Stuff, very dull stuff
Jul. 27th, 2007 02:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestIt seems my inability to write anything at the moment extends even to LJ entries. Perhaps posting something will enable me to prod myself into writing some fic...
I'll do this in reverse order, for no very good reason.
I went singing this evening. First time in... I dunno, a very long while. It was nice. The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, which we've done before, so going over the harmonies was dull work (even though I did end up singing a different line, for some reason). Bridge Over Troubled Water, we must have sung several years ago, because the alto line was very familiar. Nice, though, particularly when our MD decided not to go through the third verse in detail, but to sing it and see what happened. Much more exciting than plodding through note by note. A bit from Iolanthe that I vaguely remembered, but not very well, so 'twas a good thing our pianist was restrained in tempo. And the last verse of The Lost Chord for a stirring finale. Anyway, I enjoyed it. It's a bit weird to discover, though, that I could sing the tenor line on pitch, but wouldn't have dared to go for the top G the sopranos were doing. Once upon a time I was a mezzo.
Earlier in the day, I - with assistance from my Brats - got the DVDs arranged in the sitting room. This isn't exactly major-league achievement, but it was accomplished despite a certain amount of frustration, and with some charmingly and appropriately Heath Robinson techniques. Well, sorta. See, I bought a CD/DVD storage thingummy this morning, and with the help of Boy attempted to put it together, only to abandon it when the horrible truth became apparent - it wasn't going to hold the dvds at all. Thing is, we have some shelves, and there's a handy space underneath these shelves into which I wanted to insert the dvds, but the new purchase was intended to be put horizontally instead of vertically, and the stupid thing would only hold DVDs lengthwise in the wrong orientation. Ack. And I thought I'd checked the measurements, too - either I Failed Miserably or the info lied to me.
So we used the pieces as shelving, and spaced the shelves with empty coffee jars (15 of them, to date, really need three more) wrapped in green velvet (it all makes perfect sense, honest). Looks kinda funky, a variation on the classic-when-I-was-a-student notion of using bricks to build shelves. In case you were wondering - well, of course you were! - I buy square(ish) jars of instant, and have been saving them for quite some time in order to glasspaint them. They get filled with bath salts and, occasionally, sold.
Wednesday was most enjoyable. Boy had his, hmm, fourth session of Aspies' course, so I went into Town with him, and was escorting him along the road from the tube station, just for reassurance (not sure if I was reassuring him or me), but I was distracted by pretty shoes and left him to find his own way.
I would just like to take a moment to state that size eight is not freakishly gigantic, and that it is quite unnecessary to *laugh* when I enquire whether you have pretty shoes that will fit me. Hah.
However, I got back to my rendezvous site with enough minutes to spare that I finished Letter to a Christian Nation (amusing, but not actually as convincing as Richard Dawkins, who wrote the intro, would like to think it is) and then met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ephemera and went off for a long, leisurely and thoroughly agreeable lunch, during which we talked of all kinds of matter frivolous and non-, shared the two most tempting desserts on the Wagamamas menu, yum, and created a Green List for the purposes of bringing the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sky_pie writing community back to life in the near future. pokes Ephemera for copy of Green List At 4.15 we felt it was probably best to end our luncheon, as I had realised my Boy would be in need of conveyance from railway station to home.
Boy was not, it turned out, feeling particularly ill-used, as he had obviously caught the slow train just before the train I caught, and mine was fast. So we hastened home, and then straight out again to meet the Beast at the cinema for our promised outing to see Shrek 3. I agree with the general opinion that this is not a patch on previous Shreks; yes, there were some laughs, and yes, the sound of little princeJustin Arthur going into whiny meltdown was pretty much essential viewing, but a lot of the time it simply felt like being bludgeoned relentlessly by American Popular Culture. It's not the APC to which I object but the bludgeon, but it would have been nice to have some references in there I actually recognised. The cinema refs in the two previous films are adorable.
