The ones that don’t land
I have an Early Bird Special story. When I was working corporate in the States, there was a shopping center next door that had various eateries and office supply stores. That kind of thing. It had a restaurant popular with the Early Bird Special crowd and we were accustomed to see it lit up with wrinklies first thing in the morning.
I’d gone over for…staples or some shit before work and I was walking back across this very parking lot. Wearing my novelty CORONER t-shirt.
Oh, dear. I was approached by a small group of tiny nervous grandmas and asked if there was a problem. TBH, I felt genuinely shit about it and never wore that shirt again. The things you think are funny when you’re 25.
I’m sure there’s AI that will be able to identify this parking lot in the next six months. I had a real Google Maps adventure finding it myself. Dumber than AI, me.
It seems as though my old company has sold off quite a lot of what used to be a big campus. I know they’re not hurting for money so it must be a strategic financial decision.
Another evening lost exploring Google Maps. It’s even more fun in VR!
Oh, yeah – our internet is fixed.
April 23, 2024 — 7:55 pm
Comments: 4
She took her time, didn’t she?
Okay, I can put up with thirty years of it, but after that? I am done!
Actually, I think most of those advice letters are fake. At least, the ones in porn magazines are – I know somebody who used to write them.
Meanwhile, they tell us it could be Thursday before our internet is back. Because they have to use a cherry picker on a busy road, they have to do a survey first. I think it has to do with who controls the road (the county council or the Highways Agency). I am unclear.
All’s I know is, my YouTube addiction is on hold while we pay per byte. Good weekend, everyone!
April 19, 2024 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 6
Help a weasel out
I have reached a state of spiritual purity: I no longer desire material things. This is a problem because my birthday is next month and Uncle B is pestering me for ideas.
There’s nothing big I want and anything small I want I buy as I go, so it will have to be something novel. Bought any interesting knick-knacks or gadgets lately? Nothing too dear, please.
I did the first mow of 2024 this morning. The grass was way too wet and I kept having to pull wads of clogged vegetation from under the blades in a process that gives me the willies, safety release or no safety release. But it is done.
And this little puffball snoozed through it on the other side of the fence. Not so the chickens, who know for a fact lawn mowers are the very devil and the only way to ward him off is to scream and run in circles.
It still knocks me out that I can see behbeh sheep from my lawn chair.
April 10, 2024 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 8
Is it over? Did you die?
From this side of the pond, it looked like everyone in America was running in circles quacking. Why the overreaction – anyone know? Or was the news deceiving us again?
Photo from NASA.
Yesterday, we had a bumble bee stuck in Uncle B’s greenhouse. We like bees and we’re always being told how endangered they are. We had to try to free him.
Problem was, he’d gotten himself stuck under the bubble wrap that serves as insulation and it was going to be tricky to free safely (female bumblebees can sting, though rarely, the internet tells me).
I know, a soup ladle!
There I am, skipping around the greenhouse trying to scoop up a bee with a silver ladle without breaking any glass and I thought, “I don’t even know why I’m playing the Hogwarts game.”
April 8, 2024 — 6:42 pm
Comments: 11
My TV has a [Magic Explorer] button, y’all
But only when the pointer color is changed to purple, I guess. Another learning curve. Swell.
We got a new TV today. Our old Sony was rock solid, but it was 15 years old – right at the dawn of the smart TV era. It was kinda dumb. We saw an OLED running in a shop and thought…yes, please.
This somehow has a bigger screen with a smaller footprint (the Sony had a thick frame around the outside). It weighs about a third what the old one did and costs £0.19 a year to run all the time on standby.
We spent the afternoon watching 4K videos of cats and forests. Whee!
Have a good weekend. Any smart TV tips?
April 5, 2024 — 6:52 pm
Comments: 10
But I could if I wanted to
It blows me away what you can buy here. These four 18th C glass goblets have come up to auction for guide price, left to right, £300 – £500, £100 – £200, £50 – £100 and £500 – £1000. The engraved ones are naturally worth more because each is a unique work of art.
I can’t say I was even aware of 18th C glass before I moved here, but I’ve developed a real taste for it. Not sure why. If I bought these, I’d only contribute to their rarity by breaking them. I am a very clumsy woman. But it doesn’t mean I can’t window shop.
These four auction lots start here, if you’d like to see them big. Plenty of other things to enjoy in that auction too, if you poke around.
Me, I’ve been fighting technology all. day. long. I am exhaust.
April 4, 2024 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 5
My brain hates me
I woke up at 5 this morning – which, since our clocks went forward this weekend, was 4 o’clock Brain Time – and could not get back to sleep. You want to know what I was fretting about? I knew that Topeka was in Kansas and Santa Fe was in New Mexico, but where’n the heck was Atchison?
Kansas. It’s in Kansas, dear reader.
So, while we’re here, “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” was written in 1944, climbed the charts in 1945 and was used in the film The Harvey Girls in 1946, where it won an Oscar for Best Original Song (though if it had been around for two years, it’s hard to see it was original original.
If you’re looking for the earworm, here it is in the movie version with Judy Garland, which sounds curiously sluggish to me. I think it must be the Andrews Sisters version I remember.
Naturally, I don’t remember remember it.
April 2, 2024 — 6:52 pm
Comments: 6
O fabulous world!
If you guessed this was an hour-long video of an Amana washing machine doing a complete cycle taken from a channel about washing machines, you’d be completely correct.
The comments. Lordy.
If you click on the link, fair warning, you are apt to find other appliance channels appearing in your sidebar.
That’s the thing that chaps my hide: this video just appeared in my timeline. Surrounded by game demos and cat videos, up pops this Amana Direct Drive Washer – Full Casual Cycle + Extra Rinse out of the blue.
The algorithm – it knows too much.
I was promised flying cars and robot servants, but I suppose this will have to do.
March 26, 2024 — 6:48 pm
Comments: 9
Making me crazy
I’m not much of a royal watcher, but shit is just weird. This was supposed to happen last night, then any minute now all day long.
The Russkies put it out there that King Chuck was dead. Kate hasn’t been seen since Christmas, or maybe she was seen at the farm shop this afternoon looking fine.
And what is Barack Obama doing at Downing Street? Politicians this side of the pond didn’t think much of him when he was president. Has he become Klaus Schwab’s representative on earth or something?
Baffled.
March 18, 2024 — 6:43 pm
Comments: 9
I was really confused for two seconds
I was looking for a date for local elections and found some really confusing results – until I worked out there’s a town in Wisconsin called Sussex. It was founded in 1843 by a bricklayer from Beckley, a tiny town up the road from me. It must not have been incorporated until 1924, though – see the anniversary celebration.
It looks like a charming little town, with a leprechaun hunt and a village softball team. It’s probably a hotbed of neighborly intrigues and burning resentments, but heigh-ho.
They’ve ruined my theory that American small towns never call themselves villages unironically, though.
No elections in my village this year.
March 14, 2024 — 7:42 pm
Comments: 9