I know I promised not to go on and on about the weather, but good grief it has been diabolical lately.  I'm sitting up late, unable to sleep due to a horrible cold that made me sleep on and off for most of the day, and I've just listened to the single worst Shipping Forecast I have ever heard,.  Thank heavens I'm not actually at sea - I usually ( Read more... )

The jobsearch is on again, I suppose. On Thursday I revisited the agency I saw last spring, and they boosted my confidence enough for me to start thinking of myself as employable again. I also got orders for four more sock monkeys (one "large and pink", one pirate, a Batman and a Mr Spock), which was also cheering. On Friday, I bounced out of ( Read more... )

It's still pretty cold, by our standards (a degree or so below freezing) and it was trying to snow, so remembering the saying about "no bad weather just bad clothing choices" I dressed up carefully for the short walk to the library. Thermal leggings and top, trousers, two pairs of socks, two t-shirts and a jersey, all combined with the wooly hat, ( Read more... )

Summer, suddenly, 80 degrees today and a predicted 90 tomorrow. This is way past my comfort threshold, and I've spent the whole day trying to cool down ( Read more... )

I'm still signing on for unemployment benefit, and this week they had booked me into a two-day course to improve my chances of finding work. I had been dreading this, mainly because I was afraid of being late for it, having fallen out of the habit of getting up early, and was not too keen on the whole idea of the damn course anyway. I got up in ( Read more... )

Thanks to Neil Gaiman and a recent episode of Dr Who, I now know that petrichor is the word for that lovely smell you get after rain on dry earth ( Read more... )

The sleep reset seems to have worked pretty well. I'm still going to bed quite late, but at least I am now able to get up at a reasonable time. This morning I was awake and (more importantly) out of bed by 7.30 ( Read more... )

Sunshine yesterday, making everything look a lot more optimistic, possibly even with a faint hint of oncoming spring. I met up with a friend at the National Gallery, and we pottered about town for a while and then I came home and gave the flat a long-overdue tidy ( Read more... )

Yet another not-very-busy week, filled with aimless pottering. I spent most of the weekend flat out with what seems to have been a return of the Mystery Virus. This put me into bed at nine-o'clock on Saturday evening with a temperature of 40 degrees, and saw me feeling perfectly well by Sunday afternoon. I'm seeing the doctor about it tomorrow ( Read more... )

I'm afraid I dropped off the radar again last week, and then I had an unusually strenuous (for me) weekend, involving visits to Ikea and Lidl (because now I am a poor person), a birthday party and a visitor from Bristol. Oh, and getting soaked through by thunderstorms two days in a row. I also finished the niece's armwarmers, which look like this ( Read more... )