28 January 2023 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Badlesmere

I woke a tad earlier than I might have. Not as early as I have been, but still early. I got up, “did” the puppies and as I scoffed toast I had a look at the Internet. It was still the same as ever. As well as epically breasted bimbos and crocodiles I also seem to be getting no end of messages from religious crackpot at the moment. At the risk of stirring up a hornet’s nest I’ll just make the observation that (as an ex- religious crackpot myself) when you actually give the matter any serious consideration, all of these so-called gods need an awful lot of excuses.

 

“er indoors ^TM” and the dogs got up (once I’d chivvied them out of their pit) and once we were all organised and I’d scraped the ice off of the “er indoors ^TM”-mobile we got on with our day.

First of all we drove round to Dog Club where we had a great time. I say “great time”; Bailey seems to do her own thing, Morgan goes absolutely hyper, and Treacle… Treacle is funny. Initially all the other dogs come up to Treacle and say “Hello – play with me”, and Treacle replies with “F… off and leave me alone!” but as the session goes on so Treacle slowly warms to the other dogs. We’ve found that doing “dog agility” with her along some of the benches in the field calms her and makes her more amenable to saying hello to the other pups. But we all had a good time. The club is all about socialising, and that’s what happens; albeit some more than others.

 

From Dog Club we drove up to Badlesmere where we met Karl, Tracey and Charlotte and we had a rather good wander up to Lees Court and back again following a route we’ve walked many times. It is a good walk. Back in the day Fudge used to set off in hot pursuit of pheasants when we were up there. Today Treacle set one off, and  the puppies leapt into hot pursuit… though it has to be said that they obviously had no idea what all the fuss was about.

After a couple of hours we were back at the cars where boots were swapped for shoes and we went to the Rad Lion where we had a rather good bit of dinner. Perhaps we might have walked for a bit further to have tired the dogs some more, but they weren’t as bad in the pub as they have been in the past. And they got to taste the custard too. Dogs like custard – who would have believed it?

I took a few photos of our adventures today. Once home “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs slept like logs, and I uploaded the photos and logged a geocache find.

 

We watched an episode of “Junior Bake Off”, then “er indoors ^TM” put on a film. “Hotel Transylvania 2” looks rather good… but I might go to bed and sleep there rather than falling asleep in front of the telly.

27 January 2023 (Friday) - Rostered Day Off

I didn’t sleep well last night, and again lay wide awake for seemingly hours. I got up far earlier than I needed to, “did” the puppies, and watched more “Star Trek: Discovery” before turning on the lap-top and spending yet another age trying to get the Firefox browser to actually do anything at all. Mind you when I say  “do anything at all”, the thing was clearly doing all sorts of IT wonders that I can’t see. It just wasn’t actually doing the job I needed it to do.

Eventually it got going.

Last night I had a friend request from an incredibly epically chested young lady. I have it on good authority that she is supposed to look “sexy” but personally I find her rather scary. The friend request was still there thing morning but I thought better of accepting it. She doesn’t look like the sort of person you could take home to meet your mother. I could imagine “er indoors ^TM” laying an egg had My Boy ^TM” brought home something like that.

In the past Facebook has often presented me with the chance to get better acquainted with epically chested young ladies, but more and more I’m now getting videos of crocodiles in my Facebook feed. I can’t really understand why the algorithms at Facebook HQ would think I’d be interested in either when most of what I post about is either dog- or Lego- related.

I had an email too. Whilst my Lego mast is still in the international distribution centre in Chicago, the nice people there have told Royal Mail it is on the way, and Royal Mail have told me they are poised (like coiled springs) waiting for its arrival.

 

As “er indoors ^TM”  and the wolf pack emerged from their pit I set off Folkestone-wards. “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM”, was having another driving lesson and I had to supervise “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM” (“Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction ^TM” was at school). I got there and peered through the window at Pogo who was desperately trying to swallow the mouthful of brekkie he was half-way through munching before he could bark.

“Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” went off driving (with strict instructions not to mow anyone down). “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM” grizzled for twenty minutes then went to sleep, and the two of us dozed whilst Netflix played “Bebefinn”. Am I alone in thinking that the mother in “Bebefinn” is *far* sexier than that which sent me the Facebook Friend request overnight, even if she is boss-eyed.

 

“Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” returned having not mowed anyone down. I came home, collected the dogs and took them to Kings Wood for a walk. We had a good walk. The puppies were amazingly well behaved; coming to me whenever called. They can behave when they want to, and when they do as they are told it is incredibly impressive to any onlookers. It is only a shame that we are currently only running at (perhaps) a seventy per cent success rate, but (as I keep saying), they are both works in progress.

 

We came home where I spent a couple of hours ironing. As I ironed I watched episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which the most picky people were actually the ones with most to pick fault about.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching another episode of “Junior Bake Off”.

For a supposed day off I’ve been rather busy…

26 January 2023 (Thursday) - Late Shift

As always when I didn’t have an alarm set I slept well, finally being woken by a cold wet nose being shoved up my bum shortly after seven o’clock. We all lay dozing until Treacle got restless and woke everyone by stomping all over us.

I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do. The Facebook “Hematology Interest Group” boiled my piss as it so often does. Someone had posted a photo of what they had seen down their microscope and said “what do you think?” The answers that poured in (over seventy) had very few in agreement, and all were wildly wrong. Imagine you reaction on taking your car to what you assume to be a collection of mechanics, saying “it’s making a funny noise” and being told that the gearbox was poggered or the clutch has had it or it has run out of fuel or the sparkplugs need changing or it had blown a gasket or the radiator had blown or the tyres are flat…

I don’t think one member in a hundred on that Facebook group has the faintest idea.

