheaper than anyone else. Cool I thought and entered that amount.
Turns out, it wasn’t a Buy It Now, it was an auction – with, like, seven days left on it. I ain’t waiting that long! No problem, thinks I, that’s so cheap, someone will surely outbid me in the last few minutes.
You see where this is going.
So I bought a Buy It Now and then I won the flipping auction a week later. The picture is from the listing; it’s totally that other lady’s lacy bedspread.
It’s new in box with the shrinkwrap and everything, so I’m just going to re-list it. I’ve never sold anything on Ebay, though – have you? Any tips and tricks?
May 16, 2023 — 7:22 pm
Comments: 6
What it is living in a 500 year old house, part #563
Ivy. Growing through a tiny hole in the wood of the windowsill.
I went outside and stripped the brick of all the parent ivy, but this little shoot still thrives. You know what that means, yeah? It’s living off stuff in the house.
The walls are about a foot thick and apparently solid…cement? So godnose. Some Georgian peasant probably walled up grandma.
Eh. I exaggerate. The house was built somewhere between 1505, when the first house in the neighborhood was built, and 1610, when we have a delinquent tax bill for the property. So somewhere between 413 and 518 years old. It’s a real fixer upper.
No, we don’t owe 413 years worth of interest and penalties. They forgive it after seven years.
May 15, 2023 — 6:54 pm
Comments: 6
Serenity now!
This is what I bought myself for my birthday. It’s a biofeedback dingus meditation aid. It fits across your forehead reads your brainwaves, heart rate, respiration and stillness.
Yes, somehow it knows when you fidget. I don’t know how it measures that, but I tested it and it does indeed chime at me when I twiddle my fingers.
It does seem to be accurately measuring brain activity, too. Depending on the ‘soundscape’ you choose, it plays – for example – high winds when your brain is active and gentle breezes and bird song when it’s calm. I tried counting backwards from 100 by sevens and nearly caused a tsunami.
There’s a newer model than this one, but it’s fabric and suitable to be worn overnight while you sleep. I didn’t need that and thus was able to get a new old tech version on Ebay for (relatively) cheap.
I need it today. My day started at 5 when the cat bit me and went downhill from there. Good weekend, all!
May 12, 2023 — 7:03 pm
Comments: 4
Romance is not dead
I got an angle grinder for my birthday. In fairness, I asked for it. There are some frozen bolts around the place driving me knuts.
I knew they were for cutting through bits of metal. I didn’t realize you could use them for other stuff, like polishing and deburring. I mean, not that I do all that much deburring.
Before I hit up YouTube – it’s always YouTube these days – any of y’all know any fun angle grinder tricks?
May 11, 2023 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 14
Nouveau as all get out
Check this out. It’s Mr and Mrs Kipling’s invitation to George V’s coronation in 1911. It’s a cracking thing. From the May monthly newsletter of The Keep, which is the East Sussex record archive.
I wanted to link to a bigger version for you, but I haven’t yet found it in their Kipling papers. I haven’t looked very hard.
The Keep is in a place called Falmer (if you play Skyrim you’ll know why that tickles me) near Brighton.
it’s kind of miserable to visit in person. You have to get a reader’s ticket in advance and you have to know exactly what you want to see – no browsing the collection. Staff can be rude.
But it’s fun to browse online. At least, it is if you live in Sussex. They have quite a lot of their papers digitized and searchable. Periodically, I do a search of the name of our house + the name of our parish to see what turns up. There was a man of that name in this (very small) parish in the 1820s, so that’s probably our guy.
Nothing new has turned up for a while, though. I have a feeling the gub’ment scanning money has dried up.
May 10, 2023 — 7:52 pm
Comments: 6