2009 — 22 January: Thursday
Crikey, it's already 00:55 and I need to take the day's last meds. I enjoyed the "Movie connections" programme about Sliding Doors but then spent over 30 minutes carving up the John Mortimer material from Sunday evening into its constituent parts, and taking out all the inter-programme trails.
Oh well. Time for tonight's picture of Christa:
Christa and Peter in Old Windsor, 1980
Again, is this a happy lady? What a beautiful smile!
I do wish the meds would hurry up and clobber the germs in the afflicted finger. Patience, David! G'night.
Hibernation is under-rated
It's 10:42 or so. I surfaced briefly a couple of hours ago to dose myself, looked at the lousy weather, and went back to bed. Energy levels are rather low at the moment, but the cuppa will doubtless take effect soon. Breakfast next, and some supplies shopping. There's a lovely bit of warbling on Radio 3 right now. My finger (at the halfway point of the drugs) is now slightly less puffed up and correspondingly more bendable, though still looking somewhat like Rudolph's nose.
Having just had a brief chat with dear Mama and one of her neighbours over Mama's reluctance to endorse the "wicked waste" of throwing out from her fridge some of the shopping Big Bro and I did for her last August I find the noon news from China (that two people involved in the contaminated baby milk scandal have been sentenced to death) curiously appropriate. Melamine was added to raw milk to make it appear higher in protein — words fail me.
Server problems
I'm getting error messages on attempts to publish page updates. Email seems unaffected. Dammit.
It's 15:15, the supplies have been safely gathered in, the ignoring of a "No entry" sign by (forgive me) a lady driver has been noted — luckily I was a pedestrian at the time, and methinks there's just about time to sneak out for a cuppa somewhere.
Well, as of 17:00 or so, I seem to be back on the air. Aren't computers wonderful? Now it's 18:15 and a hollow sensation in the vicinity of the tum is calling attention to the need for some more calories. Soon.
Be still, oh beating heart...
I received welcome news today of my exciting new, age-related, pension supplement1... The amount is 2% of the Basic State Pension, multiplied by years and Pay Months of Pensionable Service between 6 November 2006 and 5 August 2008 but (sadly) is subject to a cost-neutral actuarial reduction factor where the Supplement becomes payable before age 63. Since (in my penurious case) I have precisely two months of Pensionable Service since 6 November 2006, I suspect the cost of the postage and paper used in telling me about this generous decision will more or less match the amount involved. Still, I may be wrong and, whatever the supplement adds up to, it is payable from the day I became a pensioner (January 2007) until I become 65 (October 2016).
Christa would have been tickled pink. Who knows? I may yet receive a cheque to match the one she received here.
When I just invoked my wondrous desktop search engine to pinpoint that particular page (on which I know I'd used a line from "10cc", so all I had to do was search for the word "broker") the tool very kindly updated itself first and has now equipped itself with an add-on that will search Firefox content. I do rather wonder what they mean by Firefox content, but I'm pleased to receive the free upgrade to excellent free software. (The Corporate edition will now find content from Lotus Notes, too — you may like to re-investigate, Mike.)
Right! Let's go and (h)eat up those calories. It's already 18:56!
Just to prove I can...
... in light of the access glitches earlier today, I'm now editing using Cyberduck and TextWrangler on my iMac to reassure myself that I still have an alternative route, as it were. Mind you, when it's the server that's poorly, there's not much I can do from this side of the pond. It's 21:15, has been pouring with rain, but the prospect of watching Sue Perkins giving a Huw Wheldon memorial lecture on comedy is an attractive one later tonight. The inner man has been pacified, but is a little queasy with all the antibiotics. I'm hoping a cuppa will work the usual magic.
Meanwhile, back on the XP machine, I'm sure this is a spoof, but I enjoyed it on first encounter quite a while back:
Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiff-arino. Speaking personally I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.