Sushi For Breakfast

I went into town today, as we have always said. In other words, I went into the city centre to do some Christmas shopping. I went on the bus, having originally planned this so I'd be out of the way while my road is closed for resurfacing. However, that's been delayed until Monday so I'll have to leave early for work.

I managed to get the things I wanted - Christmas cards, an advent calendar, a 2017 diary - plus a few other bargains from Wilko including blueberry shower gel and Vimto lipbalm. I also visited the art gallery for their Brick Wonders exhibition - basically lots of Lego recreations of famous world vistas and other things, such as our local cathedral, the International Space Station, and a massive Lego airport.

Am also wondering if I've got a cold coming or if this is just the effects of the weather getting colder but not cold enough to be into a regular routine with the central heating. I've been putting it on for about an hour most evenings, and I've had the fire on a few times also. It's the beginning of half term week here now and I'm determined that winter cannot be sighted until half term is well and truly behind us.

Also last night saw the first episode of QI's N series, the first edition with Sandi Toksvig in the chair instead of Stephen Fry. I do miss Stephen and I think I always will, but Sandi is awesome.

Yesterday at work was relatively quiet so I was able to follow along with the whole of the launch window for Orion EFT1 on NASA TV. Today was one of the busiest I've known and I hardly saw a thing - no launch coverage whatsoever, a couple of news headlines, and a few tweets. It feels as if it didn't really happen today.

I've just seen a 13-minute video of the launch, but nothing of the landing & post-landing coverage yet. And the launch video started at T-10secs, none of the pre-launch stuff at all - I want everything from as far back as the go-no go poll at least. It's possible someone has tweeted about it but even my Essentials Twitter list is ridiculous today, it's impossible to follow.

In happier news, I've got all my Christmas tree decorations. I'm not putting the tree up until next weekend though, as this weekend will be a major laundry weekend and probably another visit to Mum & Dad as they have Jess overnight tomorrow, with a packed programme of activities. Also I need to learn how to use my TiVo or whatever it's called when it's on Virgin cable, as I saw a tweet from BBC1 the other day with a listing of Christmas Day's evening schedule and it looks like I'll need to catch up on Doctor Who at a later date. And I hope the finale of Miranda will be worth it.

We've had two family gatherings of sorts today.

( Furniture and Bonfire Night )

I've got more than half of my Christmas shopping done I reckon, tomorrow will be more shopping at a myriad of places in Birmingham - the Disney Store, the Christian bookshop, WHSmith - I'll probably get some Jellybeans but nothing from Hotel Chocolat - I love their stuff but it's expensive for what you get.

Today was my last day in work until Monday 6th January, which will be the longest I've had away from work for a very long time. The day started early so I could get to Sainsburys before work. Going round the store wasn't a problem - it was really busy but as expected - it was the car park which was the issue, lots of people driving round looking for a space, or waiting for someone to leave. Eventually I got into work around the same time as usual, having originally left home about 7.45am. There wasn't a lot of work to do - a few tweets, a go at infographics which was only partially successful - basically I was in to drink coffee and eat Christmas sweets. I also bought a secondhand book - we have a bookshelf where we bring in unwanted books and sell them with the money going to a local hospice, and I bought the Cordon Bleu Cookery Book, which I'd had my eye on for some time.

It's been very windy and rainy here today, the worst was during the middle of the day I think - coming home, the weather was probably the nicest it's been all day. It's supposed to be the same again on Friday, but hopefully I won't have to venture out anywhere. I got plenty of veg today and also I have lots of pasta, the plan is to make another lot of pasta bake sometime. After last year, I'll be happy for none of us to fall ill.

My sister and niece are coming round tomorrow I think. Jess has been super-excited about Christmas - she was an angel in the pre-school Nativity, and they also had a carol service and Christmas party at pre-school. There was a raffle for parents & family at the party, and Mum & Dad won a tin of Quality Street, so we've got some of all the main Christmas sweets now - the main feature is Roses, I also bought small boxes of Celebrations and Heroes. They were here on Saturday, Jess was standing on her little step-stool in the middle of the living room, singing Christmas carols at the top of her voice. I showed her coverage of the EVA on my tablet - I pointed Doug Wheelock out to her, and that he knows who she is - this is following a Twitter conversation relating to three years on from his EVA and Jessica's birth, on the same day.

