2016 — 25 April: Monday
Having first read (long ago) about skin parasites...
... and then, yesterday, having browsed yet another horrible item1 — I wonder if they have dust mites down in NZ? — I've uncapriciously decided today will be a jolly good day to buy myself a fresh pair of pillows. Chaps need hobbies, after all.
I shall start my search in Matalan (as usual), but suspect I will end up (also as usual) in M&S. 'Twas ever thus. It can wait until after breakfast though.
I decided...
... to try a so-called memory foam pillow as one of the pair, and a "firmer" one as the other. A pair of protective covers (everything purporting to be polyester or similar, microfibre, hypo-allergenic, mite-proof) and a long-overdue replacement pair of slobbing-about-the-house drawstring "leisure" (as if!) trousers completed the deal. Damage? £35-04 — struck me as more than fair. Stripping the bed and Dysoning up the mountains of dust should be the work of but an hour or two. Then I'll see if I still have any non-moth-eaten sheets tucked away.
Spring cleaning. Don'tcha just hate it?
Aside to Christa
I assume you won't mind too much if I move more into the centre of the bed from now on?!
:-)
Blimey!
It's now 14:30 and I shall take an ingestion break. No wonder I do this so infrequently. Still, you should see the state of the Dyson.
Staggering downstairs with a heavy Dyson and my second batch of laundry for the day — but leaving behind me an immaculate bedroom, with fresh sheets, pillows, pillow cases, no visible dust, and not much prospect for dust mites for a while — I recognised the Philip Glass "style" but not the piece. It was "Mad Rush" written, it seems, for the Dalai Lama's visit to New York. It led me, in turn, to a 75-minute podcast discussion with Glass that I was happy to snaffle from just over four years ago. Serendipity-doo.
I have definitely earned my next cuppa.
Serendipity, part 2
I also discovered2 that at some point I (or, possibly Christa) bought a pair of black jeans that are, as yet, unworn, and (more importantly) fit perfectly. This is extra goodness because it means I can now finally "retire" the pair that Christa had already consigned to the discard pile, erm, some while ago. They are, even I must admit, now very tired.
UltraEdit for Linux
Being, in general, a law-abiding sort of chap, I've just emailed the company that sells UltraEdit for Linux asking them to clarify precisely what "up to three unique installs" means in my situation. I wish to have the continued use of UE on Skylark in the near future. It is, so far, the only Linux software I've paid for (or been asked to pay for) and I find it an excellent editor.
They replied in less than five minutes:
Thanks for your message. We are happy to help with this. Each Single License comes with 3 activations so you can use it on 3 computers.
Cool! I was hoping that's what it meant.
It's amazing...
... what you can find in a filing cabinet folder! This is the ICL job ad I clipped out of Dad's Daily Torygraph, and responded to, in November 1973:
I got the gig. Good ol' Sylvia Ewan took me on as a trainee, at £1,820 starting salary. And if you're thinking "That looks like lipstick in the top corner" you're right, and there's a story to it, too.
I've been...
... very much enjoying, at quite high volume, Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in its 2011 remastered variant. When I bought the original double vinyl LP I played the whole thing three times in succession, back to back. It has lost none of its original appeal. Earlier this evening I downloaded both a new (to me) Unthanks album, "Mount the Air", and Olivia Chaney's first album "The Longest River" from April last year. Lovely stuff.