2009 — 31 March: Tuesday
Another early night ahead of an adventure later. And another picture of Christa and a very young Peter in Old Windsor, in late 1980:
Christa and Peter in Old Windsor, 1980
Happy days... G'night.
Oops
Two minor glitches to fix this morning. First, plumb the USB keyboard into a different socket so I can actually type anything... Done. Second, correct the spelling of yesterday's hiking destination to "Corhampton Down"... done. Right. Cuppa? Check! Time? 08:43. State of consciousness? As alert as I get these days, it seems. Next? Brekkie.
I adore good puns: "Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred." (Sauce.)
Back from...
... a quick hop into Eastleigh for the successful acquisition of three well-fired loaves, followed almost immediately by a quick hop down to Portland Bill.1 Christa and I had planned our next trip to the swannery at Abbotsbury two years ago, but had to put that on hold when her symptoms ruled out such a comparatively long drive. Today, I had a long-distance view of the place from seven miles along at the other end of Chesil Beach from a hilltop above Portland. We lunched at "The Pulpit Inn" within sight of the two lighthouses. Nice trip; thanks for your company, Peter.
It's now 16:22 and I feel a powerful urge for a cuppa, 145 miles later.
I've tried the first 38 minutes of "The Wire" season 1 episode 1. That's enough for me. (Think of all the extra time I'll have by not watching any further.) I've also tried about 5 minutes of "Being Human" before reaching the same conclusion. That left only the Annie Lennox concert recorded in HD. Soon be time to do something more productive, like feed the inner man — it's 18:24 and I'm just hearing about the new South Downs National Park, one of our regular walking patches. Does this mean farmers will stop ploughing up footpaths?
Oops
"It's been brought to my attention" (thanks, Mike) that my lovely, brand-new, improved, ISP in Texas was having problems with its email server for six hours or so earlier today. Anyone emailing me may therefore have seen one or more messages along the lines of:
No messages transferred to MOLEHOLE.ORG (host mx7.webfaction.com) via SMTP: Server not responding
Of course, since I was out at the seaside, I remained in my usual state of blissful ignorance. What can I say? Sorry! It's 22:39 and I've just listened, again, to "The dub side of the moon" — absolutely brilliant. I shall also now try connecting the latest Oppo DVD player audio via its multi-channel analogue outputs to see if I can shake off the intermittent audio dropouts I seem to be enjoying via the hdmi connection on just this one device on the Onkyo receiver. There's no problem with the video, so I'm at a bit of a loss2 to explain this annoying glitch.
Technology? Don't talk to me about technology... <Sigh>