Tuesday? Nobody in the housewishing to leave their computers showing any interest in accompanying me, I went to see HP and the Order of the Phoenix on my own. With some trepidation, as that was the book which turned me right off the series. (Yes, okay, I did read the subsequents, but with no particular expectation of pleasure.) I liked it. Probably helps that I could not, in this case, have recited the source material from memory, but Harry just wasn't as bloody tiresome in the film as he was in the book. Helena Bonham Carter was suitably batshit as Bellatrix, and Imelda Staunton was (as usual) impeccable. And animated cat plates! *loves*
I read The Book at the weekend, of course. Picked up a copy from Tesco on the way home from visiting Beast's dad. No further comment at this time, and possibly not at any time, for reasons of can't-be-botheredness. But I did enjoy it.
That visit to Beast's dad was highlit by the five-person collaborative effort involved in hoisting two cubic-metre tanks over the fence at the bottom of the garden.Yes, his dad is insane.
FiL is a keen gardener. A compulsive gardener. So it is not unreasonable that he should wish to have water butts, and save some of that stuff that is constantly falling from the sky in order to apply it to his two greenhouses. Fine. So when we arrived (in the test-drive Prius, which was quite satisfactory although unsurprisingly not as magnificently comfortable as our current opulently leathered, luxury estate car) there were two large white plastic tanks, in metal-barred containers, on the front lawn. These needed to be conveyed into the back garden.
There was not enough width through the gate and down the passage on the kitchen side of the house.
The theory was, we would lift the tanks over the gate on the garage side of the house.
This gate, I should mention, is taller than I am. And, as it turned out, lifting the tanks over the gate would also involve lifting them above the corner of the roof. (Yeah, it's a bungalow, but *still*...) And simultaneously *through* the very sturdy bush next to the gate. It did not take Beast long to declare this an impossible task.
Happily, ahaha, there is a path that runs along the bottom of the garden. So we loaded a tank into the back of FiL's improbably buttercup-yellow truck, and he drove it round the corner so we could unload it and carry it along the path. Then we had to remove the plastic tank from its metal surround, as the combined weight was unmanageable for *five people to lift over a 6' fence*. sigh Eventually, we managed it. Twice. And the two giant tanks are now nicely positioned on the specially-laid paving slabs near the house, where they can catch the run-off from the guttering.
I should perhaps mention that my FiL already had twelve, yes, twelve, barrels for catching and storing rainwater.
I'll do this in reverse order, for no very good reason.
I went singing this evening. First time in... I dunno, a very long while. It was nice. The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, which we've done before, so going over the harmonies was dull work (even though I did end up singing a different line, for some reason). Bridge Over Troubled Water, we must have sung several years ago, because the alto line was very familiar. Nice, though, particularly when our MD decided not to go through the third verse in detail, but to sing it and see what happened. Much more exciting than plodding through note by note. A bit from Iolanthe that I vaguely remembered, but not very well, so 'twas a good thing our pianist was restrained in tempo. And the last verse of The Lost Chord for a stirring finale. Anyway, I enjoyed it. It's a bit weird to discover, though, that I could sing the tenor line on pitch, but wouldn't have dared to go for the top G the sopranos were doing. Once upon a time I was a mezzo.
Earlier in the day, I - with assistance from my Brats - got the DVDs arranged in the sitting room. This isn't exactly major-league achievement, but it was accomplished despite a certain amount of frustration, and with some charmingly and appropriately Heath Robinson techniques. Well, sorta. See, I bought a CD/DVD storage thingummy this morning, and with the help of Boy attempted to put it together, only to abandon it when the horrible truth became apparent - it wasn't going to hold the dvds at all. Thing is, we have some shelves, and there's a handy space underneath these shelves into which I wanted to insert the dvds, but the new purchase was intended to be put horizontally instead of vertically, and the stupid thing would only hold DVDs lengthwise in the wrong orientation. Ack. And I thought I'd checked the measurements, too - either I Failed Miserably or the info lied to me.
So we used the pieces as shelving, and spaced the shelves with empty coffee jars (15 of them, to date, really need three more) wrapped in green velvet (it all makes perfect sense, honest). Looks kinda funky, a variation on the classic-when-I-was-a-student notion of using bricks to build shelves. In case you were wondering - well, of course you were! - I buy square(ish) jars of instant, and have been saving them for quite some time in order to glasspaint them. They get filled with bath salts and, occasionally, sold.
