Some stuff

[lnr]

It's been a while since I did a "what I've been doing" post.

I'm settling into Bluesky and Mastodon, and for now I'm keeping both rather than picking one. I miss things from Twitter sometimes, the easy interact with companies who use it as a frontage for customer services or service announcements, and a few semi-famous people who I enjoyed following who are not really anywhere else I use, but I've got used to it not being there now, and I think it's probably for the best.

I've recently got into another online word game called Squaredle which is rather taking up my time, I still sometimes play Loopy and I'm still playing Pokemon Go (I'm 5353 2291 3992 if you want to add me as a friend). I'm also still playing Minecraft with Matthew quite a bit - this week we have mostly been building an epic rollercoaster for creepers to ride in. They keep getting rather entertainingly piled up on each other though, and sometimes falling off, and sitting in their minecarts up a tree or something. It's very fun.  Mike and Matthew have been getting a bit frustrated because an old mod had stopped working, and they wanted to add something to it - but this evening Mike has found a workaround, so Matthew will be delighted tomorrow! (Mike is still working on it while watching a Starcraft e-tournament this evening).

I'm currently reworking a jumper which I finished in January 2022 to make the sleeves a lot less baggy. It's a lot heavier work than the socks I've mostly been knitting this year, which makes it rather less portable. I'm still stitching away at my Sinister Cats but it's taking me a long time. I've got another paint-by-numbers kit on the go (a birthday present from my sister), and I'm enjoying this year's Moose Allain Advent Calendar which features an alphabet of animals to colour in. I've started my own alternative alphabet on the back, and so far we've got as far as Llama. I'm trying to decide whether to go for a mouse or a monkey or something else tomorrow. Maybe a mantis!

We've not done much in the way of travels or adventures since September. We went to London to see Arsenal's women's team play (and win!) and we've been to the Botanic Gardens to see their new Winter Lights (luckily we were booked for Sunday, not Saturday which was called off due to high winds!) I've been catching up with a few friends over coffee (hello ewx, naath, rmc28) but would love to catch up with others too. Friday morning coffee with the "mums" at the village coffee shop has become a nice regular thing, it's nice to keep up with village friends even if Matthew doesn't share the same school. (I'm still miffed about that.

Speaking of schools, we've done the secondary school application choosing Trumpington Community College, then Sawston Village College, with Netherhall as an emergency third choice. This is complicated by the fact we're in a feeder school for TCC, but in catchment for Sawston, which doesn't make us top priority for either. So there'll be a little nagging fear until *March*, because for some reason it takes them 6 months to process applications still.

Round the house we've been doing various jobs that had been on our minds since we bought the house (only 15 years ago!) - we've replaced the toilet with a new one which has a built-in sink. It was a bit of a palaver getting it fitted, but it's so much better than having to go next door into the bathroom to wash your hands! We've demolished the 1980s style fitted wardrobes in our room, and after an incredibly long time living out of boxes we've got beautiful new ones to replace them. And we'll be getting new carpet to fit up to them next week - along with a replacement carpet in the hall/stairs/landing which is mostly covered by the house insurance (after we managed to get two small splodges of probably bike chain oil on one stair, and couldn't get the mark out!) We've promised Matthew we can put the Christmas decorations up once the carpet is done.

And despite the shocking realisation that 2nd class stamps are now 75p each I've got this year's Christmas cards in the post today! An increasingly expensive tradition. I've got most of my shopping done, and booked train tickets up to Yorkshire (though not the ones to come back again yet - maybe we'll just stay :)

Work remains interesting, mostly in a good way. We could really do with a couple more people in the helpdesk, and for it to remain stable for a couple of years, and another person or two in the infrastructure team, but the work I'm doing is interesting and rewarding and varied and only sometimes stressful, so yeah.

And that's what I've been up to.

Comments

[sweh]

The cost of postage is leading my Mum to think that next year will be "email cards". _sigh_

[lnr]

Somehow e-cards are never the same! We've do get increasingly fewer paper ones though.

[emperor]

"Christmas cards" remain on the TODO list, I'm not sure this is going to be one of the years we manage to send any :-/

[lnr]

I reckon this is one of those things it's easy to feel bad about, but we shouldn't!

[shermarama]

It costs $4 (about £2) for each card I send to the UK, but I do kind of still like doing it, for family, to have something tangible. Also it seems the cards coming in from the UK cost £2.20 to send here, so we're getting a marginally better deal...

[lnr]

Yes, £2.20 to anywhere international. Though I no longer have an uncle in NZ, so it doesn't matter that I'd completely missed the last posting day for the antipodes again. I sneaked in with my other international ones a day before the deadline, and the last day for second class UK postage is next Monday apparently.