Weekend report

I’ve been at work, mostly, this weekend :-( Thinking hard about the money. Grin. Oh, but I do like Sundays off! I think I might not make myself available for quite so many Sundays in the future; I do seem to get put down for every session I say I can do, as opposed to a selection of them. Still. We aren’t open on Sundays over the summer. And the word on the street says that the weekend work will dry up next academic year as they are about to recruit to the new weekend structure. That will be nice, from a staying at home and pottering point of view. Less nice from a money in the bank one! However, they have been saying that the weekend rota will be sorted out very soon now for years and year and years. I am not holding my breath!

We were out last evening. We went to visit Bea ad Steve, who were having a small party to celebrate Steve’s birthday (which I think is actually today). Bea had cooked lots of lovely food, including a roast vegetable medley with white sweet potato. I lerv white sweet potato. It has the texture and almost the taste of roasted chestnuts. You never see it in the supermarkets. I wonder where she got it. Must remember to ask. I wonder if the sell it in the market in Chesterfield – must investigate one day. It was a good evening, but I was very tired. I have had a low grade cold all week which has rendered me very lethargic. Plus, of course, I had been working all day. And, of course, I had to be up and ready for work this morning. So we didn’t stay late.

I guess we left just before half ten, which meant I got to watch the eclipse of the moon as it happened while The Builder was driving us home. It was nearly totality when we got back so we sat on the south facing front wall, glass of wine in hand, rugged up snugly in our jackets and watched for 15 minutes or so. It really was very beautiful. The moon was a lovely rusty colour, the sky was absolutely clear and the stars were all twinkling. I’m really glad we were able to see it. For some reason I had thought it was at around 8, when we would have been having dinner with Bea and Steve and their other guests. Bit rude to abandon dinner and dash outside for astronomical events!

Great excitement this morning. The builders have had a great big crane delivered to the building site and spent a merry few hours this morning assembling it. In the rain, so perhaps they were not so merry. We had a merry time watching it being assembled. Matt and I have been out in the rain taking photos of it, for the online archive we are hoping to assemble. We were merry, even in the rain!

My new pedometer is very swish. Positively space age. Does all sorts of complicated things, most of which I can’t work out. It came from Hong Kong (I bought it on eBay) and the instructions are in a strange, Chinese form of English which doesn’t read terribly fluently. Still, I don’t suppose I really want to do complicated things. I want it to count 10k+ steps each day. Which it is resolutely refusing to do. 8 or 9k is as much as it will condescend to count :-(

Spoke to Austin yesterday. He's getting ready for his 18 months in Japan. He's planning to fly on March 25th. (I think that Julia is preparing for her six months in North Carolina too, but I'm not sure exactly when she is going.) I've seen Tabitha too. She just called in to the Adsetts Centre to say hello. Hmm. There appears to be someone missing ...

Today I’ve a nedake :-( Initially I put it down to over exuberant birthday celebrations last evening. But now it’s nearly 4pm and I still have it. Don’t think it can still be the excesses of yesterday. Think it might be a real nedake. Odd. Don’t normally suffer much from them