2012 — 20 August: Monday
It's a deliciously grey morning1 so I live in the faint hope that the warmth will become coolth for a bit, at least. I could use the easier sleeping conditions to top up my quota of shut-eye.
Some of yesterday's virtual tenner eventually went on a small number of Patti Smith bonus tracks that I noticed had been added to her classic albums when I was scanning the artwork last night. The rest of it may yet go on Christina Perri's 2011 album. My chum Christopher sounded keen in his late email. And the news of the death of Ridley Scott's brother Tony has made the BBC Radio 3 news.
Being by nature...
... a lazy so-and-so (in dear Mama's eyes, if no-one else's) I've decided to let Mr Toyota come and pick up the car for its next MoT and service early next month. That's one less thing to cause me hassle. Last year, I was left kicking my heels walking into Shirley from Millbrook and then up and down the High Street until it wasn't too early to call in on Bob and blag a cup of his delicious coffee.
I hafta say...
... it's much easier activating one's new JLP Partnership card when one's both the principal, and the only, cardholder. Last time I tried this trick, Christa was still the former though, what with her being dead and so on, the processes did (understandably) throw a bit of a wobbly, and actually required me to attend their offices in person clutching a death susstificate.
After this morning's intense bureaucratic effort2 I declare it time for a spot of 'lemonses'.
A bit of light relief: the North American trait of (these days) largely self-professed individualism and self-reliance mapping on to election year choices:
We can hardly fathom the depth of our dependence on government, and pretend we are bold individualists instead.
As we are in an election year, the persistence of this delusion has manifested itself politically, particularly as a foundation in the Republican Party ideology — from Ron Paul's
insistence during the primaries that the government shouldn't intervene to help the uninsured even when they are deathly ill, to Rick Santorum's maligning of public schools, to Mitt Romney's
selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate. There is no doubt that radical individualism will remain a central selling point of their campaign. Ryan's signature work, his proposal for the
federal budget, calls for drastic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Pell grants and job training programs, among others.
I will never understand what is so wrong with socialised medicine. And if you stop training youngsters your society is probably doomed.
The horror...
The shelves of the Waiting Rose were uncontaminated by any trace of salad. I suspect I must have picked a bad time to call in. And I shall be stuck in tomorrow until Mr TV Stand has been and gone and done his delivery thing. I shall make do with rice for a change.
Just (20:42) fielded a call from the care-home. Dear Mama managed to fall out of her wheelchair earlier this evening but nobody sounds too worried about it and there's no apparent damage. These things are evidently sent to try us, as it were. Now back to your normal programme.
The less intellectual end of the living room is now mostly clear, and thoroughly Dysoned, in readiness for the TV stand. Heck, I even washed the windowsill and about four blades of one of the Venetian blinds. The 60" screen is currently still on its wheeled trolley, but now rotated through 90 degrees and pushed into the middle of the floor area (leaving some space in which to assemble the new piece of flat-packery). I've hooked the Rotel power amp back up to minimise the disruption in my music supply. I can do without video for a few hours, I trust. But not without another cuppa, alas.