With no alarm set I slept through till seven o’clock, which was something of a major result. I opened my Advent Calendar and wondered just what I might say about a white plastic Christmas tree.
I made toast, and peered into the Internet. Today a lot of people were trying to sell their unwanted rubbish on Facebook marketplace. I suppose people might make a quid or two here or there, but why would anyone buy a tatty dog-eared book from some stranger half-way across the county when they can buy a brand new one from Amazon (and have it delivered to the door) cheaper?
There were also adverts for stuff I for one would never think of buying. I’ve heard that Facebook has algorithms to target adverts to what customers have looked at on-line, but they don’t seem to work very well. I get no adverts at all for Lego or dog stuff or Sparks music, but I’m snowed out with adverts for nudey sauce romps. A classic example of the failure of targeting an audience this was this morning’s advert for a Live LED map of the twelve main lines of the London Underground network showing trains as they move around on it. With over three hundred LED lights and updating over wi-fi ten times every second the thing is currently available as a Black Friday deal at ninety-six quid. I suspect this is one of those “limited edition” things limited to however many they can sell. I hope for their sake they haven’t made too many.
And a local flooring company was advertising vacancies on the local Facebook pages. I suppose that’s a sign of the times.
I had an email from the dentist offering me a Christmas present – nearly one thousand three hundred quid of off the price of having my teeth straightened. Are they crooked? And I had an email telling me that my email address had appeared in a data breach. Apparently “Gravatar” (?) had been the victim of a cyber attack and some e-villains have obtained my email address. No passwords, just the email address. Is that so terrible?
“er indoors TM” wanted a lift to work, and as her work is on my way to Kings Wood we all bundled into my car and set off. The traffic was a nightmare this morning. We got to the cows roundabout to find it gridlocked. So many idiots were slipping through as the lights changed and effectively blocking the road for those who should then have been able to drive on.
Eventually we dropped “er indoors TM” off, and me and the dogs carried on to Challock and the woods where we had a rather good walk. We practiced our whistle training and Pogo responded well. Treacle didn’t which was a shame. We met four other dog walkers and had no “episodes” at all. I got chatting with one woman who remarked on how she likes walking in the woods as people there understand what dogs are like and described the “episodes” she has had in Viccie Park with the normal people and their dogs. I smiled – I was glad it isn’t just me who has these issues in Viccie Park.
We did meet one odd dog walker though. Quite deep into the woods (about a mile from the nearest road) with his dog on a really short lead. Why not get an extender and let the dog have some freedom?
With walk walked we came home, I opened the door and told the dogs to go to the bath. They looked at me as though they had no idea what I was talking about. This made me wonder – they understand being told to go to the bath. Then I realised the bathroom door was shut. I opened it and both jumped straight into the bath.
I washed their paws then thought I’d give myself a quick haircut. I did have a plan to grow my hair long and have a ponytail, but on reflection that would be silly. But disaster struck – my haircutting shears have broken. I shall have to get new ones…
My phone asked if it could update itself, and I made the schoolboy error of allowing it, and then spent an age fighting with the anti-virus before uploading today’s instalment of the Advent Calendar adventure, and with both dogs snoring I set off.
As I drove I kept an eye on my car's petrol gauge. Something odd has been going on with the car's fuel economy. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the petrol gauge had stayed on the "completely full" level and didn't start to fall until I'd driven two hundred miles. After the most recent fuelling the gauge fell right away. Last time I drove four hundred and seventy miles and eight round trips to work before needing more petrol; this time I only managed four hundred miles and seven round trips out of more petrol.
Interestingly the morning after I got the last load of petrol “er indoors TM” said that she'd found the door thingy what you open to get to the fuel tank hadn't been closed properly. Had some cheeky sod syphoned out some petrol?
I had been wondering just what would happen when the fuel gauge reached the red bit, and I found out half-way up the motorway. It sounded an alarm, told me I had thirty-five miles of petrol left and suggested I got some more petrol pretty soon. So I did. I don't usually let the range get to less than a hundred miles, and I doubt if I will do so again... but it is nice to know what happens when the fuel does get low.
I had a minor result at work today; we had the Christmas raffle draw and I won a rather humungous bottle of bubbly. That'll do for Christmas.
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