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Little pleasures
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A chance to exchange notes on the little everyday things that cheer you up when you're down, or make an ordinary day into a better one. Winning move unaltered.
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[Pen] *is reminded of the penultimate line of Charlotte's Web* :-)
Discovering this game. A one-off, unrepeatable pleasure, of course.
And a proper move: Sitting on the sofa reading a gloriously huge, heavy book printed in 1943 that references and discusses a whole load of medieval manuscripts... and being able to view those manuscripts in their entirety a couple of minutes later just by walking over to my computer and downloading complete full-colour facsimiles from the host library. How I love the 21st century. I imagine that the author of the said book (the musicologist Higinio Anglés) would have creamed his academic pants at the prospect, especially since, working at that moment in history, even the slow option of travelling around Europe to visit the collections in person wasn't open to him.
[CdM] I just had to google it. I think I last read Charlotte's Web when I was 8 or 9
Introducing my children to great films from before their time as they grow up - While Mrs Phil is poorly in bed, 'little' Miss Phil and I have watched 'Raising Arizona', 'Airplane!', 'The Big Lebowski', 'Shaun of the Dead' over the last 4 nights. Admitedly, she'd seen two of them before, but it was good to bring her up to speed on the Coen Brothers. Maybe 'Full Metal Jacket' tonight, or perhaps 'Withnail and I', which neither of us has seen.
Watch 'Withnail' for that going-into-work-after-a-bank-holiday-with-a-surreal-feeling feeling.
[pen] not back to work till thursday
[Phil] If you're going to watch 'Withnail and I' you can play 'Spot the anachronistic road sign'.
[Phil] However, what I find with MsCdMJr is that any film that dates from before 2004 is greeted with a comment of "That's so old!"
[pen] That was cfm, not me. It is a good line, though. Mind you, we should remember that the author of Charlotte's Web was also a co-author of the odious Strunk and White Elements of Style, and so not someone that I particularly acknowledge as a judge of good writing. :-)
Sautéed mushrooms
[CdM] We've managed to avoid that. Both our little beasts will happily watch anything, so long as it's good, e.g. Psycho :)
[Phil] She'll watch and enjoy. She just complains first...
Tiling an irregularly-shaped bread roll with cheese, using the fewest possible cuts.
Recreational mathematics
(SM) Demonstrate, using longhand methods only, that 398712 + 436512 <> 447212. Then do it on a calculator.
Reprieves
The MD saying "In that case, I'll go away and let you get on with it"
Breaking a pane of glass you no longer want. The first blow, with a club hammer, is the best.
Being able to make a comment on a complete stranger's website/blog/whatever and get a reply from someone who lives potentially thousands of miles away.
One's favorite blue jeans
Overtaking a very expensive car, whose driver is obviously in a hurry, by picking the right lane at a junction/roundabout.
Walking a fast half-hour circuit of the village last night under a clear and almost-full moon, seeing the stars and flashing lights of the planes circling for Rotterdam and Amsterdam airports, and hearing the very last of the summer crickets chirruping in the grass. (And the imaginary dog trotting along beside me, of course)
Farting in the bath.
Observing that the complicated program that one has just written is working exactly as it should.
A free lunch each Friday just because you're a student.
Making things
Watching football managers lose their rag or becoming, as they would put it, "disappointed".
(SM) I'm with you on that. I have just made one of these. Prior to that a contour map of the entire North Downs at 1:80,000. The wonders of Photoshop.
Hearing from a friend you have lost touch with
Sky-watching. In particular, watching the sunrise over the sea from the deck as the overnight ferry pulls into home port, with a cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant; seeing mammatus clouds with my own eyes for the first time, a shooting star, and a night-sky full of stars out in the country. All over the past week or so.
The smell of tertiary butyl alcohol. A bit like isopropanol (de-icer, various cosmetics) only more so. Minty and a bit camphor-like. Rather nice - even better than ether.
[CdM] Hear, hear! Via Facebook, I've just regained contact with an Estonian fireman I use to chat with about 12 years ago. The downside is the cyrillic script on my FB timeline now!
Christmas!
Those first few moments in bed
The second coffee of the morning
A quarter-bottle of wine
In that case: Arriving home from work to discover that your teetotal wife has opened a bottle of red wine, to make lasagne, and the rest of it requires drinking. I love getting out of the car to the smell of lasagne, as it means I don't have to feel guilty about opening a bottle, just for myself.
Guessing the latest AVMA
The entire sensory spectrum of chips cooked in beef dripping.
Ordering a treat for yourself - in my case, cricket pads, bat, and gloves.
Getting home to find that said order has been delivered
Boxy concrete buildings built on a grassy slope overlooking big swaths of nature. Only realized how nice this makes me feel the other day when looking at some pictures.
Mullion Cove at low tide.
The Science Fiction of Samuel R Delaney
Sunshine
Knowing how to spell Samuel R Delany
The memory of having met and conversed with Samuel R Delany face-to-face, and of loaning him a copy of Driftglass when he had nothing for his scheduled reading and thus saving the day. 8oP
Being blissfully unaware of science fiction authors ;-)
Wot, even Arthur C Clarke? Even Ian McLeod? Even Charles Stross?
I've heard of, nay read (but not for nearly 30 years), A C Clarke. Never heard of the others.
Wow, and I picked UK authors of great stature too.
Cherry Garcia.
[Stevie] I did read quite a lot of John Wyndham when I was a teenager, plus A C Clarke, and a couple of Harry Harrisons. Unless you count Stephen King, I think my adult science fiction reading has been limited to Douglas Adams.
[Phil] Well, I have a non-standard view of genre classification: If you think it is SF, it is. I may not agree with you, but so what? Delaney would at one time hold that you might not have the vernacular needed to properly appreciate SF unless you can recognize it when you see it, but I reckon if you enjoy a story at whatever level genres are irrelevant, and anyway all the people I've conversed with here are intelligent enough to acquire the vernacular as they go.

