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Orangery
It's King's Day tomorrow in the Netherlands; a national holiday in every sense of the word. For most Dutch people, it means a feverish plague of orange tat - to wear, eat and wave in the air, a lot of beer, and an all-pervasive soundtrack of oompah bands and bouncy pop tunes played through bad loudspeakers from every village street. (This is my experience of it in the previous 8 years of village life - it may be different elsewhere in the country).
But the windy miller and I will be heading to the windmill in Zeeland. I will take a pile of books, a warm blanket, and a big packet of sausages to cook.
It's cold where you are? So you and the Miller are going to have an under-the-blanket sausage festival up at 'mill? That sounds very sensible under the circumstances.
[Stevie[ I am too shocked to speak.
(As it happens, I made coffee for everyone, sat out in the sun drinking coffee and eating cake, cleaned the lav thoroughly - spider footprints all over the seat - and after a lunch of sausage sarnies, I went to sit in the car to read, and got through two-thirds of Jessica Mitford's autobiography 'Hons and Rebels', including an hour's doze. Lovely.)
Exactly a week later...
My life seems to be all outings and jollies. It isn't - but as it happens I'm catching the ferry back to England tonight, the first time I've been back since last December.
The Crab
Hooray - I will not die of prostate cancer. Just seen a specialist and they have a treatment plan all worked out (catheter not involved). It'll take a couple of years at least but there is a very high probability of then being totally cancer-free. Even if not, it can be monitored and re-treated and represents no danger.
[Rosie] Thank God for that. My grandfather died of it, so I am glad to hear the news. Even if I have never met you in my life, your absence would be more than a passing thing.
Maleness
Good oh, Rosie. Great news, indeed. I hope the treatment isn't too onerous. I'll also have a drink for you this evening. :)
(Bismarck) That's very kind. I'll be quite happy to live another 15 years, being 74, and the doctor I saw earlier today implied very strongly that this business won't affect my longevity. Now, about your smoking, Mr Hughes.

(Dujon) The treatment may involve side-effects (chemo) and later possibly radiotherapy to give it a final bashing on the head. This is a bit more than taking paracetamol but I've found over the years that I seem immune to side effects, never having had any from anything. Let's hope it continues. There is already an improvement from the hormone therapy I'm undergoing - less "urgency" and less getting up during the night and no side effects such as hot flushes or sprouting boobs, which apparently can happen. And how much libido can you lose at my age? Well, a bit, actually, but it must be a serious problem for younger men, whom I do not envy.

Glad to hear that Rosie. These MC sites do come alive due to their inhabitants, so I look forward to many more years of wit 'n' wisdom from yourself (and steam locomotives).

P.S. Why do I still get libido and albedo mixed up?

Rosie
Luck, and no side effects. If you'll take some well-meant advice, keep a few bottles of the otherwise disgusting gatorade at hand during your regimen. I hope you won't need them, but better a couple of bottles you never used than not having none when dehydration hits. There's also something called pedialite over here, used for babies but essentially the same dilute cocktail of electrolytes. Can't get that at the supermarket though.
(Boolbar) Thanks for your concern. re libido/albedo - have you been trying to shag the planet Venus? Bright, isn't it.

(Stevie) I was told about possible dehydration but I think water will do. BTW, what's gatorade? Sounds like something distilled from a bayou.

Nice news
[Rosie] That's the nicest news all week. Lucozade will do the same job as Gatorade, I think, but it won't be so snappy. Ginger ale is marvellous stuff too, especially if the treatment robs you of your appetite.
[Rosie] Very glad to hear that; good luck with the treatments.
(CdM) They will be worse than the disease, which is little more than a nuisance, though not ultimately, needless to say. Thanks for your concern.
Gatorade
Sports drink. Rich in electrolytes. Water may not do, as it is the chemical imbalance that is the problem rather than lack of water. Orange juice is my usual rehydrator of choice but once you are on chemo you may find the taste becomes unpalatable. Hope I'm overstating the case. Speedy recovery at any rate. My Dad underwent the same regimen and he's free umpteen years down the road.
It's the bloody 15th of May!
Morning all. This weekend I have been mostly shouting above the din of a noisy restaurant to translate an entire Dutch menu (a very nice menu actually) to an old schoolfriend and her chap who visited for the weekend (Mauritz in Willemstad) that mader me lose some of my voice, and exploring the Napoleonic fort at the end of our dijk, which is a couple of miles away, but still on the same dijk. Exploring Fort Sabina was like one of those dreams in which you discover another staircase leading to rooms in your house that you never knew were there; it's so close to our house and has such a massive sense of history; it's now given over to nature, wind and water (and a decent cafe selling nice beer).
And what I really meant to say was... it's already halfway through May!
[pen] Halfway? I have a feeling we have another 5 years of May left.
Neighbourliness
The neighbours opposite (overbuurmensen) are gradually removing their kitchen in preparation for a new one going in in a couple of weeks. Today they'll rip out the floor and sloosh in the self-levelling goop, so they're coming over to eat at ours tonight. Salmon and new potatoes.
Can I come too?
[pen] Perhaps a self-levelling chocolate goop for desert?
Self-leveling underfloor goop. Hah. Once they are done they will lay their floor and never be able to get any of their appliances to mate the plumbing without a healthy reservoir of Class Four Words of Power.

