2008 — 19 December: Friday
As I've spent the last couple of hours doing stuff for my Christmas hostess, cousin Leigh, it somehow seems appropriate that tonight's picture of Christa should also include her.
I described last July how family Mounce was in crisis back in 1974 when we first realised my Dad was terminally ill. His younger brother Tom visited High Wycombe and appears here, with his daughter Leigh. Christa and I were there, of course, as we visited my parents on just about every remaining weekend that year from midsummer onward. Not exactly "Happy Days" but we tried to make the best of things:
Leigh, dear Mama, Christa, and Uncle Tom, summer 1974
Well, I've "dished the dos" and chilled the remainder of the crockpot, so I think I'll shoot for another early night — but not until Bob Dylan's finished his Theme Time Radio Hour. It seems to have got colder again. G'night.
More frost, more sun...
... and the not-so-gentle tinkle of the monthly glass collection service. Sleep is banished, at a mere 08:44 and brightly shines etc etc. I don't know what the HP PC's disk is up to but it's got quite a nice rhythm going. Let operations re-commence. And a cuppa, of course.
I realise the sun isn't over the yard arm yet, but... a dry ice martini? Brace yourself! And if necessary, try the greatest Nature essay Ever while listening to the Desert Island disc choices of the chap I mentioned here (Michael Deeley).
The DVD player's firmware upgrade worked, though I haven't yet checked to see if I need to re-do the (simple) multi-region hack...
The multi region hack will usually be removed. Reinstate it by: 1) No disc 2) Press Set Up 3) Press 9210 on remote 4) Press 0 on remote 5) Press Set Up
The iMac is now running OSX 10.5.6 — updates seem to have been quite thick and fast. Ubuntu, in contrast, seems to have settled down for a while. As for Windows, let's not go there. Let's have another cuppa instead. After all, it's "lemonses".
Spoke slightly too soon. Ubuntu has just taken on board 25MB of patches. But the DVD player remained multi-region; all I had to do was reset it to interlaced output so the (more capable) video scaler can continue to do that job. Meanwhile the washing machine happily does its thing and I guess I need to think about lunch sometime soon. As I gradually widen my repertoire of domestic tasks (and my skill level creeps upward) so my background level of continuous mild anxiety (in the wake of Christa's unavoidable and permanent absence) slowly dips. Perhaps one day I'll even power up the iron, though it's my current theory that I own nothing that actually demands ironing. (I admit I could1 be wrong.)
Something novel this way comes...
The indefatigable marketing arm of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (aka Amazon) has just suggested that "people who bought Roger Dodger" (which I confess I did) "have also purchased Shut up and shoot me" — can't say I see the similarity, personally. As for "novel"... This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Meanwhile, Mr Postie has brought me two more conventional DVDs, both of which I heard about on the radio (Lord Reith's [dead] marketing arm, I guess):
Right! Lunch demands my attention. Good heavens, it's already 13:15. As I chomp my prawns, potato salad, cheese, pickled onions, tomatoes, pineapple and fruitloaf (if only Christa could see me now, heh?) I remain bemused by music, and the part it plays in my life. Auditory cheesecake indeed? I don't think so.
A new acronym
"GUBU" — grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. I can see that still having useful application today. (I'm listening to the Last Word obits programme, though the web site doesn't reflect this week's "participants" yet.)
17 billion dollars given to the U.S. car makers — GUBU! (See? It works.)
Pumped again
Mike and I decided to skip our planned walk today. So after spending almost all day at a couple of (well four different) PC screens (and to placate both Christa and Dr Joey the GP, who both thought fresh air and exercise very Good Things) I've just done a healthy (and quite speedy) little stroll around the same route as I did last June. It was a pity you weren't with me, Christa, to comment on the Xmas lights, but you didn't miss anything of any great taste.
Well, how about that? I just popped downstairs a few minutes ago to do the dishes and watch HIGNFY and the next thing I know I've just finished watching, entranced, the BBC4 documentary The Swing Thing. Purely magical. My Dad would have lapped it up, too. (Mind you, the choice of narrator — Kenneth Cranham, remembered in Layer Cake from last August — was unusual.)