Season's End

On Saturday the band played at the Queensferry Folk Festival, bringing to an end my second season with the band. In the event, we only played about half a dozen events, and I missed a couple of those. However, it was enough to keep me practicing, which is the key consideration at this time.

I've been enjoying my time with the band, with the one caveat that I'm not really being stretched at all - I knew almost all the tunes when I started, I learned the remainder very quickly, and we've learned virtually nothing new since then. But that's the nature of the beast. If you want challenge, you probably need to be competing.

I'm now going to take a week off of practice (almost entirely - I'll still go on Thursday, but will probably only take my practice chanter). In the meantime, I've stripped my pipes down to let them dry, and will then rehemp all the joints so that they're ready for the winter ahead. I also need to get my kilt, waistcoat, and jacket dry cleaned, so that they're also ready. Basically, there's some maintenance that has fallen somewhat by the wayside, and it's time to get that sorted.

(Come to think of it, that sentiment applies just as well to a number of other things...)

Slugs. Why did it have to be slugs?

I hate slugs. Not as much as I used to - they used to totally freak me out, but now it is at least a case of extreme dislike rather than abject terror. However, the recent development that we have a slug invasion in the house is most definitely not welcome.

It also started a few nights ago, when we spotted a slug in the kitchen. I therefore gathered it up in a bit of kitchen roll, strode to the back door, and unceremoniously ejected the creature. (This is actually not the very first slug we've seen there, but it was the first for a long time.) Then, a few nights later we had no fewer than three slugs all at once. And then one more.

Ultimately, I think this is caused by two things. The first is the drop in temperature, which makes the indoors that much more appealing. The second is that there must be a tiny little hole that they can squeeze through and thus get in. Alas, my fear is that that hole will be somewhere horribly inaccessible. Sigh.

(It's also possible that they've recently been stirred up by us covering up the BBQ and/or getting rid of a tree root that was sitting in the garden, thus disturbing their hibernation. In which case, maybe we've seen the last of them for a while. That would be nice.)

My other consideration, of course, is how all this affects Funsize. Fears can be contagious, so if a child sees a parent totally incapacitated by the sight of some creepy crawly, they're very likely to pick up on that. And so it is incumbent on my to just get on and deal with these things, despite the obvious and very real threat to life and limb.

Or something. I'm still going to eject them with great relish.

The Final Task

The final item from my old to-do list, and one of my goals for the year, is to repaint the study. Initially we had hoped to do that during the Easter holiday, but it quickly became apparent that that was a non-starter - we also had to repaint the dining room, which was a higher-priority task, and couldn't fit both in the allotted time.

There are actually several steps involved in the repaint, which means that the study is a considerably more involved task than the dining room. Specifically:

1. Empty the study. This involves shifting huge numbers of books and other paraphenalia, then the bookshelves, the PC, and the PC desk. Hopefully, all of this will fit in the spare room for the required few days.
   
2. Rip out a few mounting sockets from one of the walls, and patch the resulting holes.
   
3. Paint the ceiling.
   
4. Paint the walls.
   
5. Paint the walls again (since we're changing the colour, two coats will be required).
   
6. Paint the skirting boards and door frame.
   
7. Leave to dry overnight.
   
8. Hoover.
   
9. Bring back the bookshelves, the books, and assorted paraphenalia. I think these are all basically going back where they came from.
   
10. Assemble a new computer desk (assuming it has been purchased in time).
    
11. Bring back the PC.

Obviously, that's a lot of steps for a small room! However, the individual steps should themselves me small. Indeed, the biggest parts of the task are probably clearing the room and then putting everything back. The actual decoration, given the size of the room and that it will hopefully be empty, should be very quick. We still have two preparatory tasks to do: the first is to finalise our choice of paint and then acquire it; the second is the purchase the new computer desk. Neither is particularly huge... but both are a case of actually getting on and doing it!

#47: "War of the Wolf", by Bernard Cornwell
#48: "The Silver Chair", by C.S. Lewis

Penny Dreadful

After five months, we've now cancelled Now TV - we'd reached a point where we'd watched almost everything we wanted to from the service, and it wasn't worth paying the subscription for the last two episodes of "L.A.'s Finest" (which, frankly, was just about worth investing the time to watch, and no more than that).

We actually got a fair amount of value from those five months - in addition to the final season of "Game of Thrones", I watched the third season of "Supergirl" (not great; it's been getting steadily worse since the start), the "Deadwood" wrap-up movie (which was good), "Chernobyl" (which was excellent, but somewhat flexible with the truth; ironically so, given the show's most-quoted line), the aforementioned "L.A.'s Finest", and "Penny Dreadful".

That last was one of those shows that I'd heard about but never had the opportunity to watch - a sort of alternate take on the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" concept, where the various characters from classic horror stories come together in an interlocking plot. It was good stuff, rather uncomfortable to watch at times, all underpinned by a great performance by Eva Green.