The house settles and goes out of square, taking walls and plumbing with it (ironically, the plumbing will be out of plumb). Wheel in new washing machine on nice new level floor and the fun starts. Also, once floor laid, skirting boards may not fit under door frame. I wish everyone the best and as you value your sanity, don't get too close. I'm currently facing a bathroom wall that is now so far away from the frame of the house, the tap stems no longer poke through enough for the taps to be fitted. Oh how I laughed.

tapping
[Stevie] Your house sounds like the spire of that Chesterfield church.
The neighbours' house is a dijk-house; split level with a front door at road level, and storeys above and a storey below which is semi-underground, built into the dyke. Theirs also has constructions built out from the back of the house, on legs.
Ours is a dijkhuis too, but ours is new and built on pilings. Theirs is a hundred years old in parts and not built on pilings. Their front door doesn't fit, they have corridors that run in U-shapes around the building, and there are at least two routes to every room in the house. I'm very fond of them but they have too much stuff and cannot help but buy more.
Thank you for the warning about sanity. I fear you are right.
My internal picture was the spire of Ely Cathedral which was reportedly three feet off the vertical at the tip. Speaking of good intentions gone all tilty while no-one was looking, tomorrow Mrs Stevie leaves for DC and I begin fixing the perambulating fence of not-all-that-windproofness-when-you-get-down-to-it.
Epeeing into the wind
[Stevie] Isn't that fencing the recurring theme of your DIY posts on this website? I remember it from years ago. Perhaps it's time it went - is not even as if you have to keep the Steveling confined any more.
Nope. I value my privacy, such as it is.
Didn't get to fix the fence because of rain and bleeping work.
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it
[Stevie] A noble task! Those swearwords won't censor themselves.
No, that's the noise my computer makes when the remote connection is timing out.
[Stevie] Mark your boundary with a row of nails.  It is said that a tack is the best form of the fence.
Argh! No court in the world would convict me, Boolbar.
Hooray! Them and their clever machines have had a closer look and I have no cancer whatever outside the prostate and so don't need chemo. A very good day. A very good day indeed.
Very good news Rosie.
I bet you feel about twenty years younger, Rosie. Marvellous, marvellous, old chap.
(Stevie,Dujon) Cheers. Thanks. The prostate itself is still cancerous but it's completely under control and the hormone therapy is working, i.e. the wee-wees are faster, less urgent and there's less getting up in the night. Pints of beer are less likely to cause "spillage". This is important, obviously. This treatment is going to have to last some time but has no side-effects apart from the obvious one of loss of libido which is not the worst thing in the world for someone of my age (74) but a slight loss nevertheless. I was told, quite seriously, that every man of 90 has prostate cancer (but dies of something else). Can I hang on to it for 16 years? Some people with more threatening cancer give it a name. Any suggestions? Trump? Ibrahimovic?
Rosie's complaint
Why not call yours a "Corbyn"? After all, although it has dangerous principles it's pacific, looks like it's quite happy in its own allotment, was around for ages before coming to your notice, and you'd be better if once it's gone.
Have a beer from me, for medical reasons.
(Bismarck) It doesn't make much sense to name a malignant growth after something benign, does it?
Chuffed
[Rosie] Glad to hear your good news!
Thanks to all who have wished me well
Weather news - look away NOW
Super thunderstorm at 4.30 pm. AFPD for a few minutes, visibility down to a couple of hundred yards, then some large hail. Large by Met Office definition, i.e >5 mm; this was over twice that. I measured the rain - 12.7 mm in about 7 minutes. Still quite warm and stuffy, and no wind. Some action at last.
The Rosie Prostate Saga
[Rosie] I've been absent from this site for some time. Good Lord, you must've been through the brambles mentally, but very glad to hear that chemo has been dodged. Having lived alongside someone who had every side-effect short of death 3 summers ago, I can assure you that every chemo case avoided is a tremendous bonus!
Best wishes for future beer consumption, although I too side with the quack on the "Now, about the smoking, Mr Hughes...." front. :)
(Phil) Thanks for your thoughts. Beer consumption continues, the only problem ever having been elimination of the processed material and that is a lot better than it was. Apparently I have responded very well to hormone therapy and can now have radiotherapy which should knock it on the head once and for all. This, though, may not be all fun.
Glad to hear things are going well and that it hasn't affected the beer glands. All the best, mate.
In other news
So what's everyone doing tomorrow? An ordinary Wednesday - or is it?
(pen) Not exactly. Another trip to the Marsden, this time for a pre-radiotherapy scan. The treatment proper involves 37 visits. It's about half an hour's drive, depending on traffic but I can pick and choose the time of day which is very useful. The treatment is far worse than the symptoms which are now no more than slight and lends the whole process an air of unreality. But you have to go through with it or things may happen later, you could say. The hospital is brilliant and are confident the treatment will be successful. You're rarely absolutely cured of cancer, of course and checkups will be needed from time to time.
