Day 2983

Aka Sunday 22nd January 2023

Went for an exercise walk this morning (I did enjoy the graffiti, a ‘Matrix’ reference is always nice, especially on the side of a large corporation, although technically that part of wall might belong to the flats above the shop):

…it was v cold when I woke up and I was tempted to give it a miss, especially as I had a bit of a sniffle and didn’t want it turning into a full-on cold. But I resisted temptation and got myself out the house and it was v slippy under foot, at least those parts of the pavement that won’t facing the sun as it was starting to emerge from the horizon. In a few places the frost/ice looked more like snow, and did slow down my walk (so that I would avoid fall tit-over-arse!). So, I walked 4.57km in 1 hour and 14 seconds, which took 6,333 steps and burnt 432 calories.

Then it was back home to read the paper, do some weights (which I might not have warmed up for properly as I ended up with an achy chest, or maybe that’s just a sign of a good workout?), listen to some music and watch some stuff (mostly more of Season Four of ‘Elementary’ and maybe ‘The Menu’)…

...nope I didn’t watch ‘The Menu’, instead I binged on ‘Elementary’ and finished off Season Four which I enjoyed, but I found the storylines around Sherlock’s father to be a tad off, either underdeveloped or too fanciable. They didn’t quite seem to belong in the same universe as the rest of the storylines. Although maybe that was the point, that Sherlock and his father led different lives in different words/circles.

Day 2981 and 2982

Aka Friday 20th January and Saturday 21st January 2023

A quiet couple of days, Friday was spent working from home, with a quick lunchtime popping to the shops to do a food shop, to pick up this week’s New Comic Book Day gems:

…and the latest ’Lego Explorer’ magazine:

…which I got for the polar bear, just got to add a Dharma logo and I’ve got a ‘Lost’ Lego polar bear! Or maybe he can go with my Hoth Luke!

And when I got home my ’Elementary’ boxset had been delivered:

…so the rest of Friday and Saturday were spent wrapping up and escaping the cold, doing the Metro cryptic:

…and enjoying some snacks and Season Four of ’Elementary’…and I did the G2 Crossword:

…which went rather well, the little grey cells munched through Friday’s clues with very little difficulty, we only had to cheat on 9.52% of the clues (two out of 21). The only hitches were us not knowing that a ‘demijohn’ is a ‘large bottle enclosed in wickerwork’, we thought it was a large bottle with a flat bottom and misreading the clue for ‘bubble bath’, ‘liquid added to hot water to make it foam’, we thought it was related to some kind of coffee drink with foamy milk. We feel a little dumb for not getting ‘bubble bath’… 

…and Saturday’s crossword ends the crossword week on a bit of a sour note. It was a pretty chewy grid today and we did struggle with it and it’s kinda outstanding that we only had to cheat on 17.39& of the clues (four out of 23)! Maybe the little grey cells were a little groggy from waking up early? Either way we learnt that the ‘Farc’ were ‘Marxist guerrillas fighting the Columbian government between 1964 and 2016’, that ‘Oviedo’ is the ‘capital of Asturias in north-west Spain’ and the ‘apse’ is the ‘part of a church where the alter is normally placed’…

Days 2977 to 2980

Aka Monday 16th January to Thursday 19th January 2023

Not much to say about these few days (at least in my personal life, there’s plenty going on in the wider world, most of it bad, very bad. Corrupt, rapey cops, Tories being Tories and trying to take away hard-won worker rights, while also admitting that they have spent more money are challenging the train strikes than it would have cost to meet the RMT’s demands, and very little good news, globally speaking. So, one tends to retreat inwards. 

And definitely not outwards as it has been very cold this week, too cold to be outside for any length of time, so no exercise walks this week. I did walk home on Tuesday and in the 25 minutes it took me, even through I was wrapped up warm, it felt like my head was turning into ice.

Monday and Tuesday I was working in the office and helping to train a new member of the team, although they’re pretty self-sufficient now. Wednesday was a more relaxed day working from home. I also I attended a Teams Coffee session with our Chief Executive, and the main take away is that it’s going to be a bit of a tough future, because of budget issues, but it did sound like upper management weren’t going to hack and slash to make savings, bit would be taking a more considered approach. Still want to provide the same service, but utilising better ways of working…although that could be the usual business-speak gloss for sugar coating the bitter pill that there is very little fat to trim and those of us towards the bottom of the totem pole will get the most grief…on the pleasant side of things I finished watching Season Three of ‘Elementary’:

…and my enjoyment is growing, so much so I’ve purchased (online) the boxset for myself. I’m enjoying Sherlock growing and slowly changing, being more open to the world (in a social sense), the stories are getting a little darker and the supporting cast are getting fleshed out, getting their own moments to grow and develop…and I did the G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword gets the crossword week off with a terrible start as we had to cheat on 22.73% of the clues (five out of 22). Clearly the little grey cells had enjoyed themselves a little too much at the weekend! We missed some, in hindsight, obvious ones, like ‘choose’ from ‘single out’, but we did learn that the ‘Narcissus’ is a ‘bulbous plant with showy yellow or white flowers’ and that ‘disquisition’ means ‘treatise’. Hopefully tomorrow’s crossword will go better…

