Still have a lingering cough, but otherwise back to normal. Gearing up for some travel, going to Uppsala for Eurocon and to visit friends, and bracing myself for Gallifrey One Hotel Hunger Games next week. Here at home there was the coronation of course, aside from some bunting down the street we experienced it mainly through memes. John has friends over this weekend so its been all gaming all the time for him and mostly puttering about in the garden when its sunny, and reading when it isn’t for me. Quite a pleasant way to spend a three-day weekend.
So far so good
Still testing positive a week on, had to postpone my dentist appointment to get my implant stitches out. I I remain congested, and a bit fuzzy, but generally feel better so hopefully just a few more days of this nonsense. The weather has been gorgeous the last few days so it would be nice to have enough energy to get some gargen maintenance done, or maybe even go into town at the weekend. On the other hand, I don’t get paid till next week so perhaps its an opportunity to hunker down at home and finish Horizon Zero Dawn finally.
Eastercon
A week back from Eastercon today, but obviously Covid ate that week right up. Still testing positive at the moment, but feeling mostly normal other than a realtively (so far) light cough. The first few days I basically slept all day, after that it was fatigue, some congestion and fuzzy headedness, mild headache, that sort of thing. Not terrible as these things go, but obviously not delighted to finally break my covid-free streak. It meant we missed this month’s First Thursday (postponed to second due to Eastercon clash) and a planned trip to Edingburgh. The weekend overall was good, we …
Chores
I have a bunch of art stuff to do as convention season is here, so I’ve applied for my passport, registered my postal vote, painted the downstairs hall, and planted some berry bushes in the garden.
British!
As of a couple of days ago I’m officially British. The ceremony was a bit long but nice overall, there was piper and a harpist and a couple of speeches. The mayor confirmed we are also Geordies, so I’ll have to start working on the accent. The other speech was very much a welcome to the country sort of thing. Which was well-meaning obviously, but they also mentioned at one point that the new citizens in the room had lived here between four and seventeen(!) years, so I can’t imagine that latter one felt especially in need of encouragment to …
Untitled
We went to London and saw some culture! Despite the strikes on Friday we had a smooth trip to Croydon to the stay at Fishlifter Manor, where we were greeted by a very welcome dhansak. Saturday we headed to the Royal Academy to explore Making Modernism, an exhibition about four German Modernist painters; Maula Modersohn-Becker, Kӓthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin. It was an interesting look at a different perspective, the Kollwitz drawings in particular. We were then joined by John’s parents and explored Spain and the Hispanic World, which was a very ambitious exhibition exploring Spanish art, its …
In the ear
One of the nice things about working from home is that I can listen to stuff all day; music, audiobooks, podcasts. I’m not consistent in my habits, usually the end and beginning of the year are when I’m best at remembering to put my headphones on – all the roundups and recommendations, plus the usual new year “do all the things” energy, but I do get through quite a bit of audio, especially the podcasts. There are some I always keep up with, This Had Oscar Buzz, Off Menu, and the Taskmaster Podcast in particular. Octothorpe, of course, though I …
Catmass
One Wednesday I had lunch at the new Spanish tapas place in Grainger market, after getting a roscón from their shop, it has a limited but solid menu and they plan to open in the mornings to do churros, so I’m looking forward to that. The roscón is tasty, though I’d forgotten how big they are – a lot for two people, we aren’t even halfway through it. I also made fabada, and after dinner we gave the cats their Xmas toys, which went over very well. Since we’re likely to be away during actual Xmas and sometimes New Year, …
Obligatory New Year’s Post
2023, so far so good. We ended the old year with friends, drinks, food, boardgames, and a movie, then started the new year with much the same. Appropriately the movie for the closing year was a rewatch, Logan Lucky in lieu of a Benoit Blanc joint, then for the new year we watched Don’t Worry Darling, which we all really liked. Three days into January I’m decluttering, which is the extent of my resolutions and sorely needed. Otherwise the 2023 goals boil down to “do the same things only moreso” excepting where they are “much less of that, actually”.
Social(s)
I’m on wandering.shop, enjoying it well enough now that there are actual people on it – I had created an account a while back but only poked my nose in now and then as it was pretty quiet. It has a lot of potential, though I guess unsurprisingly it has the reverse issues of Twitter in a lot of ways. If the birdsite is a huge for-profit corporation, with all the problems and opportunities that entails, mastodon is a bunch of small volunteer-run groups. Which is great in theory, but someone compared their experience with dealing with HOAs and…. that’s …