Years ago Raak and I differed with feeling over whether "Perdido Street Station" was Hard SF or something else. While many a satisfying hour can be passed arguing this over pints of beer, in the end all that matters is that it is a bloody good story sufficiently different from stuff sitting next to it on the shelves that it should please anyone reading it on your recommendation.

You should check it out of your library and give it a go, Phil.

Re: John Wyndham. Scariest thing I ever read was from The Day of the Triffids, the line about the blind man scuttling from a looted store with two tins of red paint under his arms and a cunning grin on his face (the context is that he thought it was food). The implications of that little vignette left me profoundly disturbed for weeks.
Watching the Aetheric Neuralizer's plasma effects in action. Worst build blog in the history of the universe, but the steampunk gun is spiffy.
[Stevie] I don't think I've specifically avoided SF, and I havea major problem in that I read so little nowadays. I know my son enjoyed "The City & The City", so I'll give Perdido a try. I really ought to get round to registering with the library too. The mobile library's next visit isn't for another 12 days, so it looks like a trip into town is required.
[Stevie] Aha, thanks for making me look up our library. I've found there's one only 6 miles away, and it's open on Saturday mornings. To Pangbourne, me hearties!
(Phil) Pangbourne is town? No answer to that.
[Rosie] Newbury is "town" Pangbourne is half the distance, and has a fish & chip shop, to boot!
The prospect of a long weekend in England; I sail back on Thursday night.That means seeing family and friends, not having to worry about not understanding what's being spoken about, eating familiar and favourite foods, and resting my eyes on familiar landscapes. Bliss.
Keeping my eyes inside my head... (Pen rests eyes on landscapes ... I prefer mine remain in their sockets!)
Witnessing another's earned success Case in point - This little animation makes me smile every time I watch it: katana girl (gif)
[Stevie] I think the Moran blog may be suffering from cybernautic gremlins. You don't seem to be able to comment - comments submit far too quickly, it seems to me, for them to be actually be being transmitted anywhere.
[Simons] Intollerable curbation of free speech! I'll have a look what knobs can be twiddled.
I just did an anonymous test and it worked fine for me other than the capcha being so fiendish it took three refreshes to make it spell something I could figure out. I used the "Anonymous" profile (you have to pick one from a list). There aren't any moderated comments waiting to be let out of the pen.
Watching Jeremy Clarkson say "I've ruined m'car!"
Getting a letter from the bank that refunds, with interest, the £30 that the ATM didn't dispense in June 2008, and that you assumed you'd just absentmindedly walked away without taking.
Contemplating the engineering excellence and sheer zombie-stopping power of my new Hammershot revolver and my Sledgefire shotgun. The Weapon Shops of Nerf are awesome.
First class travel. I have just upgraded from what was going to be four hours standing in the end of a carriage to a luxurious seat and free coffee for a mere £15. Privileged? Sure am.
Truly, it is wonderful to sit up in first class with a complimentary coffee and Wi-Fi and think of those down the other end, below the food car, and say to myself, "I'm posh and they're not."
You'll be drinking in the lounge bar next. As a friend once said to me while we were about to enter the UEA Union Bar: "You get a better class of scum in the lounge bar".

