YESSS!!!
I met my deadline!
The backstory is, one of our very senior researchers is increasingly old and frail and has been in the hospital for the last three months. Naturally, being the academic type, she used the time to write this book and the corresponding display. She has just returned to work a few hours a day and is there any way I could get it all laid out by the 11th?
I may be a weasel, but I’m not a monster.
I won’t say it was fun chasing a deadline, but it does feel good not to let an old skill fade away.
Nothing would do but a glass of my lucky whisky. Have a good weekend, everyone!
p.s. the big-ass lens flare is because it was out of focus and I was too lazy to get up and retake the photo. I have booze to drink, you know!
August 11, 2023 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 5
Phew!
Not only did I finish a first draft of the layout – which means I’m going to make my deadline, even if I skitter around the corner on two wheels – but the company bought me a copy of Microsoft Office for home.
I know what you’re thinking – Microsoft Anything is shit. And so it is. But I’ve been sitting in front of it for 40 years now(!) and I kinda know how things work, even if I have to kick them in the shins from time to time.
The open source substitutes like Libre Office and Open Office do a really good job mimicking the function of Office, but I’ve struggled for years with compatibility issues trying to take documents back and forth from home to work. Objects disappear or move or crash. They don’t play nice together.
They didn’t buy Office for this project, by the way – they bought it to get into an Access database. So I’m unsure whether to work on the book with this software – the version I have at work is 2007. Do I trust it to be backward compatible? The clock is running out…
p.s. Ooo! It’s fun to have an up-to-date version! I’ve been fiddling with the fonts in Outlook all afternoon.
p.p.s. Who you calling sad?
August 8, 2023 — 6:18 pm
Comments: 11
I swore I’d never do this again
When I did a lot of deadline-driven work, I had a terrible habit of taking on jobs that were simply impossible in the time given. Sometimes procrastination was involved, so it was my fault. Sometimes, I overpromised what I was capable of, so I guess that was my fault, too.
Okay, fine. It’s my fault.
I always succeeded, somehow. Mostly through sheer terror of the shame of failure. But I swore I’d never put myself through it again.
Anyway, I was all, like, “sure I can lay out a book in four days. And take the photos? Of course. The copy isn’t finalized yet? No problem, just dribble it to me. Announce it ahead of time in the local paper? Swell!”
So, while I run in circles yipping, please enjoy some trivia. This stamp, as you may know, is a Penny Black – the world’s first postage stamp. And because it was first, England is the only country in the world that doesn’t have to put the name of their country on a stamp.
If you find a stamp without country information, it’s English.
Now, excuse me. Expect me scarce and terrified.
August 7, 2023 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 4
Add title
Rather interesting article today on Going Postal about Tollund Man.
Actually, the article is about an old archaeology series on the BBC, available via iPlayer, which I haven’t watched myself yet. You might be able to watch it for your ownself if your VPN is set to the UK and you swear you’re British and have paid for a TV license.
They do ask. Yes we have :(
Anyway, among the revelations are horned helmets. I’m sure I’ve always read there were no horned helmets in antiquity.
Changing the subject, I’ve had a good look at Google Images headshots and I don’t think Possum Lady is Porno Lady. I think they both used a common theatrical alias and when Possum lady discovered this – lovable scamp that she is – she leaned into it.
Right. I brought some work home. If I don’t want to booger my Saturday, I better hop to it. Have a good weekend!
August 4, 2023 — 6:56 pm
Comments: 6
How did I miss this little detail?
Some Vegetable sent me a link to this video. Why yes – that’s Dylan Mulvaney with the Possum Lady. She uploaded it last month, but it must have been made some time ago. Mulvaney looks relatively sane there.
If you get to the point you looked saner wearing floppy ears and pretending to be a possum, you probably took a very wrong turn somewhere.
Anyway! I discovered Possum Lady channel (and her website) during lockdown and it afforded me many a happy hour of wholesome chuckles. I wrote at the time:
The lady goes by Georgette Spelvin, a famous pseudonym from American theater history. All anyone knows is she’s a woman of a certain age who lives in Southern California and has a bunch of rescue squirrels and possums.
It was Georgina Spelvin, actually, and Wikipedia has helpfully added this observation to the article: “‘Georgina Spelvin’ has fallen out of general use since it was adopted as a screen name by pornographic actress Shelley Graham, who was credited by that name in The Devil in Miss Jones.”
Whu-hu-hu-huat? Possum Lady is a porn star?! That porn star?
Let me tell you a story. When I was in my freshman year in art school, I and three of my friends went to see The Devil in Miss Jones. We had more or less just met, just turned 18, all newly minted grownups out on the town and we thought, Why not? Why not go see a hardcore porn movie in the theater?