I have been given a booklet about dealing with this particular form of cancer. It's a useful read and there are photos of various smiling late middle-aged and elderly fellows, sometimes with their soulful-looking wives. One of the men is someone I instantly recognised and know quite well, as I do his wife. In the Big Band I used to play in before it packed up he and I were the trombone section. Also, he is a Chelsea supporter. I had no idea he'd had prostate cancer because even though he must now be about 80 he's pretty vigorous and healthy. A good omen, and a small world.
steaming
[Roie] Re: your comment to me in the Pea & Honey game - I've only ridden on two steam trains, one on the NY railway, and one on exhibition on the preserved part of the Louth-Grimsby line. And I have no idea what either of them were. (Didn't comment in the game because it makes the stanzas messy - tidy, tidy, tidy!)
trombonists unite
[And Rosie again] That sounds reasonable. I hope you find a way to deal with the side-effects of the treatment. When you get to be [more than 40] and have done lots of things, it's inevitable that people you know or have known pop up on telly, radio or in print from time to time - the delight is never knowing where or when.
The Beyer-Garratt trombonists
(pen, 1st) I should hope not. Dreadful dirty things. Beyer-Garratts are huge. I wouldn't want to fire one.
(pen, 2nd) It's all been postponed until early September because the prostate has not yet shrunk quite enough with the hormone treatment for it to be bombed with short-wave X-rays. The smaller the better because it lessens harming healthy tissue which causes the side effects. So a quiet life for a bit.
More than 40? Yes, keep going.....
I fully intend to
Spent Sunday (30C in the shade outside, slightly less inside due to judicious management of shade and through draughts) in the biggest of our two attic guest bedrooms, installing bargainous bookcase and linen cupboard (42 euros and 50 euros from the Dutch equivalent of eBay respectively) and emptying (OK, binning the contents of) boxes from the house move two and a half tears ago. I threw out my collected payslips from my last jobs in the UK - one collection going back to 1998, which is about the time I started contributing to the predecessors of this site. Blimey. It was a long, long time ago.
Dear Ms penelope
pursuant to the new post-Brexit changes to the tax code to be enacted next year, all residents of the UK who were employed between the years of 1970 to 2016 must supply proof of adequate withholding during the relevant working years.
Please forward copies of your payslips for the last five years in the UK to HM Ministry of Monetary Annoyance, 10 Nosuch Circle, London W1 ...
That sounds a bit laborious.
Tax-driven
[pen] Still got mine all the way back to year dot. I'm going to keep hold of them, too, as I've lived and worked on local contracts in various countries, so come pension time I have the proof incontrovertible, or at least enough to allow me to litigate from my shack.
BTW, if anyone thinks of saving through one of those Irish life insurance jobs, don't. My one has the same book value as the contributions, and the redemption value exactly two months after the official valuation in April is somehow only 65% of said contributions. Easily the worst investment I have ever made.
Dear Jeremy Taxman
Naff off. I earn euros now, you numpty.
Love
penelope
And following my earlier post...
Friday AND pay day AND temperatures below 25C... happy, happy, happy.
Ex-Pats Hiding Out In Holland Give Inland Revenue The Two Finger Salute!
Dutch Tax Cheats Refuse To Pay Their Share!
"Let Them Eat Chocolate and Tulip Bulbs" Sneer Callous Brexit-Dodgers!
Story on page 5.
You won't want to miss our Page 3 Bird, former Miss Windmill Acet Aldehyde (22).
CH3CHO
Subtle stuff.
nauseous
A surfeit of chocolate-covered tulip bulb fritters, probably.
We've been DUPed - again.
(Softers) Nice one, but I don't think many will be fooled.
Well, you can fool all of the people ......
Outage
Hello. Looks like there was an outage last night. Not entirely sure of the cause - could be as benign as a simple kernel panic but I'll investigate further to check it's nothing more malign.
Are we back yet?
'Kernel panic' sounds like a Face Pyjama. Is it a real thing?
Nope, nothing like that.
Punctuation
I think "expats" is better without a hyphen otherwise it sounds as if the person has somehow metamorphosed from copros bovis and this will simply not do as a chatup line at all, will it, pen?
What do you get if you stand under a cow? A pat on the head.
[Rosie] I have no idea, I'm an immigrant. 'Expats' is a name people give themselves when they're in a state of denial, not really believing the place they have chosen to live is actually 'foreign'.
[pen] Entirely agree.
[penelope, Software] And gifted by others to imply contempt based on the assumption of that very behavior. It's interesting that an Englishman here is often called an "ex-pat" but Hispanic ex-pats are universally "immigrants".
Exile
[penelope et al] Penelope and I are both immigrants and expatriates. I was expatriated forcefully (in the sense of having no choice in the matter) and penelope voluntarily (unless finding a husband in another country is considered an hormonal dictate). Of course the use of the term expat (or ex-pat) is just silly idiomatic waffling. I have heard the term used to describe someone who is working in this country but will, in all likelihood, return 'home' after a time - which is quite the opposite of its true meaning.
[Duj] I'll have you know I tried out lots of potential husbands in the UK, but none of them met the required standard.
Didn't try me!
[pen] or height?
Possessing a windmill could be a criterion, I guess?
Work, Work, Work . . .
Grad school is NOT for the faint of heart . . .
Just popping in to say h'lo
Yes, it's me, sans plus sign (which I dropped ages ago). Good to see MC5 is still alive and well. ????????
Now there's a blast from the past. G'day.
dr q
You're not fooling anyone Raak, which is of course to say "Dunx" impersonating "Software" in his "Dan"-pretending-to-be-"flerdle" persona.

