Paul Davidson
Weeknotes 094: Promise of Percy Pigs
Is good news that you can’t share better than good news you can? I’m not sure. But it’s a nice feeling to hold regardless.
I’m writing these after a Sunday evening with the work laptop making sure the everybody is getting paid. Not the most desirable way to spend the evening, but I’ve got tomorrow off to celebrate doing something very smart and I really want them to be paid.
I’ve kept up my tradition of being inordinately jealous of Piglet and The Chef’s Mondays together. While I suffered through a head-cold in back-to-back meetings, they made doughnuts and played in the Dene with friends. Accounts of the most sickeningly cute game of tuggy abound.
In punishment, The Chef picked my cold up the day after. Piglet remains happily well. We’re presuming that means she was patient zero and is just tougher than us.
Coincidentally the GP rang. I was halfway through thinking that it was psychically good service, when they disabused me of that notion and pointed out that I’m getting old and they would like to stick their finger somewhere that requires express permission.
To assuage the pain of work admin, I’m trialling doing a few hours work before opening email/Teams. It’s worked this week because I’ve had the privilege of free mornings. My productivity hasn’t been great, but at least having one task done by lunch means the days aren’t a total bust. I half-remember reading somewhere that the aim for productivity isn’t to maximise good days, but minimise the zero days.
With The Chef ill, I’ve had free evenings to carry over some of the pseudo-productiveness. I’ve tried starting on my December plan to indieweb this place, with little success. I created a Mastodon profile because I mistakenly thought I’d need one. Turns out not. Expect very little to happen there. I do have a lot of “rel=me” tags in the head.html doc though. I’ve started nicking Amit Gawande’s Blot Theme. Expect that to be complete sometime in late 2035. At least I managed to follow along with CSS nth child property to add a list of recent posts to the homepage. Not a total bust.
The one dampener on last week’s final was the Beeb’s terrible decision to have a crappy Kasabian concert as the closing credits. Now—for someone of my prostate-checking age—the Italia 90 Nessum Dorma end credits are insurmountable. But they could have done so much better than this. My soundtrack choice for losing the final would have been King. The image mixing writes itself. As winners? The end credits need to place the tournament in history—stills of Lily Parr and the current crop of presenters who couldn’t quite do it. I’m still trying to choose the music.
While I’m on my middle-aged cultural rant, I watched Blade Runner 2049 and it’s Creed for scifi: Visit the same themes with a near-perfect modern cast. Bring the original actor in to play father. Computers exist now. Surpass the original1.
After my success with nail painting, I was allowed to try a plait this week. Daddy plaits aren’t good enough.
It snuck up on us. But we’re now the type of house that has Babybel in the fridge2.
To get an early start celebrating my smart decision making skills, we farmed Piglet out to Lǎolao and Lǎoyé while we went antiquing then out for drinks and food. Then more food the next day.
Meanwhile Lǎolao and Lǎoyé were treated to the full works. Piglet ended up asleep in their bed, unwashed, unpyjama’d and unkempt at 10 pm. We let her nap before visiting my half of the family for a second Sunday Roast in as many weeks. We had the excuse of a visiting auntie necessitating a visit from us too.