It was in a proper theater, not a porn theater, because it was regarded as an art film. Do you know what makes a porno an art film? Everyone’s having sex, but nobody’s having fun. It’s grubby and ugly and everyone’s miserable.
Not something to see with your new little friends. ‘Bout died of cringe.
August 2, 2023 — 7:53 pm
Comments: 8
Pimpin’ out the hens…
Another weekend, another church fête. This one is small but good; we went for the first time last year.
In attendance was a chicken rescue – the kind that rehabilitates battery hens.
I’ve got to do this some day. If you ever need a pick-me-up, go to YouTube and search “battery hens first” – you’ll get videos of the first time a rescue hen sees the sun or walks on grass or has a dust bath. It’s so inspirational.
In fairness to the farmers, they sell of rescue hens at the time of their first molt. Every chicken in the world – even the most cherished family pet – looks like shit during a molt. Half naked, grumpy and depressed.
Anyway, they were offering chicken cuddles in return for a donation. I didn’t want a cuddle – who wants to hold a common old ISA brown when I have exotic chickens I can hold for free? – but I did want to give them some money. Just as I did, a little boy walked by with his mom and lit up like a Christmas tree, so I said he could have my chicken cuddle. Pictured above.
Chicken keepers reproduce like drag queens – by drawing the young into our squalid fetishes.
It was only later I realized the lady at the rescue thought I was trying to foist my roosters off on her, when I complained about my cockerel flock.
July 31, 2023 — 7:11 pm
Comments: 4
Ahhh…
Today was the last dry day for a while (and it was rainy in the morning). So instead of sitting around inside pecking at a keyboard, we have elected to light the firebowl and sit in the garden drinking wine. It’s a Friday thing.
Why, yes – we are using an upturned bucket as a table. Pure class. Have a good weekend!
July 28, 2023 — 7:37 pm
Comments: 7
First of the season
I’ve got one tomato (Uncle B ate one of the ones in the picture), a dozen radishes and two onions. Do you think I can make a soup out of that, or would it be intolerably spicy?
This isn’t at all what I was going to post about tonight. I was going to post about getting out of a chair and how I’m finding it increasingly difficult (I know, I know…it comes to us all). I was going to ask if you think it’s waning leg strength, core strength or arm strength.
But in casting around the internet, I’ve discovered “getting out of a chair” YouTubes are a real genre. I’ve been watching people get into and out of chairs all evening. Then I’ve been imitating them getting into and out of chairs.
Fun.
I won’t say I’ve found the perfect technique, but I’ve learned some interesting tips and given my thigh muscles some exercise. Which has helped. All the methods seem to start by schooching out to the edge of your seat.
And it’s the leg muscles, mostly.
July 26, 2023 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 14
Huh.
I won this bottle of whisky at a church fête on Saturday. That’s right – the Church of England promotes drinking and gambling.
Someone came around just before they called the raffle to sell a few more tickets. I hadn’t bought any, so I bought one. I like whisky just fine. Then I said what the heck and bought a second one. I won on the second one.
Funny thing – I knew I was going to win. I was sure of it. So sure I walked up to stand next to the person calling the numbers.
When I got back to where Uncle B was sitting, he said, “I knew you were going to win.”
Weird. I don’t get premonitions. When I do, it would be over a £15 bottle of Aldi whisky.
July 24, 2023 — 5:50 pm
Comments: 7
Not my attic, not my water tank
You’re an accepting bunch – only Tim Carlson wondered how my toilet inlet pipe might have become full of bees. This calls for more Adventures in English Plumbing.
The thing above is a water storage tank and, until recently, most British homes had one in the attic. It stores water used to fill the bath or flush the toilet (cooking water uses the mains).
I’ve heard several reasons why this is. For places where the water pressure is low. To give a supply if the mains water is ever cut off. To prevent problems if everyone in London flushes at once. There is some discussion here.
Well, ours is very like unto this one. You’ll notice there is no lid.
Think on that. Five hundred years of dust, vermin, cobwebs and the skeletons of mad first wives wafting around. When we found out there was no lid, we took to calling it rat water.
We’re not sure if the bathroom sinks fill from the tank. Uncle B – being a far more fastidious sort of person – wisely takes fresh water up from the kitchen to brush his teeth. I’m lazy. I brush my teeth in potential rat water and try not to think about it.
You may or may not recall that we also have a colony of bees in the attic. Been there for years. We consulted with bee people and a neighbor who also had attic bees and the only option for getting rid of them is to fog the attic with poison.
Not keen on the idea of poison finding its way through the cracks in the house and into me. The best advice was to cohabit with them. Worst case, honey drips down the inglenook some years and they swarm around the chimney all summer.
Also, drown and get sucked into the toilet inlet. Have a good weekend!
July 21, 2023 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 16