2012 — 8 February: Wednesday

Last night's choice of film ("Secretary") was the one I'd noted on FilmFour just over four years ago.1 I stand by my choice of "quirky" to describe it. In other late-breaking news, Junior will now be here on Friday — I persuaded them not to drive down late on the Thursday evening after their trip to a ballet that evening. (I suspect this may be his first-ever ballet,2 though he couldn't tell me which one it is.)

I also suspect that may be my weekend tied up, as it were. Still, it's always nice to see one's offspring...

If -3C comes...

... can Spring be far behind? Probably! It's 08:19 and time for tea.

Impossible not to be reminded of that Haldane quote about beetles while reading this Japanese study.

Breakfast to munch, and a packed lunch to prepare. (Sausage sandwich, for a change.) And then it's off to the races. Followed by some further supplies shopping, I suspect. Good job the pension showed up.

Back, after a...

... fairly chilly stroll of six miles or so in the vicinity of Marwell zoo. It's a good job there was still plenty of ice3 around as some of the bridleways were (would have been) extremely muddily churned up. And what better music to munch to than Beethoven's 7th Symphony? It's 13:55 and I have miles to go before I sleep.

Right: time for my next chores. Sorry, Beet, gotta dash. [Pause] Mother Hubbard's cupboard is once again full for a bit. I suppose you know you're getting used to winter when you realise that -1C doesn't even feel all that cold.

The more clearly...

... we peer into space, the more mysterious and wonderful it all seems to be. Here's the Carina Nebula, a mere 7,500 light years away. As they say in "Contact" — if there's nobody else out there, it's a huge waste of space.

Is there anything...

... more annoying than to spend an hour scanning some artwork and then have the program freeze on the last scan and lose all the images? Grrr. "Snap Ploobadoof", indeed. Time for some moving pixels, methinks. Good grief, it's already 22:15 — when did that happen?

  

Footnotes

1  Christa and I first saw it in the Harbour Lights cinema in 2003.
2  Mine was a performance of "Swan Lake" at the Royal Festival Hall in, I suspect, 1965.
3  While descending one smooth lane and discussing the merits of skate-boarding down it, we touched on onomatopeia as we considered the likely sound of high-speed impact at the bottom. I was reminded of Don Martin's sound effect "Snap Ploobadoof".