Winter’s log, earthdate 201509.08

Because my favourite eldest daughter was over today, I’ve started writing later than I usually do – and I’ve also just finished my third Treadmilling for the day. Because Julian was off dropping Lee back, I decided to count how many steps I do in my ten minutes on the treadmill – I miss my Stair Walks, and I sort of feel that just mindlessly stepping along on the treadmill can’t really be called valid “exercise”, and isn’t “working” my leg muscles to the extent that the stairs did… So I counted, just to see. Well, I still don’t think it really counts as “exercising”, but I did 400 steps in 10 minutes and 10 seconds – just a little more than I was doing on my “Stairs Down”, and “Stairs Back Up Again” Stair Walks – so who knows? Maybe it is exercise, even though it doesn’t feel like it…

Well, the painters were here again today – still fiddling around in the bedroom and bedroom corridor (as opposed to the much wider hall corridor!) I must say that they’ve done a lovely job in the bedroom, both with the two new doors, and the wall that used to have great big brackets where the previous owners had attached one of their enormous televisions. The painting in the bedroom corridor isn’t really noticeable unless you have all the lights turned on – it’s too dark down there to see much without them. Tomorrow they’ll be starting in the dining room-slash-living room area, giving me a reprieve of a couple of hours before they start working in the Den. They said that they’d probably be able to finish off tomorrow, but there’s an awful lot of wall area in both rooms, so I’m just a trifle sceptical! (I wish there was a shortcut for a “smilie” denoting a raised eyebrow, that would “translate” properly into WordPress-ese”!) a ” ?) ” will have to do, I suppose… Anyway, if the painters do finish tomorrow, that’ll give me a day of (hopefully) uninterrupted Rifting (or graphicing!) before Friday, when I’m off to the hairdresser again. While my favourite eldest daughter was here we talked about her assignments and how she was going to handle them. With the one she’s managed to get an extension on (but shouldn’t really need!) she has to write one thousand words on how the texts that they’ve had to read this semester (year? I fergit…) have influenced her writing… The thing is, Lee’s in her very early forties… and she’s been writing (novels and novellas) since she was about twelve years old – and as she herself said, anything that she’s read in the past few months probably won’t have had any influence on her writing, or style of writing, whatsoever! Whatever (or whoever) has influenced her writing will have occurred many, many years ago! Still, it’s only a thousand words, and it shouldn’t be too hard for her to explain that in a thousand words, surely! 🙂 The other assignment is in the form of a video. She wants to make a short video explaining (exhorting?) young teens about the possible future dangers of sexting, without coming across as judgmental, accusing, or victimising. But even in this day and age of political correctness and neurotically extreme phobias about being seen as racist, homophobic, sexist, overly judgmental, blaming the victim – ad nauseam – it should be possible to point out the possible (and even probable!) pitfalls of sending photos of one’s genitals to another person via the internet, in a factual and straightforward manner, shouldn’t it? For a video assignment though, I guess it would have to be a person (or maybe persons?) looking earnestly at the camera and explaining the problems that they’ve had after sexting their partner. You mustn’t portray shame or guilt, or any other negative connotations – after all, they’ve done nothing to be guilty or ashamed of – but just state the facts. Anyway, it’s her assignment, and she’ll do it her way 🙂 We also watched six (6!) episodes of “Arrow” – now that we live so much closer to her Julian doesn’t have to drive her home so early and we have more time to watch whatever it is that we’re currently watching 🙂 Oh, she said she had a present for me, but she’d left it at home, but that she’d give it to Julian to bring back with him – which he did 🙂 In Adelaide on Saturday, I was quite cold and borrowed a scarf from Melissa, Julian’s sister. It was a lovely dark blue wool “Adelaide University” scarf – it was beautiful and warm, and I was quite reluctant to hand it back to Melissa when we left for the airport. Lee’s present was a black wool “Deakin University” scarf – exactly the same, only black (which I really prefer, too!) so I’m extremely pleased, and I shall be wearing it a lot, too, until the weather gets warmer! 🙂

And… it’s “that time”… again!

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

And sim sala bim, I’m back again! 🙂 It’s after dinner, and after television, where Julian and I have just watched last season’s final episode of “Person of Interest” – talk about a cliff-hanger! There will be another, final, shortened season of the show, which my favourite eldest daughter and I were discussing, just this afternoon! We’re wondering if the character “Shaw” will have been “turned” by Samaritan, if she’ll just pretend to have been “turned” to fool Samaritan, or if she’ll be unaffected by her imprisonment by Samaritan! And… how do you kill, or destroy, such a powerful AI as Samaritan? Lee was saying that you can’t destroy or kill such a powerful entity – but Samaritan was attempting to (quite literally) kill “The Machine”, so surely it could be killed in the same way? Oh, questions, questions, questions, and no answers, yet! 🙂 It’s interesting to speculate, though… and the fact that the last season will be a very short one suggests that they (the writers and producers) have some sort of resolution to the conflict between the two machines… One thing’s for sure – having come so far with “The Machine” and its champions, one finds oneself almost hopping from foot to foot, chewing one’s nails down to the quick, and jumping up and down with impatience, waiting to see what’s going to happen! Roll on next year and the final season! 🙂

Reading back over what I’ve just written, it seems incongruous to get so het up over a – let’s face it – a pretty flimsy show with really improbable and implausible plots, where only the “goodies” can shoot straight (and nearly always in the knee-caps!) cars and trucks (vans) have armour-plated duco, and with technical holes that would make a piece of Swiss Cheese look like solid rock! But it’s good fun, and really, if something can keep you interested and on the edge of your seats for so long, it can’t be all that bad, now can it? 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Thank goodness! Only another two days of these terrible tablets! This morning, I hopped on the scales… 76.3kg Right, time for the confirmatory second weighing. Back on the scales… It dithered! It went up to 76.9kg… while I was trying to get my balance – then dropped down to 76.7… 8… 5… and finally stopped on 3 again! So I went down… one point! From 76.4kg to 76.3kg. Don’t worry, tomorrow I’ll probably be back at 76.6kg or something. I do find it difficult to stand on the scales properly – my feet are badly deformed, and trying to get both feet straight (HA!) on the metal strips you’re supposed to stand on involves me going quite painfully knock-kneed, and half standing on the inside edge of one foot. It’s not easy to keep one’s balance like that! *sigh*

So anyway, the painters will be back tomorrow, I should have a couple of hours in here before Julian has to secure the computers and cover everything with sheets of plastic, whereupon I suppose I shall retire to the living room and read my kindle until everything’s back to normal in here… It might be a good idea if I get Julian to charge up my tablet tonight, too… But anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough, and said just about everything that I wanted to say – so once again I guess that’s about it from me for tonight! Call in again tomorrow night, though, and see whether or not my weight did go up (I bet it does!) and whether the painters have finished, or whether they’ll be back again on Thursday, as well as lots of other news you really won’t want to miss out on! 😉 But until then, do try to bee good, don’t forget that there is no great genius without some touch of madness, and remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – but most of all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