It all happens around here

Well, that weekend flew by rather fast, didn’t it?

It all got off to a rather awful start as the journey home took rather longer than it should have. A fire was reported at Barking, so LT took the opportunity to suspend every piece of underground line east of Whitechapel, which had knock-on effects all over the place, principally as far as I am concerned, on the Circle Line, which went from normal service to meltdown faster than I can type the phrase. Forty-five minutes to travel from Victoria to Liverpool Street, standing in a crammed carriage at about 40 degrees is too much. It’s not as if the line goes anywhere near Barking.

Anyway, Friday evening, we watched the Uruguay-Ghana game, officially because it was the last game in which I had any potential financial interest and therefore any reason other than random choice to favour one team over another, but also because I rather fancied watching some football without the attack on my nervous system that always accompanies an England match.

Marvellously entertaining game, though with the wrong result. Ghana lost because of a blatant piece of cheating by Uruguay. For the latter, it was worth the self-sacrifice of the player right at the death to stop a certain goal with his hand. For the former, the rules should allow for a penalty goal rather than a penalty kick; they had already done the hard work, which was stopped by the handball, the pressure of a penalty kick with seconds to go at the end of extra time was just unfair. Kudo, though, to the player for stepping up in the resulting shoot-out that followed his extra time miss and burying the first in their doomed shoot out.

This means that the Dutch receive the curse that is my support for the semi-finals. I can’t bring myself to support Uruguay and although the Dutch are not the most entertaining footballing nation right now, they haven’t been as blatantly naughty in getting where they are, if they have been naughty at all. I have to confess to not having watched them play so far this tournament.

Either way, that was that, on Friday and even Furtle was entertained by it!

Saturday we were inspected by Furtle Ma and Furtle Pa, who unexpectedly donated a brand new Dyson Vacuum Cleaner to the cause, and Furtle Pa fixed some wiring in the conservatory, while Furtle Ma wandered around the garden pointing out weeds from proper plants, and indicating those that needed trimming back or moving to somewhere rather shadier. As a result of this we wandered into Ilford on Sunday and bought gardening equipment. The buying of stuff is by far the most satisfying part of any hobby or activity and my interest is now officially over, though I suspect that my involvement isn’t (I have gardening gloves).

While we were refreshing ourselves in the pub, pax_draconis swung by for a couple or three hours before going on to another event. Always nice to catch up.

Yesterday, apart from buying gardening equipment, saw me finally repairing my iTunes library, though I now have to go through and edit it, since while I know there are about 12,900 tracks on there, iTunes has decided that there is double that number, so I have to remove the dead links. As far as I can tell, I have to do that manually. Bum. Still, we’re getting there. I still have no ringtones other than those that come with the phone, so I shall have to start creating them again, once I have sorted the rest out. My mood was slightly torpedoed by the discovery that the problem with my PC may owe more to a malfunctioning USB port than to the external drive. My new external drive was recognised by the PC until about half way through the data transfer when suddenly it wasn’t any more. Luckily I have enough drive space elsewhere, so starting again, I managed to get the library rebuilt to the stage it is now.

I shall have to try plumbing in the external drive to another USB and operating it from there. I shall do the same with the older Seagate drive, too. I have a horrible feeling that I now have far more storage space than I intended. Or less, depending upon how the PC has affected them.

Oh well.

Yesterday evening we chatted for a couple of hours with one half of or adjoining next door neighbours, before calling it a day.

And that was the weekend: quite good value for two days.

It all happens around here

Well, that weekend flew by rather fast, didn’t it?

It all got off to a rather awful start as the journey home took rather longer than it should have. A fire was reported at Barking, so LT took the opportunity to suspend every piece of underground line east of Whitechapel, which had knock-on effects all over the place, principally as far as I am concerned, on the Circle Line, which went from normal service to meltdown faster than I can type the phrase. Forty-five minutes to travel from Victoria to Liverpool Street, standing in a crammed carriage at about 40 degrees is too much. It’s not as if the line goes anywhere near Barking.

Anyway, Friday evening, we watched the Uruguay-Ghana game, officially because it was the last game in which I had any potential financial interest and therefore any reason other than random choice to favour one team over another, but also because I rather fancied watching some football without the attack on my nervous system that always accompanies an England match.

