Days 861 to 867

Aka Monday 10^th to Sunday 16^h June 2019

I seem to have settled into a new pattern, since I started the new temp job, I get up early to iron my shirt for the day (I am maintaining a work-man like approach of wearing a shirt, tie, smart trousers and shoes to work, rather than my previous more relaxed style of jeans, a polo shirt and trainers or loafers. This time, I very much want to keep my work and personal life separated as much as possible and not blur the two), I then wash and toilet, watch a little of BBC Breakfast, then I get dressed and go to work. Onn the way in I pick up the Guardian, mostly for the G2 Crossword, I get to work and spend five minutes having an initial once over of the crossword and then I punch in and get to work.

Of the 9-to-5, I spend a least an hour or two worrying that I’m doing the job wrong and that I’m going to get shouted at. Then it’s home time and I get home and I do a few weight exercises, cook dinner, eat dinner, flop down in front of the TV for a few hours, too tired to read or doing something more creative, then I fall asleep, awake up and go to bed and fall asleep again. Then I wake up and repeat the whole thing all over. Apart from the weekends, when I do get a little energy back and don’t feel so tired that I can’t do stuff, like work on my re-edits or read or tidy up or catching up on my blog!

I also got my second ever pull-list:

…although I’ve still got comics from six months ago that I haven’t read (see above about feeling tired)!

… and the postman brought me a copy of the special edition of The Chemical Brothers compilation ‘Brotherhood’ (although it’s weird that it hasn’t got many of their earliest songs, by which I really mean ‘Song To The Siren’ 😊, which they recorded under the Dust Brothers moniker), which I mostly got for the bonus CD of their Electronic Battle Weapon’s, tracks-in-progress that were tested out in their DJ sets:

…and I got a DVD of ‘The Accountant’, I known what you’re thinking, but I’ve heard good things about this flick and I kinda like Ben Affleck as an actor…

…and I did the G2 Crosswords this week (as per usual):

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a great start as I only had to cheat on one of the 25 clues. The answers were just there, flowing straight from the little grey cells to my hand to my pen, tumbling out like clowns from a clown car. And I learnt that the ‘open grassland of southern Africa’ is called ‘veld’…

…and Tuesday’s crossword goes even better, and I didn’t have to cheat on any of the clues. The answers were just there, bang, bang, bang, one after the other, flowing onto the grid. Even the answers I shouldn’t have gotten, I got, like ‘yorker’ for ‘difficult cricket delivery to play’, I had ‘y_r_e_’ from the other clues and the little grey cells said that’s ‘yorker’. Conversely, my workday went a tad worse, so swings and roundabouts 😊…

…Wednesday’s crossword takes a little nosedive as I had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). The answers came pretty easily, except for those four, but I did learn that a ‘partridge’ is a ‘game bird’ and that a ‘fathom’ is ‘six feet down’. Also, the grid seemed extra poetic with Ticket Acorns, Wrote Primacy, Gritter Rayon, Awful Deliver, Haywire Virus and Martyr Dreary…

 

…meanwhile Friday’s crossword takes the nosedive further, as I had to cheat on over a quarter of the clues (five out of 19). The answer I got came easy, but the rest were like a brick wall that the little grey cells couldn’t climb. But my workday went pretty great and I did learn that a ‘domed roof’ is a ‘cupola’ and that the ‘Maldives’ are ‘Indian Ocean island country’…

…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on an ‘eh…it’s middling and okay’ end, as I have to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). It took a little brain work to get some of the answers, like was Cajuns or Creole, but the other 20 answers came went too much struggle. And I learnt that the ‘second-largest Mediterranean island, after Sicily’ is ‘Sardinia’, that ‘Huron’ is a ‘Great Lake’ and that ‘fusilli’ is ‘spiral pasta’ (I really hate pasta, so have no idea what all the different kinds are called, apart from spaghetti!)…

Days 854 to 860

Aka Monday 3^rd to Sunday 9^th June 2019 

The temp job is going well, and I’ve been working more and more on my own. The only downside to the job, aside from having loads of things to remember, is that I’m not walking as much as I was, but I’m snacking less during the working day and I have lost weight…

…on the comics front ’The Wild Storm’ #23 arrived and I picked up my first pull list, just the one issue was in it, out of a total of five, and one was on the shelf, but I only set it up last Thursday and I should get the rest next week and the pull list should be up and running proper by the end of the month (I think) and I got the latest 2000AD Partwork, featuring the A.B.C. Warriors, from WH Smiths:

…and I brought ‘Batman vs the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles’ DVD, which looks fun, but I feel so physically drained from working that I don’t have enough energy to actively read or watch much, which is a shame…

…and I got the latest issue of Lego Star Wars, which features a free AT-M6 minifigure:

…and I did the G2 Crosswords this week (as per usual):

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a great start, the answers flowed like chocolate in Willy Wonka’s factory, as I only had to cheat to a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24).  And I learnt that the ‘precursor to the Euro’ was called the ‘Ecu’ and that the ‘madeira cake’ is a ‘rich sponge’ and not Richard Branson like I first thought (boom! boom!)… 

…Tuesday’s crossword went a little worse, I had to cheat on a seventh of the clues (three out of 21), it wasn’t that the clues were particularly hard, but did show up my lack of knowledge of art and geography, otherwise I would have gotten ‘Art Nouveau’ from ‘French school of painting and architecture of the 1880’s’ and ‘Liberia’ from ‘Africa’s oldest independent country’, but I’m annoyed that I got the answer to ‘erroneous’ wrong, I went for ‘wrong’ instead of ‘false’, doh!...

…Wednesday’s crossword went worse, but I did get an Illuminati score (cheating on five out of 23 clues), I could get most of the answers, but my little grey cells were too tired to get those last five answers. But I did learn that ‘Tito’ was the ‘Yugoslav marshall, prime minister and president, d. 1980’, that a ‘hyrdoplane’ is a ‘boat that lifts out of the water at high speeds’ and that ‘Primrose’ is a ‘woodland plant with yellow flowers in spring’…

…but the little grey cells were firing on all cylinders for Thursday’s crossword, as I didn’t have to cheat on any of the 21 clues, the answers were just spilling out of my brain, down my fingers and onto the page. Plus, the grid gave out some nice aliases/nicknames/stage names/band names – Mike Archive, Scrumpy Tout, Realm Victim, Sylph Acolyte and Zinc Forty-Two…

…Friday’s crossword goes a little worse, I guess the little grey cells were a little burnt out from yesterday’s perfect score but did give another Illuminati score (five out of 23). And I learnt that a ‘horse with reddish-brown coat’ is a ‘roan’ and that an ‘oral examination’ is a ‘viva’, but I should have gotten ‘slapdash’, ‘useful’ and ‘pestle’…

…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on an okayish note, as I had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). I should have gotten ‘cantankerous’ from ‘grouchy’ and known that ‘Bahrain’ is a ‘Gulf sheikhdom’, but I did learn that ‘alliteration’ is a ‘poetic rhyming device using words with the same initial letter’…