Experimental Cookery 2023: Venison Haunch Steaks

For the past several months we have had a couple of venison steaks sitting in our freezer waiting for us to decide what to do with them. We finally used them up today - any notion of turning them into tacos or otherwise chopping them up was discarded, and they instead were seared and then served. I took the opportunity to make 'real' chips to have with them, but otherwise it was all fairly simple.

And that was a winning meal. Really, we should have done it much sooner. Alas, I have no idea when, or even if, we might do these again. Still, good stuff.

Invitation Declined

I see that we're being invited to personally swear allegiance to our beloved new monarch at the coronation next week.

Personally, I'm quite glad of this. Because up to now it was possible to argue that we'd been represented by various people - by our MPs, by our MSPs, by Humza Yousaf as First Minister and by Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, by the heads of the churches and universities, and so on and so forth.

But if we're being invited to individually swear allegiance that all disappears. And an invitation to swear allegiance is also, by extension, an invitation to decline to swear that allegiance.

It will be very interesting to see what fraction of the country actually care about this pantomime, versus merely having to pay for it.

Risking It

For the first time in about nine months, I'm going to leave my work laptop in the office. It's a risk, but one I've decided to take - I could really do with having a couple of days completely away from it.

In other news, it has been a tough week.

Under Consideration

A few weeks ago I was approached about the possibility of becoming an Elder in the church. Apparently, they're keen to get a younger insight!

Anyway, I have since been considering the matter carefully.

On the one hand:

• Someone has to do the job, and the truth is that the existing Kirk Session is only getting older. The ability of others to carry it is likely to diminish, and so it's somewhat incumbent on those of us who can to help out.
• I'm also conscious that you need to be in the meetings to have a voice. This goes back to an incident in my first church many years ago, when the then Kirk Session put out a statement on a controversial topic that I very much disagreed with (to the extent that had it gone beyond a simple statement and into actual policy, I would have had to consider walking away). I felt that the wider congregation should really have been consulted, but the truth is that the Kirk Session was acting within their remit. In which case, being on that body would be a good thing.

But...

• I'm very much the sort of person who will either commit to something fully, or not at all. I'm not keen on doing something in a half-hearted manner, and I really dislike dropping the ball. And it's fair to say that I'm already somewhat stretched in my commitments. In which case, do I have the time to take something new on?

It's a tough one. Especially as it is by no means guaranteed that the opportunity would come again...

#8: "Eldership", by various authors

D&D: Honour Among Thieves

I had a window of opportunity on Monday, and so made my way out to see the new D&D movie. I was lucky to catch it - it had already left our local cinema, and none of the other nearby ones had shows I could catch. Luckily the one near my parents' had a couple of showings, which meant I stepped back in time. That said, they've refitted their screens with reclining chairs for all customers, which was a pleasant surprise. And so, I sat down in an almost deserted cinema to watch the film.

And it's okay. It's a perfectly fine film, a diverting way to spend a couple of hours, with the same blend of action and comedy one might expect from a "Guardians of the Galaxy" or recent "Thor" film. The cast were all pretty good, the pacing was good. It was all good.

And almost completely unmemorable. Indeed, almost all of the best bits of the film had already been released, in the form of the trailers, TV spots, and other promotions. What was left was the connecting tissue, which was all fine but was mostly just... there.

Ultimately, my view is... yeah, it's okay.

On the plus side, it isn't the cinematic abomination that was the previous films, so that's a positive. On the other hand, that's not exactly a high bar to reach. And I'm struggling to find a reason to watch this one over, say, watching "Guardians of the Galaxy" again (which is funnier, more action packed, and just generally a bit better on every metric).

Make of that what you will, I guess.

#7: "Flying Scotsman and the Best Birthday Ever", by Michael Morpurgo (a book for Surprise!)

Picard Season Three

As I've mentioned before, I rather enjoyed the first season of Picard, but for a rather disappointing finale. I thought the second season started extremely well, but then collapsed into an awful mess. So I came to the third season with seriously mixed feelings.

The good news is that having finished it this morning, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable. Yes, there were details here and there I didn't care for, and some of the fan service was rather extreme, but I felt it told a good story, told it well, and gave the Next Generation crew the send off that Nemesis really failed to give them.

I'll not say any more than that, due to the risk of spoilers, but I will note that the show ends by setting up a potential successor series that I would very much like to see. Which is great!

A Case of Bad Timing

As often happens, we had a few days of good weather during the Easter holiday. So I took the opportunity to bring the BBQ into use for the year. This involved giving it a good clean, and purchasing a new canister of gas to use with it. This proved to be more of a challenge than expected, but was eventually successful.

When I turned the BBQ on, part of the level on the valve then broke off in my hand. We were still able to use the BBQ for that meal and then switch if off again to make it safe, but can't now use it again until the valve has been replaced.

This was something of an annoyance in itself, but otherwise unremarkable except for one detail: for some time I have been considering replacing that BBQ with a new one, and any new purchase was going to be a charcoal BBQ. Unfortunately, the time to make that purchase is not immediately after buying a new gas canister!

Still, it could have been a lot worse, I guess. So that's a win at least.