Welcome "back".
Doctor Q! Wotcher, mate. Still at Pittsburgh Uni? Great to hear from you.
So yeah, a few of you know, but not everyone does, so here goes…
My real name is now Gracie Jane; pronouns are she/her. But I'm still in Pittsburgh, and people still call me Quuxum, even IRL.
[Duj] You might be on one of the meds I'm on as well :)
[drgj] Good for you! =) Out of interest, how long do people usually pronounce the "u" sound in "qu...um" for?
[drquuxum] Pleased to meet you, Gracie Jane. Great good luck in your new life.
[drq] Glad to see you back here. The more the merrier. And following on from Tuj, how do you pronounce "quuxum" (in my head it is kw-uck-zum)?
And thinking about it, how is Tuj pronounced?
[Bool] Yup; I usually spell it out as Kwucks-um, or even K????-?m.
Yes, how is Tuj pronounced? Tudge? or as in French "touge"?
"Tuy". That or "Mangrove-Stoat Frog Warbler" depending on where one is pronouncing "Tuj".
The entity known as Tuj
Unpronounceable in this solar system, I have always thought, existing only as a symbolic representation in ASCII of a different existence. 1945166590+22554-171, if your Gödelising is up to it.
Alas, your instantaneous translator is on the blink. "Bismarck" is easily pronounceable in almost every language on Earth.
Hello again
Been tweaking. Hopefully nothing broken...
Rhymes with "smudge" in my head, but YMMV. On this line, there aren't any truly unpronounceables among us, a la Drewsxpa, at present are there?
[rab] You'll ruin your teeth.
Pronunciation
[Tuj] But what would you know.
Mornin' all. Comment ally voos?
Trebonski, as my Dad would have said. Bilingual but French wasn't one of 'em.
dokodo don, dokodo don, dokodo don, dokodo don
Our taiko group played for a friend's wedding yesterday. At the party afterwards, that is, not the ceremony itself. The bride is one of the group, so she was playing with us, with a shoulder-slung drum over her full white wedding rig. Later today I expect to be very happy when the restoration of my Mac from backup completes (touch wood). The disc failed last weekend and I've been poking at the Internet through a variety of letterboxes since. Or maybe I shall be happy in a couple of days. It has just announced, "About 37 hours and 2 minutes remaining."
Happiness is restored, along with the backup.
Backups
37 hours? How much were you recovering?
About 1.75 TB. I got the machine back from Apple yesterday with a new disc, the current OS, and nothing else. I booted it, it saw my Time Capsule, and in just a few clicks and 18 hours, it's back to normal. It reported a transfer rate varying between 8 and 25 MB/second, I'm not sure why it would be that low. My broadband is faster. Maybe I should have remembered to plug in the Ethernet before it started over Wifi.
Was it a Time Machine backup? These are very slow, for some reason.
Having said that I had a backup that ran for a comparable time over USB2 last week. I had resized my hard drive from 3/4 TB to 1TB and told windows to do a backup to the same drive I had used to do the restore from the smaller image. Part of the problem was I forgot to disable Malwarebytes until 24 hours had passed uneventfully (as in the "end of backup" event hadn't fired), but I think that there was some sort of messing around comparing block usage with bit maps too. I should have used a clean USB drive from the get-go.
