2010 — 25 September: Saturday
"Sun arise"1 and the first cuppa is awaiting my attention. It's well past dawn (08:37) and the barometer is back up. Lots to do including, just possibly, a trip to a hardware store. You could say I have plans that have been shelved for far too long. And that's not including my next crockpot stuffing session.
As if banks don't make enough profit already, one of mine has just emailed me to say that the thieves in charge of the enterprise will, from 26th November, pay no interest on credit balances above £2,500 on the kind of current account I have — one that was carefully chosen for its freedom from monthly fees.
Rupert-über-alles
I've been wondering, vaguely, what the Tea Party was all about:
The fact that [Sarah] Palin is the figurehead of a movement most of whose emergent stars would appear to be better suited to prison or lunatic asylums makes it hard to get one's head around quite what is happening to mainstream politics in the US at the moment. But for people who'd ideally like prospective leaders of the free world to be able to point to China on a map — and not to claim that they'd have told the Nazis Anne Frank was hiding in their attic because lying is always wrong in God's eyes — it doesn't feel madly encouraging. When candidates for public office are being promoted by Fox on the apparent understanding that they will appear exclusively on Fox, classing the network a fascist broadcaster seems less and less hysterical.
Global domination. Robert Heinlein's 1940 novella "If this goes on —" looks ever more prescient.
Son's at his peak
Oh, to be young again! A one-liner from him:
By the way - we're off to Tenerife for a week, today - just rushing to catch the flight now... Sun & diving :-)
The crockpot begins its simmering journey, yesterday's typo is quietly corrected (thanks, Mike), and somehow it's nearly noon. What's next, Mrs Landingham?
I seem to have been buying CDs on the ECM label since nearly the time of the third Big Bang. Thanks, Mr Postie:
Why is it that...
... local DIY shops never have quite what you want in stock when you want it? Aggravating, isn't it? Off we go again, this time (at 15:41) a little further afield. Still, at least I now know how to tip the back seats fully forward.
Two hours, £219, and quite a few miles, later I now have the five uprights, the 40 brackets (8 a different colour), the screws, the wall plugs, and 4 of the 16 shelves I'm going to need — bought at a combination of B&Q, Wickes, and two Homebase stores; the first of which yielded nothing.2 But it's enough to be going on with, at least. Now, where's my hammer drill? And the spirit level? And the chuck key? And my motivation? Need a cuppa first. It's 17:57 and the BBC Radio 3 jazz is infinitely better than hearing about the new leader of the loyal opposition.
And why does the online...
... variant of the DIY shop only offer a subset of the shelves I want? Again, very aggravating. It's 21:17 and I'm giving "Planet Rock" another chance to impress me.