2012 — 2 February: Thursday

In more Southern latitudes1 I suspect Big Bro is throwing another steak on the BBQ. Up here in the old country I had to content myself (as it were) by throwing another blanket on the bed. It's a brisk 17.1C at the PC and a chilly -4C on my front porch. Jolly good job I had the central heating system completely replaced.

And still the sun shines.

I've spent much of the morning browsing through all the letters I wrote to dear Mama over the years, many of them recalling happy times with Christa and Peter. As I said, I may yet publish a few bits'n'pieces from them. It's now 10:25 and is slowly warming up hereabouts.

I've long known...

... that a law of greater power than the conservation of matter holds sway in my house. Today's example is merely the latest. Back in March 2009 I bought the 3-DVD set TV series made out of Robert Littell's2 excellent novel "The Company". I scanned the artwork and filed it away in one of my folders. So far, so good. Now Mike has just passed along to me a surplus Zone A Blu-ray of the same TV series, this time just on two discs. Obviously, it makes sense to keep the Blu-rays in place of the DVDs. But the cover artwork has vanished (defected?).

There are days when I suspect the house of having been built along the same lines as the one decribed so memorably in Robert Heinlein's 1940 story "..and he built a crooked house...". I constructed my first tesseract after reading that story — doesn't everyone do that?

If the relief...

... I'm currently feeling at receiving the following in today's post is any indication:

Normal

... then my subconscious must have been more worried than I realised. Mind you, given what killed Christa, perhaps that's understandable? When did "tummy" become an accepted piece of medical jargon?

Why does Windows just crash, suddenly? Could there still be a tiny bug buried in it somewhere? I'm old enough to recall Ed Yourdon's tale of each new release of OS/360 being estimated to contain 1,000 undiscovered bugs. And that was over 45 years ago. Oh well. Time to don some warm gladrags and set off for my lunchtime rendezvous. I gather we're off to the "Plough" in Sparsholt for a change.

I think it's...

... time to order a copy of Leonard Cohen's new album, don't you? Not to mention, grab an evening meal. It's 18:53 and horribly cold out there. [Pause] Even colder now that I've just been out to the garage to supply gas and electricity meter readings as requested by the virtual meter reader. Tea, Mrs Landingham?

  

Footnotes

1  NZ, that is.
2  My appreciation of Mr Littell's work began with the wonderful "Defection of AJ Lewinter" back in 1974.