6 December 2014 (Saturday) - Paddington

There's no denying that I like a drop (or two) of ale. there was a time when I would shift gallons of the stuff. But more and more these days I'll go all week and only have a glass of wine. Four pints of the dark stuff took its toll; I did feel a llittle rough this morning.
I came down to find everyone's favourite Poppet had tiddled on the carpet. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and put this down to "er indoors TM" not chivving him outside last night. Normally he's really good about potty things.

Over brekkie I checked out social media. Nothing much had happened overnight. Young children were using Facebook to share virus-loaded film clips, knob jokes were abounding. "Same old same-old" really. Mind you I did see that he chap who ran the Boys Brigade was having a birthday today. He's eighty four. I can remember him in his prime; dynamic, leading loads of youngsters into all sorts of mischief. Really should meet up with him before its too late.
And I saw that a cyber-acquiantance had spent the night in hospital with his young son. The child was ill, and this chap had gone from the hospital to his church's fellowship breakfast meeting where everyone was praying for the child. How does that work? I *really* don't understand. God can make the child better (if he wants to) but no one questions God's possible involvement in the child being ill in the first place?

I saw there was a squabble on the Coursera web site's forum. Personally I have found the workload on my current course to be a little excessive, and the course organisers have slowed the pace. On a previous course the organisers set the timetable of due-dates for assessments, and then made all of the course material available. That suited me because I could then truly work at my own pace. However in this course each module is only released when the course staff are ready. I don't like this; there are four modules left in the course. My schedule is such that I could do all four modules in this coming week, but will struggle to find time to do even one in the week after. I said as much on their discussion forum.
When will I ever learn? There is no such thing on the Internet as a "discussion" forum. There are only sites where everyone makes bitter, nasty and personal attacks on anyone who does not agree with them.

This morning part of me wondered about going to the CITO. A CITO is a "cache in, trash out" event in which hunters of tupperware get together to tidy up an area. I've been to two of these things before and quite frankly I'm in no hurry to go to a third.
The first was amazingly well supported but I felt sorry for the organiser. The groundsman of the place we were tidying was told he would have over fifty volunteers who would do whatever he wanted. When fifty volunteers turned up he went off like a stuck record about how many people there were and how surprised he was, and then those fifty people watched him work. Just at the point where most people had lost interest and had buggered off, said groundsman hit on the frankly genius idea of getting the volunteers to actually help him by doing stuff. Half a dozen of us then broke our backs for an hour or so.
The second experience was in many ways the complete opposite to the first. We arrived at a park in North Kent and were given a black sack to fill with rubbish. We then joined dozens of other people scouring one of the most pristine parks in the county; if not the country. Nearly an hour's work only found us three scraps of litter.
And both of these were (as I recall) in seemingly sub-zero temperatures.

So instead we took Grand-Daughter to the cinema. I'd not been to the cinema for some time; we saw the new "Paddington" film. I liked it... or did I? Without wishing to give away any spoilers I think I cried more than I laughed.
From there we had McLunch. I do like McDonalds, and we enjoyed our McLunch. In our party we had two excited (but well behaved) young girls. Several of the other parties there seemed to have wild animals. Do decent people *really* allow their brats to run round McDonalds, pausing only to shovel food into their maws before continuing to race?

I would have liked to have gone to the monthly cacher's meet which was taking place this afternoon. But being on the night shift put paid to that plan. So as "er indoors TM" set off to the meet I went to bed. After a few minutes I heard the door go as she went off, and I then felt a litttle thunp as my dog jumped onto the bed. He shouldn't do that.

I'm off to the night shift now...

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