2013 — 14 January: Monday
It was approaching 08:00 this morning as I caught up1 with NPR's "Weekend All Things Considered" from Washington via the World Radio Network's satellite feed. It's actually too long, I've decided, since I listened to Jackie Lyden (mentioned here, I recall, with her memoir about her troubled mother when I found from my server logs that somebody wanted help with an "eassy" [sic] on that book and had stubbed their virtual toe on 'molehole' looking for one). I rarely write "eassays" these days :-)
Speaking of recall...
... I was in some need of cheering-up yesterday evening2 so I decided — on a whim — to search out versions of that beautiful Celtic song "David of the White Rock" which was my first, and last, solo treble performance as part of the weekend day of entrance assessment3 for the Junior school attached to Big Bro's fee-paying grammar school in Cheadle Hulme.
Turns out there are many variants available, but after sampling several I downloaded the largely instrumental one on this 1990 album:
"What album?" I hear you ask. "Where's the little thumbnail of it?" Well, that was when I discovered that when you explicitly fire up the Windows Media Centre on a twin-screen desktop PC, in a misguided initial attempt to invoke the Media Player (that fires up with no trouble at all when the Amazon MP3 download function prods it), you're locked into the full screen that the dim-witted application grabs regardless of your wish to do anything else on the other screen. That will teach me — again — not to go anywhere near the stupid software. So I directly loaded just the player application, smacked down its attempt to configure itself to grab playing rights (or any other rights, for that matter) and just used the trusty snipping tool.
An extraordinary track, on a John Williams (guitarist, not film music chap) album I'd never encountered. Right. How about some brekkie?
Ever dumber?
Somehow, I doubt the subject of this headline...
Biggest Thing in Universe Found — Defies Scientific Theory
... gives a toss about "Scientific Theory". Or the Earth. Or its primitive ape-descended life-forms that still think digital watches are a good idea. (Link.)
As the big hand...
... approached the little one at the top of the dial, well over half an hour ago now, I was just setting my next crockpot creation to "stun". It's a right old mixture, too, so fingers crossed. It's nasty, cold, and drearily wet outside but do I care? Not now I have a newly-delivered pair of "Big Bad Mamas" to keep me warm, courtesy of Roger Corman:
My late lemonses was accompanied by the not-entirely-surprising news that the State Pension (which, in my case, "I [still] 'ave not got") is now going to require 35 years of contributions for maximal payout. When I last checked, a couple of months before Christa skidded off Life's Highway so horribly, the contributions 'threshold' was 30 years. I have 38+ years. I wonder whether "they" will once again contact me to suggest I do something (i.e. pay "them") to top up my contribution record? I also predict the 'threshold' will rise still further, the age at which it starts paying out will do the same, and I will die a poor old man.
That's my current plan, certainly :-)
Returning from the...
... mid-afternoon trip that made good the (various) deficiencies in yesterday's little expotition (except for the fact that the OJ carton selection was a null set) I find myself pondering the wisdom of my young daffodils. They're shooting up as if they know something about the weather that I clearly don't. Personally, I think it's f-f-f-cold out there. Wonder if they'd like a nice, hot, cuppa?
Later
Undeterred by the plummeting thermometer, an intrepid trio has plotted a fresh air ramble for tomorrow, avoiding mud as far as possible. We're evidently mad. Brrr.
I'd been harbouring a whim to re-watch Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown" but, despite having just given it an hour, I find I'm losing — if not the will to live — the will to continue. It's a curious piece of work that's now going back on the shelf for another six years or so. But I have placed my 'pre-orders' for both the final lump of Twiglet and the new Tim Burton animation "Frankenweenie". Ooh, I'm such a neophiliac.