…and things tick up a fair bit with Tuesday’s crossword, we only had to cheat on 7.69% of the clues (two out of 26). And those two we missed, we just didn’t know the answers, so it’s kinda a clean sweep. Kinda. We learnt that ‘Transvaal’ was ‘one of four provinces of South Africa from 1910 to 1994’ and that ‘Acre’ is a ‘Israeli port, last city held by the Crusaders until 1291’. Again, we’re let down by poor geography knowledge…

…while Wednesday’s crossword goes even better and we only had to cheat on 4.17% of the clues (one out of 24). Would have been a clean sweep, but we missed ‘apartment’ from ‘suite of rooms’, we were stuck thinking around hotel rooms and suites. Have a slight knee-jerk reaction that ‘suite of rooms’ is a poor clue for ‘apartment’! We did like how 3 down (‘That’s all folks’) tied in with 15 down (‘screwy’). At this rate we might get a proper clean sweep tomorrow…

…unfortunately Thursday’s crossword was very chewy, the little grey cells couldn’t get to grips with it and we had to cheat on 16.67% of the clues (four out of 24). Maybe the cold is getting to them? But we did learn that an ‘Ameer’ is an ‘independent ruler in Arabia’, that a ‘tightrope’ is an ‘funambulist’s support’ and that a ‘Bathyscaphe’ is a ‘deep-diving vessel for underwater exploration’. Hopefully this is just a bleep and we’ll be back on track tomorrow…and I did (not so well on) the Metro’s cryptics:

Days 2975 and 2976

Aka Saturday 14th January and Sunday 15th January 2023

A low key weekend spent listening to the Elvis boxset, watching Season Three of ‘Elementary’ and chilling. The postie delivered ’Time Before Time’ #19:

…which was a fun read. Nadia is finally reunited with her mother and sister and we find out what is happening in the far, distant past. The story really delivers on showing the disconnect you can feel when you reunite and it doesn’t quite live up to your hopes and dreams. 

One of the newspaper was leading on Noel Gallagher's divorce and a little bit shamefully my first thought was if this meant that an Oasis reunion was on the cards. And then it went to "hold on, this is a family breaking up, anything else should be an afterthought". Although, as an Oasis fan and with the history between the brothers, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out:

On Sunday I went for an exercise walk (the fourth of the new year!) and it was knackering, only slightly less knackering than Wednesday’s, so it looks like I’m getting some stamina back. Just need to keep it up, expand the length of the walk as my stamina comes back and incorporate more stair use at work, get those little burst of activity in. This are some pictures I took during the walk:

…and these are the stats 4.85km walked in 56 minutes and 7 seconds, which took 6,227 steps and burnt 466 calories…and this is Saturday’s G2 Crossword:

…and Saturday’s crossword ends a pretty damn fine crossword week on a pretty damn fine note, as we only had to cheat on 4.17% of the clues (one out of 24). The little grey cells didn’t burn themselves out, they kept enough in reserve to chew through this grid (and it did have a few chewy clues). Although we did fail to get ‘hacienda’ from ‘landed estate in Spain and Latin America’, which we really should off (like anyone who had a passing interest in music and grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Hacienda should have been a gimme!)…

Day 2974

Aka Friday 13th January 2023

A busy, but quiet day in the office. Since the redesign, which cut the number of staff in our section by 25%, we’ve been under the cosh and we’re about a week behind on our work. There is literally not enough of us now to keep up with it. We are getting a few new people in, as not all the post in the new design were filled initially but training them is taking us awhile and away from work. Obvs in a short time they’ll be up to speed and we’ll be able to catch up, but until then it’ll be a pain. At lunch I picked up these two albums:

…’Elvis in Nashville’, which, as the title suggests, collects the recordings Elvis made in Nashvillein over a week or so of the Summer of 1970. And it’s a great collection of songs. It’s nice to have the released tracks in their “pure” form (the songs that were used for ‘Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old)’ had snippets of the song "I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago" fading in and out between each track, acting as a bridge) and the unreleased takes, rehearsals and jams show how much fun it could be recording with Elvis and how the songs were worked up into their final form. I also like how it's packaged to resemble a reel-to reel tape box …

…while the Jive Bunny album was a bit of impulse purchase, I do have fond memories of their late ‘80s work and hopefully it still stands up…we had a quick few drinks after work and when I got home started watching Season Three of ‘Elementary’:

...and, as it's Friday the 13th I rewatched 'Friday the 13th: A New Beginning':

...my snapshot review is I liked the try at a new direction and the characters, while stereotypes, were not played to broad, everything feels heighted, like Jason via Dario Argento. The dirty hillbillies, the coked out paramedic/orderly, the greasers, “oh baby, oh baby”, the robot, etc. There’s some harsh kills, like the flare in the mouth and the belt, but some are just tame. A lot of not showing much and leaving our imagination to fill in the blanks. It doesn’t hit all of my criteria for a Friday film, but I really enjoy it...and I worked on the cryptic crossword:

…and today’s G2 Crossword:

…Friday’s crossword didn’t go quite as well, as we had to cheat on 4.00% of the clues (one out of 25)! So, still damn fine. The little grey cells didn’t burn themselves out yesterday and we only stumbled on not knowing that a ‘Petrel’ is a ‘small oceanic seabird, comes ashore only to breed’…