Diary

It has been a while since the last diary post. Life is starting to get a little nearer to normal. It has only been 14 months but it’s hard to remember when we weren’t having the think about Covid. As I am sure I have said before I don’t really understand the “need” to get back to the pub. We go out, obviously but rarely just for a drink. We would be more likely to have people over or to go to their place. If we go to a pub it’s for a meal. Sue can drink me under the table and I’d rather pay supermarket prices.

Our daughter and son in law moved into their new house last week. We went over there on Saturday. I had only seen photos. It will be a great family home when its all finished. They have been renovating it for the last 8 months. They have quite a big garden but there are no proper fences between the neighbours on both sides. They have used up all the money from the sale of their old house so I said we’d pay for the fences. They were chuffed to bits as the kids and the dog can’t play out there just yet. There is also something that looks like a grave down at the bottom of the garden. I’m sure it isn’t a grave. Well, actually I’m not. None of the neighbours know where the old guy who lived there buried his wife.

A couple of days later Sue called her cousin who does some garden landscaping as a side job. She seemed to think he would help the kids out for free with tidying up the garden. I told her that he was probably fed up with all the family asking him to do jobs on the cheap but she said he would be fine. He asked her how much she thought it was going to be and she told him about £500. He asked her what year it was and did she think it was the 1950’s. She told him to sort out with our daughter what they wanted done in the garden and get back to us with the quote. Hang on. “Us”? We’ve just paid a grand for fencing. I knew there was no point arguing as our daughter wouldn’t accept us paying for it. They were more than happy with the fences. The quote came in at over 4K. I think not.

The next week or so are going to be a mess at home. We are having a new kitchen fitted, starting on Monday. Obviously everything has to come out of the kitchen by Monday morning. Sue was getting herself stressed about everything being in a mess.

“All our things are going to be in boxes.”

“Well, yes. there is no other way to do it.”

“But they’ll smash all the tiles!”

“Do you want to keep the tiles?”

“No.”

“Exactly. If they try to take them off carefully they will be here a lot longer.”

“I hate things being messed up!!”

I knew this. I mainly knew this as she has said it a couple of hundred times in the last few days. So, if you’re stressed about everything being a mess and everything from the kitchen is going into boxes, what’s the best thing to do? You guessed it! Empty the bloody kitchen 5 days early! She says she just wants it over and done with. So the living room (which is smaller than the kitchen) is now stacked up with boxes of stuff from the cupboards and drawers.

It’s going to be a long week.

 

Census day! Have you filled yours in? You’ll be getting a knock on the door if you don’t send it. Ours didn’t take long to do. No more than 10 minutes. There really isn’t that much on it.

Last Wednesday the Government announced that over 50’s could now book a Covid vaccine. I tried their website in the morning but it didn’t seem to be working. When I stopped for a break later that day I tried again and it did work. I managed to get booked in for Friday lunch time. Our nearest centre is about 10 minutes away. When Sue had hers done a few weeks ago it was really quiet. I think there were 3 or 4 other cars in the car park. When I got there on Friday I had to queue to get into the car park! I then joined the fairly short queue outside to get booked in. I mentioned how much busier it was to one of the stewards and he reckoned they would be vaccinating a thousand people that day.

I have to say the organisation of it all was superb. It really couldn’t have been done better. Plenty of staff who all knew exactly what their role was but they were all friendly as well. It was a very relaxed experience. I haven’t had any effects from the jab other than the “dead arm”. That’s not a surprise and it is already feeling a lot better today. I had the Astrazena vaccine. I won’t be losing any sleep worrying about blood clots.

I have had a couple of videos that I wanted to get out this weekend. One was posted earlier today and the other is current uploading. My videos lose some of the quality when uploaded to Youtube. I have looked into that and think I have found some things to improve. I found those after I had recorded the videos that are going out today so you’ll have to bear with me a little longer!

I had to replace one of my laptops last week. I run 2 laptops side by side and have 3 monitors connected to them. The E key on the older one started to fail. It wouldn’t always work. I thought there was probably some debris under the key so I tried to clear it with a small brush. It seemed to work but not for long. I removed the key. There is a small rubber spring that looked like it needed to be replaced. I ordered one from Ebay but it didn’t make any difference. I ordered a replacement keyboard. Only a tenner so worth a go. I wish I had watched the Youtube video explaining how to replace it before I ordered it. I didn’t count how many screws need to be removed but someone estimated 50! Pretty much everything had to come out. Awful design! I have had the laptop for quite e while so was due for a new one. The few days I had to wait for it to be delivered were annoying as it started typing “e” constantly without being pressed. I opened a notepad file and left it on the screen. When I came back it had types 20000 e’s. On a few occasions it would wait until I was about to press send on an email and would add a row of a dozen or more e’s.

I haven’t much else to report really. Miami starts next week. Its a tournament I always enjoy trading. I’m not sure why but I always have particularly strong results trading that tournament.

Stay safe.