Marvellously entertaining game, though with the wrong result. Ghana lost because of a blatant piece of cheating by Uruguay. For the latter, it was worth the self-sacrifice of the player right at the death to stop a certain goal with his hand. For the former, the rules should allow for a penalty goal rather than a penalty kick; they had already done the hard work, which was stopped by the handball, the pressure of a penalty kick with seconds to go at the end of extra time was just unfair. Kudo, though, to the player for stepping up in the resulting shoot-out that followed his extra time miss and burying the first in their doomed shoot out.

This means that the Dutch receive the curse that is my support for the semi-finals. I can’t bring myself to support Uruguay and although the Dutch are not the most entertaining footballing nation right now, they haven’t been as blatantly naughty in getting where they are, if they have been naughty at all. I have to confess to not having watched them play so far this tournament.

Either way, that was that, on Friday and even Furtle was entertained by it!

Saturday we were inspected by Furtle Ma and Furtle Pa, who unexpectedly donated a brand new Dyson Vacuum Cleaner to the cause, and Furtle Pa fixed some wiring in the conservatory, while Furtle Ma wandered around the garden pointing out weeds from proper plants, and indicating those that needed trimming back or moving to somewhere rather shadier. As a result of this we wandered into Ilford on Sunday and bought gardening equipment. The buying of stuff is by far the most satisfying part of any hobby or activity and my interest is now officially over, though I suspect that my involvement isn’t (I have gardening gloves).

While we were refreshing ourselves in the pub, pax_draconis swung by for a couple or three hours before going on to another event. Always nice to catch up.

Yesterday, apart from buying gardening equipment, saw me finally repairing my iTunes library, though I now have to go through and edit it, since while I know there are about 12,900 tracks on there, iTunes has decided that there is double that number, so I have to remove the dead links. As far as I can tell, I have to do that manually. Bum. Still, we’re getting there. I still have no ringtones other than those that come with the phone, so I shall have to start creating them again, once I have sorted the rest out. My mood was slightly torpedoed by the discovery that the problem with my PC may owe more to a malfunctioning USB port than to the external drive. My new external drive was recognised by the PC until about half way through the data transfer when suddenly it wasn’t any more. Luckily I have enough drive space elsewhere, so starting again, I managed to get the library rebuilt to the stage it is now.

I shall have to try plumbing in the external drive to another USB and operating it from there. I shall do the same with the older Seagate drive, too. I have a horrible feeling that I now have far more storage space than I intended. Or less, depending upon how the PC has affected them.

Oh well.

Yesterday evening we chatted for a couple of hours with one half of or adjoining next door neighbours, before calling it a day.

And that was the weekend: quite good value for two days.

...lunchtime doubly so.

If the wee small hours of the morning when you can’t get to sleep and all the bad thoughts in the world haunt you – say 2.00am to 3.00am – are the hour of the wolf, then the equivalent in the day time is 90 minutes long and falls between 2.30pm and 4.00pm. It’s not as bad, or at least it’s bad in a different way: it is the hour of the dog, when time starts running backwards and boredom beyond human endurance sets in.

We are over three-quarters of the way through that hour now (more, given my slow typing), but it’s a rare day when it doesn’t drag in the office.

Oddly, once we hit 4.00pm, then time speeds up again, sometimes astoundingly so. After 90 minutes of dire and interminable lag, the next hour tends to put its running shorts and pumps on to sprint for the finishing line.

Afternoons are odd things.

...lunchtime doubly so.

If the wee small hours of the morning when you can’t get to sleep and all the bad thoughts in the world haunt you – say 2.00am to 3.00am – are the hour of the wolf, then the equivalent in the day time is 90 minutes long and falls between 2.30pm and 4.00pm. It’s not as bad, or at least it’s bad in a different way: it is the hour of the dog, when time starts running backwards and boredom beyond human endurance sets in.

We are over three-quarters of the way through that hour now (more, given my slow typing), but it’s a rare day when it doesn’t drag in the office.

Oddly, once we hit 4.00pm, then time speeds up again, sometimes astoundingly so. After 90 minutes of dire and interminable lag, the next hour tends to put its running shorts and pumps on to sprint for the finishing line.

Afternoons are odd things.