Of the three seasons, I felt that the first was the most solid. After that first season I got the impression that they knew the characters still had a lot of potential, but didn't have a clear idea quite how best to use them. The third season was maybe a step up from the first, but suffered very significantly from splitting up the core cast - at times it felt more like watching three separate shows than a single coherent whole.

I was also a little dismayed by the ending. The main plot all came together really nicely, but the two side plots just seemed to... stop. They didn't really go anywhere, and indeed one of them ended by pretty much just undoing everything that it had been building up to. That's a bit of a shame, especially since it seems the end was planned, rather than being an unexpected cancellation.

Still, it was a good show, and well worth the time we invested in it. I doubt I would watch it again, but then the days of my rewatching TV are largely coming to a close - there's already too much that's new that I want to watch, and way too little time.
#46: "The Crimson Legion", by Troy Denning

Day 250: Update on Goals

Somehow, it feels like ages since I did one of these...

Anyway, we've now reached day 250, so time for another update on goals.

• Books: By day 250 I should have read 41.10 books. I'm now well ahead of that target, which is good. The current estimate is that I'll end up slightly over the 60 books for the year, but that I'll fail to finish off the British part of The List.
  
• Weight: Nothing to report.
  
• Blogging: Nothing much to say - this remains right on target in both blogs.
  
• Redecorate the Study: This will probably be the big change between now and the next update. We think we've picked out the rough colour for the walls (but will need to narrow it to a specific shade), and have picked out the replacement computer desk. So it's just a case of actually doing the work, which I hope to do during the October break. Watch this space.
  
• The To-Do List: This was completed some weeks ago. I've decided not to put together a new to-do list, so from the next update I'll remove this from the report entirely,

And that's that. Another short-but-sweet report, with one done and three well in hand. There's only the one permanent fly in the ointment to worry about, which is annoying but just not something I'm getting a handle on.

Hardly Worth The Effort

According to this blog, last year I packed the BBQ up for the winter at the end of September. However, that was delayed from my original plan by not having a suitable cover until the last minute. With the start of September the temperature seems to have dropped significantly, such that even the nice days have a noticable chill to them.

That being the case, I think I'll pack up our BBQ for the winter over this weekend.

The upshot of that, given that my birthday BBQ didn't really happen, is that it was used exactly once in 2019, to cook a couple of burgers as a test to verify that it was in fact still working after the winter. Frankly, it was barely worth the effort of unpacking the thing.

(Meanwhile at work I will continue to look out for a chance to have one more BBQ in the year. But that's less of an issue, both since it can happen at short notice if we do have a good day, but primarily because the work BBQ doesn't really have that same "packing up" ritual - the equivalent is just a matter of not getting it out for use.)

Ah, Very Clever

Scenario One: The Tory rebels chicken out, and don't back the motion for parliament to seize control over the process, or don't back the proposed law to block No Deal. Boris remains in control, and we get his version of Brexit on October 31st.

Scenario Two: The Tory rebels don't chicken out, and a law is put in place to block No Deal. The Tories therefore remove the whip from those rebels, and then call an election - campaigning under the banner that the only way to see Brexit protected is to vote Tory. It's very likely that Boris would win that election. Furthermore, the former-Tory rebels, having lost the whip, cannot stand as Tory candidates, and therefore will almost certainly lose their seats to new, loyal Tories. Boris thus emerges with an actual majority and a much more united Tory party. Then then repeal the law blocking No Deal, and proceed as before.

(That assumes Boris wins the election, of course. But frankly there are only two chances of Corbyn winning: fat chance and nae chance. Theresa May ran the worst campaign I can recall and still beat him.)

Two other thoughts:

If there is an election, expect to see the remnants of Change UK (and their spin-offs) urgently seeking to join the Lib Dems. Or, just possibly, not supporting the rebellion and seeking readmission to the Tories. Any who don't will almost certainly lose their seats, so...

If there is a General Election the SNP will have a difficult choice to make: do their campaign on a "stop Brexit" platform, or do they campaign on an "Indyref 2" platform. If they go for "stop Brexit" they'll probably get more seats, but then can't claim those seats as a mandate for independence. Alternately, if they go for "Indyref 2" they won't win as many seats (though still a majority of the seats in Scotland and probably more than they have currently). Of course, that also weakens their anti-Brexit mandate. I'm not sure that matters.

The upshot: yeah, it's still a No Deal Brexit (regardless of whether a law is passed to block it or not), followed by years of Tory rule. Joy.

The Mug in the Microwave

As of this weekend we now keep a mug of water in our microwave. This is not quite as daft as it seems.

The thing is, Funsize has reached a height where she can just about reach some of the buttons on the microwave, and said microwave has a really convenient feature where, with the press of a single button, you can switch it on for 30 seconds at full power.

But running a microwave with nothing in it is a bad idea - basically, you've got a load of energy being pumped into a reflective chamber with nowhere to go. (Normally, whatever you're cooking absorbs much of that energy, which is why it gets hot. And yes, that's a vast simplification.)

And so, we now have a mug of water in the microwave. That way, if FS pushes the button, we'll end up with slightly warmed water. Which isn't the perfect solution, but is probably something we can live with.