2015 — 30 August: Sunday
My kitchen1 spent yesterday mid-afternoon until evening being hauled from its initial state of "boy cleanliness" to some higher state to which, it seems, all kitchens should aspire at all times. Quite a lot of stuff found its way to the local tip, which pleased me immensely. Once I can find where everything that remains has been relocated I shall no doubt be fine :-)
They slumber on...
... though there was idle talk about "going to the gym for an hour" so I shall sit tight and await developments. I'm to book another table for another lunch, it seems. I can do that, assuming the phone is still roughly where I expect. The makings of my morning cuppa were (largely) undisturbed. Some things are inviolable, I feel. My tea heads that particular list.
Meanwhile, I shall resume the slowish process of unloading stuff from NAS #1 prior to its lobotomising and rebirth. It's all in a good cause.
Supermassive...
... black holes now travel in pairs, it seems. Who knew?
Supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) are unavoidable products of galaxy mergers and are expected to exist in the cores of many quasars.
And what effect will that bit of arcane knowledge have on me, I wonder? I must re-read "The Xi effect" before it's too dark to see.
Lunch...
... has been duly booked, and will be the next highlight of the day. The latterday Highland Clearances of the kitchen and outlying areas has been proceeding apace. At this rate I may even regain use of my dining room. Also found an alternative butter dish complete with unbroken lid. Excellent. But I broke the glass teapot (coffee pot, whatever) I've been using since I switched back to decent loose-leaf tea years ago. Nothing for it: I shall intensify my casual search for a decent replacement.
The meta bag (multiple bags of bags, many containing further bags) and meta box (multiple boxes of boxes, many containing further boxes) situations are both being brought under better discipline. A spare shed key and a couple of spare LED bulbs have turned up. Not to mention a couple of £1 coins, and a "use before mid-2007" power comestible. (Actually, I believe almost no foodstuff in the house is now much more than a year old. Progress of a sort.) We even found some sugar that Big Bro failed to unearth during his stay a few weeks ago.Our post-prandial stroll...
... took the three of us around the greater portion of Harold Hillier's little garden patch (new, to the pair of them). There's a nice exhibition of photos, a "sugar craft" flowers exhibit, and (of course) a greater variety of weed-like things (flowers, trees, bushes, what have you) than you can shake a stick at. Plus, in ye gifte shoppe, a small jar of lemon and lime curd to be enjoyed in due course. I last tasted lemon curd over five decades ago — and never realised the "and lime" variant even existed. Report to follow.
The troublesome Philips 40" 4K resolution monitor screen2 will be on its way to its new home when they set off. One less thing to trip over. They seem to like the "new" car, too. Another trip hazard safely removed.
Lots of ancient "stuff"...
... has been unearthed from the depths of Technology Towers. Not all of it has any known function or purpose discernible to the trio of archaeologists hereabouts. Thus, quite a lot of it will be leaving in the morning. Inter alia there was a crate of Peter's university course notes. And some of his school books from a decade earlier. Some toys from even earlier. And this little gem!
There was a time when I was word-perfect on these stories. One had to be when reading them to Peter as he was equally word-perfect in his audio memory of them. I shall obviously keep this despite the slightly creepy factoid I learned, many years later, about the Fat Controller:
Not wanting to waste the heinous amount of research that went into making sure that Edward the Blue Engine doesn't pull a train of clay in the wrong direction, the Awdry brothers published a volume called The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways. This is not the sort of thing you would read to a three-year-old child. It barely even references the in-universe fact that the trains are alive. Not to mention the slightly traumatising information that the Fat Controller from the early stories is dead and it's now his identical grandson running things.
I hadn't fully grokked the extent of Christa's "here's a nut; let's bury it somewhere" proclivities. Though, given what I saw of the parental mansion's attics back in the 1970s, I could (I suppose) have been more alert to the possibility. Technology Towers, of course, is far from being a mansion. The dining room basically went out of commission at the time of the 2010 central heating upheavals and, since there's only me bouncing around in the house for 99% of the time, it never struck me as anything I needed to do much about. Stuff, however, accretes somewhat and I have been remiss in keeping on top of it.