[rab] The backup was made with Time Machine, but the restore process was handled by the Migration Assistant. Apart from whatever speed issues there may be, it seems to me that Time Machine works the way that all backups should, ever since disks superseded magnetic tape. You aren't limited to just doing a full restore, you can look at the backup and see all the individual files and access them just like they're ordinary files on a disc, which of course they are, not hidden in some opaque archive format. Automatic hourly backups meant that without having to think about it, when the disk failed I lost no data. Do modern backup solutions for other systems provide this level of does-it-right-ness?
Discs haven't superseded mag tape. The cost factor is with the disc, but in streaming mode tape can beat a spinning disc in speed of writes. Not only that, you might be surprised at how robust the tape market has become since defense in depth backup strategies were developed in the wake of cheap,reliable discs. Of course, it is all about to change again as Flash becomes cheaper and more reliable.
Tape me up
If your tape breaks, you can splice it, losing only certain files. Solid state memory and optical disks do not have that option.
[Bismarck] Don't they splice themselves?
Light Show
Spectacular thunderstorm here. Some of the lightning made the scene look like daylight. Not all that much rain, surprisingly.
Electric Light Pourchestra
What Rosie said, but with a very hefty downpour of rain followed by a few hours of drizzle.
[Rakk] My understanding is that discs can recover lost blocks if they are in the right sort of configuration, and Flash has hardware redundancy built-in for its peculiar fail modes, so I guess the answer is "Yesnabe".
But in order to get the sort of speed and reliability from spinning discs that tape offers (in streaming mode - important specific there) you have to "waste" a lot of discs. Personally I think tape is neat just because of the robot silos. Technology should have moving parts to provide visual interest. Today's tech is all solid state in boring boxes. Some years ago I toyed with the idea of using tiny motors like the ones in toy helicopters to drive lightweight gear trains, the whole on an appliqué that could be stuck to a tower casing to make it look like it was doing useful stuff. Might still try that.
[Stevie] So it was you that invented the fidget spinner?
Cumulonimbi
Made it over here late morning, flood-like and loud as anything. Which was fun as I was having a job interview, to which it added some useful absurdity. Didn't manage to use it as a proof of divine support, though.
Thunderstruck
[Bis] I got one of my loveliest-ever jobs during a day or so of deluges and flooding. I even had a refugee friend staying over because his street was flooded - I was reluctant to take him in because I wanted to read-read-read before the interview, but humanity prevailed, and the job was a good fit.
Where's 'over here'?
(pen) Didn't you get any thunder earlier this morning? I know parts of The Netherlands got some tasty stuff. Have a look here to see it as it happens.
Fidgit Spinner
No. If I had, it would glow green and spark as it span.
Job Interview With Weather
You should have calmly placed your smartphone on the table between you and the interviewer and had it play Ride of the Valkyries as the weather crescendoed. If it had been me I would also have thought to wear 15 inch cymbals attached to the inside leg of my trousers at knee-level so I could join in the fun as I interviewed, but that's just me and my over-preparation thing at work.

