Days 2987 to 2990

Aka Thursday 26th January to Sunday 29th January 2023

…I was back in the office for this Thursday and Friday, and it was great to see everyone and catch up in person. It also meant that it was easy to go to the shops, where I picked up the special Elvis magazine from ‘Uncut’:

…and hopefully it’ll explain all the difference between all the many Elvis albums. There are loads of Elvis albums and it can be hard to know what they cover/include, especially as many have been reissued as session collections, like ‘Elvis in Nashville’, where the sessions produced four albums!…

…the postie delivered ’Sgt Rock vs The Army of the Dead’ #5:

…and we’re nearing the climax and Bruce Campbell has turned the dial up a touch more with Easy Company taking on zombie Hitler and Eva Braun! The art, by Eduardo Risso and Kristian Rossi, is gorgeous and perfectly sets the tone of a war torn city hiding monsters (both figurative and literal). A fun read and looking forward to seeing how they end this story. I also got ‘Heavenly Remixes 5 & 6’:

…which has got a ton of great bands and/or remixes (like Andrew Weatherall, Urban Takeover, Psychemagik, Trevor Jackson, David Holmes, Flying Mojito Bros, Monkey Mafia, Saint Etienne and more)..although for some reason when I ripped the second disc, the Weatherall remix of Flowered Up’s Weekender would come with a couple of glitches, so I did it again and got glitches, but in different places, so I had to spend the best part of an hour in Audacity cut ‘n’ pasting out the glitched parts for unglitched parts! And I got a ‘Mario Kart’ happy meal toy:

…which I’ll see if my nephew would like it. On Saturday I finished watching Season Five (which nicely continued the development of Holmes, Watson, Bell and Capt. Gregson, alongside the “mysteries” of the week) of ‘Elementary’ and started Season Six:

…and on Sunday I went for an exercise work in the morning:

…and I walked 3.75km in 58 minutes and 3 seconds, which took 5,744 steps and burnt 370 calories. Which is nice. And I did the bridge and steps, the ones that always give me a subconscious fear that they will crumble when I use them, but I kept it under control.

…and I did the Metro crosswords:

…and I did the G2 Crosswords:

…after yesterday’s nightmare of a crossword, Thursday’s crossword went super, super well and we didn’t have to cheat on any of the 25 clues! The little grey cells really bounced back from yesterday! Or the clues were easier! 😊

…and we almost do as well as Thursday crossword, we only had to cheat on 4.76% of Friday’s clues (one out of 21)! We only stumbled on not getting ‘orifice’ from ‘opening, such s a nostril’. Which we really should have gotten. Maybe we should have given it a few more minutes, and then we would have remembered it? But it’s miles better than Wednesday’s performance…

…which goes a tad better and we only had to cheat on 0.00% of the clues (zero out of 24)! That’s right a second clean sweep this week. Probably the best crosswording week this year! The little grey cells took their time, considered the clues and nailed it!

Days 2984 to 2986

Aka Monday 23rd January to Wednesday 25th January 2023

A quiet/normal few days. Worked from home, and not too much to say about that. Except that working from home is odd, due to the lack of face-to-face interactions with colleagues and friends. One can feel a little disconnected and Teamsing isn’t the same as face to face. I did go for an exercise walk on Wednesday morning:

…where I walked 4km in 50 minutes and 24 seconds in 5,395 steps, which burnt 375 calories (which is probably half a Mars bar ☹!) Combined with some weight sessions on Monday and Wednesday it looks like I’m getting back on track, back on the exercise train!

…and I got the latest ‘Mojo’:

…which has a big feature on Bob Dylan’s new release, volume 17 of his ‘Bootleg Series’, which covers the recording of 'Time Out Of Mind' and features a cover CD collecting “hidden gems from The Bootleg Series”. I’m not a big Dylan fan, I like the hits, your ‘Lay Lady Lay’, ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, etc, but when I listened to a greatest hits compilation, the deeper cuts didn’t hit me like the hits. In fact I tend to like Dylan songs more when they’re covered by other artists. So, I never ventured any further, but a friend is a big Dylan fan and keeps suggesting his stuff to me. And I’ve dipped my toe in the Dylan waters, got a few albums – a best of, 'Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid' (and a bootleg of outtakes), 'John Wesley Harding', 'Nashville Skyline', 'The Bootleg Series, Vol. 15- Travelin' Thru, 1967 - 1969' and 'The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 -3' (which is a lot more Dylan than I thought I had). And I do like his more countryish songs, so this seemed like a good way to dip my toe further. There’s also a nice feature on John Lee Hooker and Rick Rubin to get my teeth into. And plenty of reviews, news and that kinda thing. I also started watching Season Five of ‘Elementary’:

…and I watched 'Fight The Power: How Hip-Hop Changed The World':

…and it’s an interesting watch, it hits most of the points that hip-hop docs do, but offered new insights and perspectives from the people that were there and it does an excellent job covering the social and political issues that lead to, and then shaped hip-hop. But sometimes this was to the detriment of the music. For example, there was very little focus on Puff Daddy and “pop” hip-hop, and I don’t think there was anything about the Wu-Tang Clan. And there was very little in-depth looking at how sexist, misogynist, racist, violent lyrics and the glamourisation of “thug-life” affected hip-hop and black America. But when you’ve only got four hours and you’re covering fifty plus years it’s hard to get everything in. Defo a recommend watch. My only real big gripe was the lack of a soundtrack listing, so many good songs played and I’ve got no idea what half of them were!

…Kyle Starks Sticker Club stickers arrived on Tuesday:

…and I brought ‘Lego Batman’ magazine, with a smart Batcycle toy:

...I did the Metro's crosswords:

…and then I did Monday’s G2 Crossword:

…which went pretty well. The little grey cells were on tip-top form and we only had to cheat on 9.52% of the clues (two out of 21). And those two clues, we just didn’t know what the answers were, which means that we learnt that the ‘Dauphin’ is the ‘French equivalent to Prince of Wales’ and that ‘Tanzania’ is an ‘East African country’…not a bad start to the week, will it continue… and I did Tuesday’s G2 Crossword:

…Tuesday’s crossword went a smidge better, we only had to cheat on 8.70% of the clues (two out of 23). We should have done better though, as we should have gotten ‘percentage’ from ‘share’! But we did learn that the ‘Gavotte’ is a ‘French 18th-century dance’…and I did Wednesday’s G2 Crossword:

…I was wondering of working from home was giving the little grey cells an edge in tackle the clues, but Wednesday’s crossword dispelled that notion, Severely! We had to cheat on 21.74% of the clues (five out of 23)! The worst score of the year I think! But is was softened slightly as it was an Illuminati score, we haven’t had one of them in a while., and that for four of the clues we had no chance of getting them. So, we learnt that ‘Ormolu’ is a ‘gold-coloured alloy’, that ‘Doeskin’ is a ‘soft leather made from deer or sheep’, that Tbilisi is in Georgia and that the ‘Larkspur’ is an ‘annual plant of the buttercup family’. Hopefully the rest of the week’s crossword’s go better…