2012 — 10 July: Tuesday

Finally, I got Jeeves to bring me my morning cuppa.1 He's going to be setting off under the gentle tutelage of my little dominatrix-in-a-box in search of the aircraft museum in the vicinity of Hurn airport. I have declined the honour of accompanying him. "Seen one aircraft museum" (as an ex-colleague once memorably and impatiently remarked in the context of bookshops after realising, too late, that I was perfectly happy to spend an hour [or more] of his time in each one I could find in Florida malls in 1984) "seen them all".

Currently (09:51) he's deterred by a spot of rain? Can you believe it?

Meanwhile, work proceeds on my pesky music database.

NZ time

Big Bro's laptop has just told him of Microsoft updates, as his ISP is in NZ. I won't see these for about another eight hours. I can wait. I'm just expunging unwanted pre-loaded gorp from my second little USB 3 external hard drive. Plans are firming up to refresh the level of Ubuntu server on my inhouse server (the tiny Asus solid state netbook) and I'm now thinking of giving it just a USB memory stick as its main data drive. After all, the weirdness that is the complete 'molehole' web only amounts to about 1.14GB, and most of that lives on my side of the firewall.

Time for a spot of lunch. It seems to have stopped raining, too.

Before you know it...

... it's almost time for the next meal. I used the rain as an excuse to sponge the road lime from the side of the car before it settled in for a chemical meal. Two washes in 56 months. I spoil that vehicle. Whatever next? [Pause] Well after the next shower I decided it was time to trim my vine as its foliage was grasping for me every time I walked past on my way to the bins. Then there was the grotesque dark green slippery sludgy fungus2 that's been steadily accumulating on the concrete path ever since the sunshine last dried it out and killed it off. That, too, had to go.

So, while Bro hunts fruitlessly for my hacksaw (intending to attack my ailing side gate) I can finally note Mr Postie's latest little bounty:

DVDs

I note Anna Torv features in "Fringe". Recognise a rather young "Sookie Stackhouse"? As I said, this Lonergan film got made several years ago but was held up by a dispute between him and Fox Studio execs regarding the most desirable (versus commercial) running time. They don't want to alienate him too much as it would do little for their reputation among other 'Indie' directors, but they don't much like being defied by a director either. All makes for an undelightful variant of what's aptly called "development hell", though that more often occurs long before the final cut (I suspect).

Then I suppose I'd better start rooting in Mother Hubbard's cupboard for a few crumbs before lining up the evening's entertainment. It's already 18:27 and has been a thorough washout as summer days go. [Pause] My Soderbergh double bill ("Haywire" and "Contagion") went down smoothly and also allowed me to keep at least half an eye on other things since I've watched both these films recently. "Contagion" three times now, in fact. As for tomorrow, who knows? Maybe even a joint expedition to the care-home?

  

Footnotes

1  Without taking it back downstairs on the insulting grounds that I was snoring. What else is a Big Bro for?
2  Were it not the fact that it's been an annual infestation for the last four years (which suggests Christa had a way of keeping on top of it) I might suspect it had been tracked here as spores on Big Bro's space boots as he alighted from his flying saucer. It certainly has that "Alien" je ne sais quoi look about it.