AS the weather glooms, looms, flashes and crashes about outside, two people sit opposite each other at a table while tinny Wagner belts out of one of the glass slabs on the table..

"What would you say your biggest faults are?"

"WHAT?" syncopated metallic crashes are heard coming from from under the table

"I SAID: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BIGGEST FAULTS ARE?"

"MY INCONVENIENT INTROVERSION. ARE WE GOING TO DO THE ONE ABOUT WHICH TREE I WOULD BE NEXT, BECAUSE IF WE ARE THE ANSWER IS THAT ONE OVER THERE."
[Stevie] I've downloaded RotV for future reference, you never know. Didn't get asked what my faults are (there's a Pandora's box...), did you ever support Communism and would you rather plant a tree, cut one down or cut one down and lie about it.
[pen] One linguistic border to the south of you.
Wagnerian Aids To Interviewing During Thunderstorms
and the knee-cymbals?
[Stevie] Still in two minds... Wagner didn't score for knee-cymbals, so it lacks authenticity for the purist, which might count against me if the interviewer knows their stuff.
Answering Rosie, earlier
It was Wednesday, I think, we had very hot thundery weather, torrential storms all around us but only a few hot drops of rain chez windy miller. Thursday - I think the neighbour's weather station recorded more than an inch of rain. It was spectacular.
[Bis] Bonjour. (Not 'ow-do' - hoedoe - as the Brabantsers confusingly say instead of 'bye'.)
(pen) Ah, those weather charts were right, then, though I'm not sure exactly where you are in The Netherlands.
In a thunderous voice
I looked at central Europe on, I think, my Friday. There was a spectacular string of storms in an elbow, almost a right-angle, from north of Hamburg curving down to southwest of Saltzburg then a bit of a gap to western France (SE from Paris) where a smaller but significant area was also producing much electrical activity.
Given that the lightning markers are coloured from white to yellow to orange to three shades of red depending on six 20-minute periods it was a most colourful sight.
[Rosie] South of the Netherlands; the big islands of Zeeland just to the west of us, and to the North, via the big Haringvliet bridge, Rotterdam. We would be able to see the lights of the bridge if it wasn't for our neighbours' house.
Whoops
Saltzburg sb Stuttgart.
Wagner Not Having The Foresight To Score For Knee Cymbals
I see your point, but it would be difficult to answer the interviewer's questions while playing a trombone or french horn. Perhaps you could join in one of the brass parts by playing it on those Irish Armpit-Actuated Bagpipes. Now I think on it, the vigorous Clouseau parrot-inflation arm movements would augment any interview process, thunderstorm or no thunderstorm.
Nowt since July?
So what's everyone been up to? I've had three weeks off - spent 8 days in the UK. Ate fish and chips by the seaside watching the rain and visited the Mary Rose at Portsmouth's Historic Naval Dockyard - the best museum I have ever visited.
re: Nowt since July?
[pen] I just got back from a road trip across the north of Pennsylvania (and a small bit of Western New York). Quite lovely, and I'll be uploading some pictures soon-ish.
Chewing my own leg off so I can escape work and go to Florida for a week.
Legless in Florida
[Stevie] Splendid. I have worked so bloomin' hard this year on supporting my department with all of its projects (*ahem*) that I have been unable to use up my vacation days at the correct rate. So I've had a bit of a session in the working hours part of the SAP platform, which fell over only twice as I tried to use it. As a result I'm having at least a week off per month between now and the end of the year.(Smug, I know, but this is a benefit of being a Dutch university employee).
Hey, August is cool
Warmest day of the month here, 24.5°, which frankly is crap for a highest-in-August and the second worst ever, i.e. post-1983.
(Stevie) Whoa! Have you seen this?
[Rosie] It's that time of year. Time to fire up the genny and clean it's pipes out. Hopefully it either blows itself out or goes someplace else before I have to drive through it in a week and a bit.
Gulf of... Mexico?
I can't help feeling that building a wall in Texas would help stop these foreign storms.
(Bismarck) Some wall.
Officially autumn
So how was everyone's week? And what's planned for the weekend? If I apply myself, I could be making jam for the fourth Sunday in a row - it requires a foraging expedition by cycle from the windy miller's mill tomorrow (but first, the bicycle must be retrieved from another windmill where the apprentice left it a couple of weeks ago). Pffft.
arrow_circle_down
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