2010 — 27 May: Thursday

I finished packing carton #089 (the next batch of six) just a few minutes before midnight and then, as it were, went on strike. Of course, the real fun will start when I begin to re-admit the books back into the house,¹ post-plumbing upheaval and — 99.9% certainty — post a complete redecoration exercise and some floor covering replacement. Where's Christa when you need her, I wonder? She was very good at this sort of operation.

Definitely time for sleep. It's just gone midnight, and I'm knackered. Still, at least it wasn't so brutally hot today. G'night.

What a charmless way...

... to start the day — a Microspit Blue Screen of Death on my main 'workhorse' a mere two years on from the last complete re-installation. (I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the idea.)

Since Mr Radio 3 just tossed a coin to choose between Mozart and Wagner and the wrong chap won, I think it's time to get going. Food shopping and those six cartons should keep me out of mischief until about 10:00 then a pause to (forgive the pun) take stock. It's 09:05 and the overnight rain has cooled and dampened things nicely.

Seven and a half miles...

... and over three hours further along Life's little highway, what have I learned today? Well, perhaps the best lesson was that the ABS brakes on my car work beautifully. This is the first time I've actually needed them "for real", and the fault was entirely mine. Least said, and all that.²

I also discovered that I could place up to four crosses on my latest voting paper, for the new (and not entirely necessary) parish council (or some such). And that ladies' clothes are seasonal affairs — I'd popped into Christa's preferred dress "swap shop" to ask for advice on clearing out her wardrobes. And that cleaning products, whether for my hair, or the drains down which it gently and cloggingly drifts, cost more than I spend on my main meal of the day.

Safely back home, in full-on feet-up cuppa-and-"lemonses" mode while wandering along links related to a summary of yet another biography of J Robert Oppenheimer, I found this lovely little patch of purple prose:

As felicitous an instance of futile classicism as can well be found, outside of the Far East, is the conventional spelling of the English language. A breach of the proprieties in spelling is extremely annoying and will discredit any writer in the eyes of all persons who are possessed of a developed sense of the true and the beautiful. English orthography satisfies all of the canons of reputability under the law of conspicuous waste. It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective; its acquisition consumes much time and effort; failure to acquire it is easy of detection. Therefore it is the first and readiest test of reputability in learning, and conformity to its ritual is indispensable to a blameless academic life.

Thorstein Veblen, quoted in the late Richard Mitchell's Killer Bees

I'm saving for a bit later, but looking forward to exploring, the promising buffoonery available here. It's time I turned my random thoughts in a vaguely lunchy sort of direction. A smoked salmon salad. Yum.

Did you enjoy that refreshing shower?

This chap looks as if he did. Out of compassion for my NZ sister-in-law's lack of broadband, I've hived the larger image off to a separate page. Click the pic to see it:

It's 15:16 and gentle amounts of carton-stuffing are about to resume. I don't expect to make another trip out to the warehouse before tomorrow, however.

Ready or not, Basingstoke-ish chums, here I come.

Footnotes

¹ It's a jolly good job that the plumber isn't bothered by books on wall-attached bookshelves (as many of them are, of course), but just by the layers of the things actually either on the floor or in bookcases that stand directly on the floor.
² There was no-one else around — I was merely caught by a set of lights that changed more quickly than I expected and a road surface that was slightly wet. An interesting and very worthwhile lesson. I now know the sound the ABS mechanism makes, too.