The Emergency Alert Test

There is to be a test of the Emergency Alert system on Sunday, and the right wing commentariat seem to have lost their minds over it. A couple of quick thoughts:

• If you're going to have an Emergency Alert system, it really does need tested occasionally, for the same reason all our employers have to have periodic fire drills - it's not enough to assume that these things work, or even to show that they work in theory. If they're important enough then they need to be tested, in real life, before we find ourselves having to rely on them.
• The reason for the Emergency Alert system itself should really be one that that right wing commentariat should be able to appreciate: it's basically a replacement for the old air raid sirens from their beloved Blitz. Basically, if we find ourselves in a situation where something is liable to go wrong at short and unpredicatable notice (such as, heaven forbid, we are once again subject to bombing raids), we will probably appreciate having an alert system in place.

Of course, I stand ready to revise my opinion if the government of the day decides to start misusing it (sending alerts for any and all nonsense at their whim). But if that does happen, it's easy enough to switch off.

As it is, having a one-off test of the system is quite a good idea, really.

The Twilight Zone

A controversial statement to start: Celtic could do with drawing their next game.

My reasoning is as follows: As things stand, Rangers are on 79 points with six games to play - the maximum total they could achieve is 97 points. Celtic are on 91 points, with an insurmountable goal difference. What that means is that if Celtic win their next two days they will have won the league... in every sense but the strictly mathematical. (By which I mean that strictly speaking it's not impossible for Rangers to oerturn it, but it's just not going to happen.)

The upshot of that is that if they win their next two games, Celtic fans will find themselves in a weird twilight zone - do they celebrate the league win when it's not quite done, do they wait for the next game when it's a formality, or (most likely) do they have a mix where some people do one and some the other and it turn into a bit of a mess?

Far cleaner is if they draw the next match, then win two, jump from 95 to 98 points, and put it beyond even strict mathmatical doubt in one step.

(Not that it really matters all that much - the league is long since done. The only remaining questions are just when do they cross the line, and what is their final points tally?)

On the other hand, as far as I can tell, the highest-ever points tally in Scottish football is 106 (though I might be wrong - I haven't checked every single season!). If Celtic win all six of their remaining matches, they could hit 109. Which also provides a compelling reason to keep going!

The Endless To-Do List

Over the course of this holiday I finally made some progress on my To-Do List: I managed to complete the second-last item on the list from the Christmas holiday! (I also managed to complete all but one item, coincidentally the same item, from the February break's list.)

Alas, the To-Do List for this holiday has a couple more undone items at this point, though one of them was something of a "how long is a piece of string" task - I was never actually going to get properly caught up on the blog, so just making some progress was something.

Still, that To-Do List remains a serious frustration, especially as I'm not really in a position to simply delete anything from the list. All the remaining items are either things I must get done or are things that I really want to get done, in preference to other potential items.

So we'll see. I don't think there's any prospect of making progress at my next holiday, so the next little while will need to see me trying to deal with the list while not on holiday...

Day 100: Update on Goals

100 days into 2023, so here's the latest update:

• Books: I have now read six books this year, having completed exactly one since the previous update (and that one was in progress when 2023 started!). It's fair to say I won't be reaching 60 books this year! I have started the second of the three books from The List, but am making really slow progress. Still, there's time enough to think this goal should be completed by the end of the year.
• Blogging: I should really have completed 32 posts by this point in the year, so I'm a good bit behind. I'm also rather behind at the Imaginarium also. That said, I did make up some ground in March, so it's not impossible that I'll catch up. We'll see.
• Redecorating: A very small amount of progress here - I changed Surprise!'s cot into a bed yesterday. The rest of the task remains as it was, but that's not a massive problem, I think. That said, we'll need to figure out when we're going to do any of the other parts, since I have absolutely no free time, and all my holidays are long since assigned.
• Other stuff: The main home PC died a rather spectacular death and has now been replaced (as recounted at length elsewhere). LC's laptop has also been consigned to the past, with a replacement due imminently. This was unfortunate, as I wasn't sure what the budget for a replacement was, so we've taken a best guess. I'm now enjoying my Easter break, which I'll probably blog about more once I get back. The Summer holiday is now mostly booked, with only two things I'm aware of needing locked down (and a big bill to pay).

I remain confident that all three goals will complete by the end of the year, but I'm very glad I didn't set any others, because even this rather unambitious set is proving challenging.

A Suggestion

For the benefit of Google, Amazon and the like: if I spend some time searching for some big-ticket item (a BBQ for instance) and then I stop searching for said item, that's probably a decent indicator that I've made a purchase. Indeed, there's a very good chance that you know I've made that purchase, especially if you're Amazon.

In that case, it's probably not such a good idea to spend the next several months pushing adverts for BBQs (or whatever) into my feed - there is no world in which I need more than one. Can I humbly suggest that a better approach, if you absolutely must, would be to send me adverts for BBQ accessories? Because while having your adverts foisted upon me is inherently annoying, at least they're marginally less annoying that way.

Ticking Off a Job

Ever since the New Year, I have had "fix car" sitting on my to-do list - it got scraped when we were going to soft play late last year, and paying to have it put right looked like being inordinately expensive, so it fell to me. Anyway, I've finally managed to find some time, and some decent weather, and now the job is done.

Huzzah!

(Well, almost. There is one final step required, after the paint has had four hours to dry. But that's a matter of a few minutes' work, so I'm not counting that.)