I sent an email to the probate people. They have now taken double the length of time they said they would take to do whatever it is that they do about Dad’s estate.

I chased up the Lego mast I ordered on Sunday. With the on-line tracking I could see it was posted from Madison WI (wherever that is?) on Monday and moved through the Oak Creek distribution centre (wherever that is?) yesterday and today it had got to the Chicago international distribution centre (presumably in Chicago – I’ve heard of that one…)

 

I walked the dogs round the block. They are strange things. Whilst Treacle just keeps herself to herself, when we go to dog club the puppies charge around wanting to play with everyone. When they are on the leads they snarl and growl. I wish I knew why.

As we walked so Morgan did the most humungous turd; rock-solid and probably half as long as he was. I shall have to keep an eye on him.

 

We came home and watched another episode of “Star Trek: Discovery”. I think where I went wrong with this show before was watching each episode one per week as it was released. By binge-watching you can follow the tortuous plot so much easier.

I then did some more of my current Coursera course. Whilst it is very much work-related, I’m enjoying it and learning a few things along the way. As I always tell the trainees, a day when you learn nothing is a day wasted… Over the years I’ve wasted quite a few days.

 

The dogs perked up as I got ready for work. They are quite clever. They know when it is walkies time and they get very over-excited. They know when it is work time and they go to their beds where they get a treat from me on my way out.

How do they know the difference?

 

I went to B&Q before work. The living room light is flickering. Expert opinion on the internet (!) claims that the flickering in the LED lights is either because they are taking too much power or they don't like the dimmer switch. So I went to get some lower wattage LED lights, a non-dimmer switch and a screwdriver. B&Q were in the throes of having a re-design with much of the store cordoned off, and not a single thing on the shelf where it used to be. I asked several assistants for light bulbs, switches and screwdrivers, and just got blank faces. Everyone working there openly admitted that no one at all knew where anything was.

I've had issues in B&Q before; they really do need to work on some basic training for their staff. When asked "where is item X" the answer should be “I don't know - let me find out for you". It really shouldn't be along the lines of "F... only knows. I can't find anything either", should it?

 

I eventually got what I needed and set off west-wards through the -hursts and the -dens and the traffic lights. I lost count of the amount of road works I met this morning before finally getting to work, where I had a rather busy late shift.

 

And in closing, today is something of an anniversary. Sixteen years ago today I signed up with Facebook. And today would have been my Dad’s eighty-seventh birthday.

25 January 2023 (Wednesday) - Early Shift

 

Yet again I did that infuriating thing where I woke feeling full of energy and raring to go at ten past two, and then dozed for intervals of fifteen to twenty minutes for the rest of the night.

Being on an early shift in Pembury this morning I was up and about and tiddling the puppies even earlier than usual, Recently I remarked on how many local houses had lights on at half past five in the morning. Only two (not including our house) had lights on at five o’clock.

With puppies tiddled they shot upstairs to the big bed (they love it!) and I sparked up my lap-top. With not enough time for telly this morning I had a plan to muck out my in-box instead.

Despite having told me that it was closing down last November, the NHS Jobs website was still sending me daily emails that I didn’t want.

LinkedIn was suggesting I congratulate people that I don’t know for doing things I consider to be meaningless trivia,

Credit Karma congratulated me on having paid down my credit card balance. What does that phrase even mean?

Sky suggested I might start up monthly subscriptions with even more channels. Seriously? The Sky-Q box is already recording stuff up to six times faster than we can possibly watch it.

Google had told me that I’d logged in to my account…

And this was the email account to which I have stuff that I have stuff I want sent. I I had a look at my Gmail account (which is for the crap I don’t want) and there were nine hundred and ninety-eight unread emails. Ironically it told me that fourteen of those were spam. I deleted the lot without even looking at them.

I also spent a few minutes looking up how to fix the issue with the car’s dashboard display thingy that had died yesterday. People on the Skoda forums said there were two solutions. I could either pay the garage nearly six hundred quid, or I could disconnect the battery for ten minutes.

 

I then had a look at social media . Yesterday’s geo-squabble has calmed down. Interestingly I made a comment a couple of days ago that I will be archiving quite a few of my Wherigo geocaches (as everyone has done them and no one has been near for a year), and no end of people have appeared asking me not to get rid of them because they still want to play them. I’m rather pleased that the things are popular… you never know; I might revamp one or two of them if people like to play them.

I looked up who on my Facebook Friends list had a birthday today and sent a birthday wish to an old friend, downloaded bank statements then got ready for work.

 

I wandered off through a very dark morning to find where I'd left my car. As I started the car so the dashboard radio display thingy leapt into life. Dead yesterday, fine this morning. What was that all about?

As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about Justin Bieber who has apparently just sold all the rights to his songs, and made a profit of two hundred million dollars.

I can't say I blame him. Aged twenty-eight he's now set for life, isn't he?

There was also a lot of talk about how the Western world are sending tanks to Ukraine, but nowhere near enough, if you listen to the Ukrainian president who wants (demands) three hundred and has been given (about) fifty.

Apparently one of the Russian leaders who was in South Africa the other day said that Russia are beginning to see the war as being not against Ukraine, but against the entire Western coalition of nations who are supplying Ukraine with the weapons.

He's got a point. And let's not have anyone pretending to be surprised when some Western country or other finds its capital nuked and everyone else gets a stern warning to mind its own business.

 

Work was much the same as ever, but being on an early start meant I got out early, and was home at dusk. Mind you by the time I’d walked the dogs round the block it was completely dark.

With walk walked I watched more “Star Trek: Discovery”, then dozed with the dogs until “er indoors ^TM” came home, when I carried on sitting on the sofa with the dogs.

I spend so much time just sitting with the dogs when there is so much more I could be doing…