Rather shockingly, Surprise! announced to us on Monday that he had a wobbly tooth. This morning, he announced that he no longer had a wobbly tooth.
This is even more of a shock than when Funsize announced the same three years ago - it all feels rather too early for us to be at this stage, though he is very close to his fifth birthday. Anyway, the upshot of this is that we'll once again have to call on the services of the tooth fairy.
Two years ago, we found ourselves coming to the end of our fixed mortgage deal just as there was a spike in interest rates. So we took our a two-year fix, in the hope that they'd come down again in that time. And that was fine.
And, indeed, the plan looked really good until about two weeks ago - the base rate had dropped to 3.75% with a further reduction expected this week and then, hopefully, at least one more in the months to come. Which would have been good.
Right on cue, therefore, this situation with Iran kicked off. Which has of course disrupted the oil supplies, leading to an immediate spike in prices, and in turn a rise in inflation. So the expected rate reduction didn't come, any prospect of further increases has evaporated, and indeed it's likely that the Bank of England may well start raising the rate again (because of course the thing to do in an impending cost of living crisis is to pile on a load more misery - that'll teach the plebs to want such fripperies as petrol to commute and food to eat).
And, just for fun, we're also coming to the end of our current deal on gas and electricity...
Oh well, I guess things could be a lot worse.
It has been a frustrating week. On the face of things, it's all okay - things are just proceeding onwards, there was an issue but there's a workaround, and there are things to do but no immediate crisis. And yet... it all just feels like a big drift. There's a bunch of stuff I'm waiting on, and no signs of anything much happening until then.
Which all feels a bit odd, but it all does definitely feel like it's waiting for something to happen.
It has been an odd weekend for news on the reboot front - late on Saturday I saw the news that the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" reboot is now not going ahead, and then yesterday came the news that "Firefly" is restarting, with an animated series set between the show and the film, reuniting all the surviving cast members.
I must admit, I was actually rather glad of the first news, and have deeply mixed feelings about the second. Because while "Buffy" and (in particular) "Firefly" are prime material for a reboot in some form, any such reboot has to grapple with the Joss Whedon problem: he has been cancelled for fairly good reason, but he's also pretty much essential to the success of those properties.
The upshot of that is that I find it extremely hard to muster any enthusiasm for any reboot that doesn't involve Joss Whedon, and have no enthusiasm for one that does. As I said before, I'm afraid it's time for those IP to die.
(And yet, all that said, if the "Firefly" show does actually happen, I inevitably will end up watching it, because I can't claim to be entirely consistent.)
#8: "Tyrant", by Conn Iggulden
The petrol station at our local Tesco has been closed for refurbishment for several weeks. This has been a bit of a pain, given my usual practice of filling up while doing the Big Shop, but fair enough. It reopened last week, and so today was the first time I used it.
And I just can't actually see what's different? It's the same arrangement, it's the same pumps, they haven't even really been cleaned up all that much. All in all, it seems like a whole load of effort and nuisance for, essentially, nothing.
Oh well. It doesn't matter... just odd enough to be worth remarking on.
#7: "The Crimson Campaign", by Brian McClennan
Just for once, Scotland has a really exciting football season. And so it was probably inevitable that Rangers and Celtic would play a Scottish Cup quarter final and put on one of the worst displays of "football" ever (though not even their worst game this season...). But far worse than that was the pitch invasion and the disgraceful scenes that followed the merciful end of the game.
It is probably the case that there are some lessons to be learned about the crowd allocation and the stewarding of the match. If so, those lessons should be investigated and learned. It's also probably the case that one side started it, and that one side was the worse offender (and not necessarily the same side either way).
But all of that is largely irrelevant. The bottom line is that this is not the first time something like this has happened, and while all the talking heads are lining up to express their disgust, almost nobody is truly surprised by any of this. That it happened is a mark of shame, but perhaps a bigger shame is that it seems to just be a feature of our game.
So.
There needs to be a sanction applied to these two clubs. And that cannot be a fine: if the penalty for breaking a rule is a fine, that rule becomes optional for the very rich. And stamping this out cannot be optional.
So the penalty should take the nature of a footballing sanction.
Two other things:
At this point, I'm inclined to ban both Rangers and Celtic from the Scottish Cup next season. They caused this blight in a Scottish Cup match, so eject them from that competition next year.
But if that's not enough to stop this happening again, then in future I think we need to stop holding the Old Firm matches - when those fixtures are scheduled, simply rest the teams and assign both a 3-0 defeat.
And there comes a point, very soon indeed, when we should consider declaring both these teams ineligible for European competition, as happened to English teams in the 80s. That's probably the most effective sanction, but should probably be considered a nuclear option - it means both these clubs losing a huge amount of money, it means they become hugely unappealing to any calibre of player... but perhaps that's what we need to do.
But none of that will happen, of course. We'll have a couple of token arrests, some sort of slap on the wrist, and "lessons have been learned".
In the meantime, I'm very much hoping that Hearts win the league and Falkirk, St Mirren, or even Dunfermline win the Scottish Cup.
Shame on them both.
Young Surprise! has been ill. Indeed, he has been ill for the past several weeks, starting with overnight vomiting, then all manner of horrible stuff from both ends, endless washing and rewashing of clothes and bedding, and a huge amount of time off nursery (all of which meant working from home, which is fine, but also while trying to keep him looked after).
It's fair to say that it has been a difficult time, to the extent that last night I finally ran out of energy completely and fell asleep while watching TV (which for me basically never happens).
Anyway, it does look like he might finally be over it, and is back at nursery. Or, at least, I desperately hope that he's finally over it!
It's a rare year when you get through Christmas without having to return/replace something. This year, it is a game controller for my nephew, which failed just after the end of the "returns window". Which is far from ideal - consumer law means that defective items should be accepted for return within any reasonable timeframe, but I've found before that consumer law is, sadly, something of an illusion.
Oh well.
So, I got in touch with Amazon, and found myself redirected to their third-party provider. Not good. Then I walked around Amazon's support a second time, and found myself redirected to their third-party provider. Still not good.
But then I went onto their support chat and spoke to an agent (which I strongly suspect to be an AI, but never mind). Anyway, a few minutes there and a return has been arranged.
So, fair play to Amazon - they actually came through, and without too much hassle. Now to actually return the item, collect the refund, and order a replacement...
The second attempt at waffles saw me switching to a different waffle mix, and increasing the waffle maker setting from '3' to '4'. I also started adding more of the waffle mix to the device, meaning we now got fully-formed waffles.
The upshot was that the outcome was vastly superior, though we're still not quite there yet. A few things still to adjust...