2014 — 7 October: Tuesday
I have a little adventure pencilled in for the afternoon1 as I'm "busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do". My word, it's a long time since I last watched "A Connecticut Yankee at the court of King Arthur". My choice of film for yesterday evening was "In & Out" with the reliable Kevin Kline and Joan Cusack. Since I didn't begin it until midnight, however, and I chose it as a deliberate contrast (that is, no brain required) to the somewhat tedious data exercise I'm currently undertaking, 'bedtime' was correspondingly delayed.
In earlier times, of course, I thought nothing of staying up until 2 or 3 a.m. despite the day job. I suspect those days are past. Good job I'm retired :-)
Meanwhile...
... I shall also be busy putting off doing the tidying-up necessary ahead of my son's planned invasion this coming weekend, too. Procrastination (or is that "indolence"?) rules around these parts.
As Mandy Rice-Davies...
... so memorably observed half a century ago: "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Breakfast! I need breakfast!
[Pause]
Well, the bread roll that's now too thickly-covered in an overnight mould to be worth the effort of scraping it off had been going to be for my lemonses, dagnabbit. Plan B.
I seized my chance...
... to pick up a pair of 'sacks' of salt2 for the water softener while out and about earlier, though the point of today's adventure was actually to track down a dinky little wearable hi-def video camera. Turns out the new model has yet to displace its predecessor on the shelves (as it were). But then it was only released on Sunday and, since I wasn't (for once) the one anxious to get my hands on one, I could be more relaxed about it. I was also in time to intercept Mr Postie's latest package before we even set off...
... although, if stitching two films on to one DVD becomes a commonplace tactic, I may have to rethink my cunning title-indexing scheme for my CaseLogic folders3 storage system. I bought this quartet of titles just to get "Her Alibi" — it's taken over a fortnight to show up, too.
Mercy me!
My ex-neighbour4 is now a "Consultant Interventional Radiologist" at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah. He's just suggested I should be "LinkedIn" to his professional network in a pair of requests one minute apart. I'm amused to note that three (different) names I already know appear on each of these two requests. However, I still don't "do" any form of social networky thing (what with being retired, and indolent, and what have you). I have thus sent him what I hope he'll take as a friendly, but firm, polite refusal.
Remind me. When was "LinkedIn" last hacked? Oh, and see above, re snooping powers.
Mercy me! (take 2)
I just got lucky. I'd asked for, and paid for, two chicken kebabs. I found three in the package for my evening light meal. (I assemble a simple, tasty, mix of kebabs, a roll with reduced-sugar orange marmalade [to reduce the burn from the green peppers — I can take the red ones, and the onions], a lump of cheese and the right number of little tomatoes to 'go round' as it were.)
And then, just as I'm about to settle down to eat said tasty mix there's a gentle knock on the door, and (by the time I get to it, and switch on the porch light) the sound of a white van accelerating away up the hill, having dropped off another "four-in-one" plus singleton. Coincidence? I don't think so:
"All in order" as Christa would (almost) say.