Wednesday was most enjoyable. Boy had his, hmm, fourth session of Aspies' course, so I went into Town with him, and was escorting him along the road from the tube station, just for reassurance (not sure if I was reassuring him or me), but I was distracted by pretty shoes and left him to find his own way.
I would just like to take a moment to state that size eight is not freakishly gigantic, and that it is quite unnecessary to *laugh* when I enquire whether you have pretty shoes that will fit me. Hah.
However, I got back to my rendezvous site with enough minutes to spare that I finished Letter to a Christian Nation (amusing, but not actually as convincing as Richard Dawkins, who wrote the intro, would like to think it is) and then met
ephemera and went off for a long, leisurely and thoroughly agreeable lunch, during which we talked of all kinds of matter frivolous and non-, shared the two most tempting desserts on the Wagamamas menu, yum, and created a Green List for the purposes of bringing the sky_pie writing community back to life in the near future. pokes Ephemera for copy of Green List At 4.15 we felt it was probably best to end our luncheon, as I had realised my Boy would be in need of conveyance from railway station to home.Boy was not, it turned out, feeling particularly ill-used, as he had obviously caught the slow train just before the train I caught, and mine was fast. So we hastened home, and then straight out again to meet the Beast at the cinema for our promised outing to see Shrek 3. I agree with the general opinion that this is not a patch on previous Shreks; yes, there were some laughs, and yes, the sound of little prince
Tuesday? Nobody in the house
I read The Book at the weekend, of course. Picked up a copy from Tesco on the way home from visiting Beast's dad. No further comment at this time, and possibly not at any time, for reasons of can't-be-botheredness. But I did enjoy it.
That visit to Beast's dad was highlit by the five-person collaborative effort involved in hoisting two cubic-metre tanks over the fence at the bottom of the garden.
FiL is a keen gardener. A compulsive gardener. So it is not unreasonable that he should wish to have water butts, and save some of that stuff that is constantly falling from the sky in order to apply it to his two greenhouses. Fine. So when we arrived (in the test-drive Prius, which was quite satisfactory although unsurprisingly not as magnificently comfortable as our current opulently leathered, luxury estate car) there were two large white plastic tanks, in metal-barred containers, on the front lawn. These needed to be conveyed into the back garden.
There was not enough width through the gate and down the passage on the kitchen side of the house.
The theory was, we would lift the tanks over the gate on the garage side of the house.
This gate, I should mention, is taller than I am. And, as it turned out, lifting the tanks over the gate would also involve lifting them above the corner of the roof. (Yeah, it's a bungalow, but *still*...) And simultaneously *through* the very sturdy bush next to the gate. It did not take Beast long to declare this an impossible task.
Happily, ahaha, there is a path that runs along the bottom of the garden. So we loaded a tank into the back of FiL's improbably buttercup-yellow truck, and he drove it round the corner so we could unload it and carry it along the path. Then we had to remove the plastic tank from its metal surround, as the combined weight was unmanageable for *five people to lift over a 6' fence*. sigh Eventually, we managed it. Twice. And the two giant tanks are now nicely positioned on the specially-laid paving slabs near the house, where they can catch the run-off from the guttering.
I should perhaps mention that my FiL already had twelve, yes, twelve, barrels for catching and storing rainwater.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 03:23 am (UTC)And, not to be mean or anything, but your FIL sounds insane. 12 barrels already? Bonkers!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 02:49 pm (UTC)I have to agree with Vaudevilles though, that's an insane amount of work if he's already got so many barrels.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 03:39 pm (UTC)Your FIL seems a little - narrowly focussed? But go you for achieving the impossible!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 05:09 pm (UTC)Also, GIP.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 07:21 pm (UTC)o.O Well... at least you all got a good workout...
Does your inability to write anything make you as cranky and irritated as I get when I have no inspiration to make graphics? I hate it when I feel like that.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-28 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-28 10:43 am (UTC)That's a GOOD resolution! :-)