2007 — 15 Apr: Radiating minor wetness
The new radiator may be unholey, but it's still oozing water1 gently onto Junior's carpet and
the mess will be unholy
if left to its own faulty devices. This may therefore mean postponing our planned camera-toting trip to see the new batch of cygnets in Abbotsbury later today. (I
recall on our last trip there at this time of year they had road signs up saying "To the baby swans".) They also had precisely one flamingo, but that's a bird
with a difference of opinion!2
Newsflash: our plumber actually rang us a few minutes ago, and has left his 5-year-old's birthday present unwrapping to come and
drain, tighten, and re-fill whatever it is that plumbers drain, tighten, and re-fill on these occasions. We had collected about an inch of
evidence for him. What a blessing to have a dry sense of humour. The dripping is over; let the (hot tank) bleeding begin. It seems we have a
fair amount of air in the system to get rid of in days to come.
Happier topic: if you recall those two recent acquisitions:
- The Holiday turned out drearily, and we headed for home within 40 minutes, but
- Stranger than fiction is a complete delight from first frame to last. I even sat through all the extras (which is why it's now after one a.m. [there were lots]), and I predict I will be watching it again fairly soon.
We spent enough on the plumbing, of course, to render any further shopping rather unlikely for a bit!
Right. Time to turn my attention to the weekly snailmail to dear Mama. While I do that, why not amuse yourself with this amazing tale from the CIA? Or, failing that, you could spend a couple of minutes pondering (scroll a little) this thoughtful view of the late Neville Duke.
Oops!
I fear an attack of the rhetoricals. I (quite accidentally) allowed the iMac's power supply to be cut (She who must be adored noticed before I did) and I now find I have "done something" to what had been my system default web browser (Safari). It starts up, and announces itself both by its icon bouncing up and down merrily on the Dock a couple of times and by its main menu bar along the top of the screen. The only minor detail is a distinct lack of browser window, which is a bit of a bummer when you're trying to have a quiet web browse. Oh, and the only way to get it to go away is to "Force Quit" it, which has at least now taught me which is the "Option" key. So it's back to trusty Firefox. I guess I shouldn't really assume Mac applications are necessarily as "rock solid" as the underlying Unix system.
But you know what these things are like: once a piece of technology has let you down for the first time, you're always left wondering which bit will fall off next, and will it hurt? (Stop sniggering over there, Len!)
Charlee has a chum
I'm sure you remember Gorgeous Charlee? Well, visible this morning, just across the road, was her chum:
And if you need a bigger view or a fresh pic of Charlee.