Tonight in celebration of the end of work, I replayed A Very CraftLass Christmas, which resulted in a long Twitter conversation between CraftLass and myself about Christmas carols and church denominations, and when the music ended I fished my tenor recorder out of the cupboard for the first time in a couple of years and tooted through a few Christmas carols. I really like it as an instrument but it was clearly made for people with longer fingers than I have.

( Cut for Norovirus tales including vomiting, arse-rain and assorted horrid smells )

So, happy new year. It's Stargazing Live from tomorrow so am looking forward to that.

Mother just trimmed my hair, saving me from the nightmare of a visit to the hairdressers'. Actually, she hacked a great huge chunk off, it now has a neat line but it's shorter than I like. I can still tie it back, and it'll be much quicker to wash and dry, but it feels really short cos it just touches my shoulders. I've had it this short before, but it will take some getting used to. It'll be too short for Christmas but hopefully will be back to a more agreeable length for the Olympics.

On a positive side, I've been resurrecting my musical side recently. I now have three recorders, with a fourth on its way as my Christmas present to myself:



Top to bottom: Treble; Sopranino; Descant. I have a Tenor recorder on its way to me. All are mid-range Yamaha recorders, their top range ABS recorders (without paying extra for rosewood-effect finish), however the Sopranino only has this model below expensive wooden and professional grade recorders, so this has a flat windway (like in school recorders) and the others have arched windways, which are the standard on the higher-grade recorders. The descant is nice, I was surprised it needs a bit more finesse to play than my old Dolmetsch from school, but then that's the point of a higher-grade instrument. The sopranino is interesting to play, it was completely new to me, tho I can't practice too late in the evening because it's naturally rather shrill. The treble has a really awesome lightly-mellow tone, I'm trying to play it frequently so I get used to playing a recorder in F for itself, and not as a transposition of recorders in C. Am looking forward to this afternoon's practice.

Day 360 Following yesterday's present haul, I'm not short of DVDs to watch:



Although for now, I'm quite happy enjoying the silence while spending hours at a time on Wikipedia reading about EastEnders characters from the 1980s or whatever. Also my sleep schedule is totally wrecked, because it's so cold at night my sore throat is irritated further and I'm up most of the night coughing, so sleep happens mostly between 5am and 11am, with odd hours before or after if I'm lucky. So long as I can shift this cold I should be fine about getting back on schedule, I'm not in work until 4th January, and I'm past the stage in my cold where I need an extra snooze in the afternoon.

We don't really have any leftovers apart from the turkey and half a jar of good quality cranberry sauce. Because we had Christmas dinner late in the afternoon we didn't have a buffet-type meal during the day, so we never bought the accompaniments usual for this (eg dips, breadsticks, cheese straws, etc) that are so yummy when eaten as leftovers. We do have the stilton of course, plus some strong cheddar, various relishes, and the box of biscuits for cheese, which I made a start on as part of breakfast. I was thinking it was a shame we didn't have the dips, but then they're so predictable, everywhere sells the same quartet, it's no longer a novelty and no-one ever wants much of the thousand island dip. But I still plan to make sushi at some point next week.

Day 358 Christmas Day preparations are underway:



Dad has gone to Morrisons because apparently the nuts we have aren't up to the usual standard. He's also said he'll get some more Paracetamol - I am getting better slowly but still getting through the stuff at speed. Meanwhile I am keeping up with NORAD Tracks Santa (as I type he's heading for Shanghai) which I just love so much. afjelkjfjflajflkjfldjfklsj so wonderful, hi-tech meets Santa magic saljfal;fj;dsjf;lsjfl; OMG just wait until Bean is old enough to be introduced to NORAD Tracks Santa dljflajflkdjsflslkl

And last night The Good Life episode "When I'm 65" was on! It normally never gets shown, it was a one-off episode made for the Queen to attend the studio filming. It was shown with the Queen arriving beforehand and meeting the cast and credited crew (ie studio managers, makeup artist) after. The voiceover mentioned how some of the crew had been with the BBC for a while ("He came as a pageboy in 1931" and so on).

Day 353 I tend to be rather wary of starting Christmas food (ie snack food, seasonal variations of the usual stuff) too early, lest it all be gone by the big day. But we had to start on the Stilton because it's too big for the cheese dish, so we have some in the cheese dish and this is the rest:



So the stuff in the cheese dish is less than half of what we bought. And it's highly delicious. I know Stilton is delicious anyway, but this is more sublime than the usual stuff, it doesn't have the standard sharp kick, more of a gentle buzz that increases in intensity when you eat more. Very highly recommended.