2009 — 11 June: Thursday
If all goes to plan, and the creek don't rise, there's a walk on the cards later today. Seems dry so far, though cloudy. (It's 00:25 or so). Tonight's photo? Christa about four months before Peter was born, so this was at the tail-end of 1979. Farewell, as it were, to a relatively unlamented decade (politically, at any rate).
For my evening's entertainment I caught up with the second DVD (of three) of the fourth season of Weeds and very engaging it is, too. I don't expect I missed anything on the broadcast channels.
G'night. Oops. There's the small matter of a 40MB upgrade to Safari 4 on the iMac to contend with first. Still, it's only fair. There were all those Microspit patches this morning on the two XP machines; not to mention Java 6 release 14 (which, I hope, plays more nicely with my Firefox browser than the previous level did).
Safari 4 now has a gimmicky (I'm sorry, I think they'd prefer me to call it "amazing") wall of top sites. Of course, the first thing to do is edit this to remove all the ones I'd never visit in a month of Sundays. <Sigh> G'night, take 2.
Status of creek?
Unrisen, as of 07:57 — must be all this sunshine. Mind you, it's risen plenty in other parts of the UK.
I had somehow missed the fact that Intel, having acquired the StrongARM and turned it into Xscale, had then sold it on. My 203 MHz StrongARM RiscPC felt like (and was) the fastest PC I'd used for quite some time and I still use two of its major bits of legacy software (albeit both long since ported to the Windows platform). Hadn't heard of Sean Maloney either. (But then he's never heard of me, so that makes us slightly more equal.)
What links a tin of Maxwell House and a tin of Kit-e-Kat? And I had a Dinky toy based on the offspring, too, about 50 years ago! (Answer.)
Time for breakfast. Now, where's that Kit-e-Kat?
My ongoing research into fresh fruit rotting times is proceeding apace. The latest datum point covers the sticky patch under the three neglected Kiwi fruit(s). Don't worry, Christa, it all wiped off the worktop nicely with a little elbow grease. The tomatoes didn't last nearly as long. But they seem to wrinkle rather than fermenting. Fascinating. Oh well, it's 09:49 and nearly time to hit the road. The sun is blazing away out of a mostly blue sky, the lunch pack will ensure my energy doesn't lack punch, and all that remains is the correct choice of attire. The BBC insists on a diet of sunshine and showers.
70 seconds for the first Sudoku of the day. Not too shabby.
6+ miles later
It's 15:07 and the rain held off until about a mile from home. And it only lasted long enough to clean the windscreen. Time for an indoor shower.
Crumbs of comfort
Today's piece on Art Spiegelman took me on a journey culminating in a nice long transcript of a Guardian/NFT interview with Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Peter Poplaski and Steve Bell that, for some reason, I missed at the time. (Four years ago.) There's also a Q&A too. Marvellous. And people have been known to wonder why I admire Crumb so much. (One of Christa's friends over in Germany [Monika from Saarbrucken] was very early pressed into service to get me several of the sketchbooks published by zwei tausend eins back when Crumb was more highly appreciated in Germany1 than in England.)
And I've just learned here that his next project is to publish a "scandalous" Bible satire. That should go down well in some quarters!
Smoke gets in your eyes...
... but pollen has (finally) started getting up my nose. I'm taking cover indoors. I'm usually quite badly affected before this point of the year. I'd been hoping my fairly frequent forays into the countryside over the (good grief!) 19 months since Christa's death would desensitise me. Ho-hum. 16:28? That must mean it's time for a cuppa.
Later
I'm almost certain I'll regret this, but if there's even the faintest chance that the preview in Radio Times is on the mark... I shall dump the hi-def transmission of the remarkably silly-sounding Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire onto my Humax satellite PVR. Don't want to miss something that's been compared to the ineffable Princess Bride now, do I? But I shall be watching Weeds in the meantime.