La Famile Stevie got upgraded to 1st class on a trans-Canada flight a couple of years ago. I was so impressed I wrote it up for mi blog.

Non-sensible (e.g. pink-paisley-silver-spike-heeled) shoes.
[cfm] May I ask, without prejudice, if you are a person of the female variety?
[Phil] You cannot ask, and cfm is not required to tell you if you do. Because it's more fun that way.

Firing the Nerf Rapidstrike submachine gun. Top o' the world, ma!

Hidden textAt last, a suitable vehicle with which to express my utter rejection of The Colbert Report and the fucktard who presents it.
Rare-breed pork chops bought from the butcher at home in Lincolnshire last week for dinner tonight in the Netherlands The pork here is shocking, and mostly reared indoors. These tasted soooo good.
[pen] Is it me, or is "rare-breed" pork so ubiquitous that one wonders just how "rare" these breeds are? It might just be a Berkshire thing, to be honest.
"Ahuh! Ahuh! Ahuh huh huh! Bet you can't guess what I'm doing?"
[Geo] Are you singing the second line of The Proclaimers' "I'm on my way"?
Puns. Endless puns. and reading back up the page I'd put a word in for Iain (M) Banks as a SF author worth reading... Also, should it be "an SF author"?
Listening to TMS at work
Hidden textThat's "Test Match Special". The BBC's incomparably excellent radio commentary on England's international cricket matches
[Geo] Not fair! It must give us two guesses! You are doing either:
a) Your Elvis Presley warm-ups prior to opening your Las Vegas drive-thru Chapel of Burnin' Love for the day

or

2) Your Tommy Cooper wind-up to the eggs/tray/water-filled glasses trick.
Discovering that my "Ten Years Without Gnawing A Leg Off" certificate bears the notorious doctored version of the city seal, in which the minuteman depicted on one side seems very pleased indeed to see the indian on the other.
Hidden textEven when honoring me they give me the shaft.
Petrichor
Also, knowing the word for petrichor. :-)
[SM] Excellent, on both counts.
Certain TV show theme tunes. Today's nominee, even though I only ever watched about two shows, is the Dexter Theme Tune. A fun little track, that one.
[Simons Mith] Good one. I'll volley that back with the "Morse" theme. I'm particularly fond of the bit where the French Horns swell up. Into tubas, presumably. But then they'd be French Potatoes I suppose. Musical theory was never my strong suit.
Riding on new bicycle tyres. Mm, pumped up really hard.
I'm not sure how I feel about walking through an antiques fleamarket and thinking, not once but several times, "that's not old, I had one of those!" A box of metal puzzles that I'm sure was exactly the same make and design as one my brother had, a set of mathematical instruments, manual sewing machines just like my aunt's, a metal right-angle just like the one my father made in the army (and which I still have), and of course any number of slide rules.
Being able to point at the giant sliderule hanging next to the canoe and the stuffed Springbok head in a local "casual dining" restaurant and say "I know how to use that to do hard sums".
Doing sums in my head faster than someone else does them with a calculator e.g. deducting VAT.
New windscreen wiper blades
Sitting in a 6th floor office in Rotterdam with a window that faces west over the city towards the Port of Rotterdam and watching the storms coming in from the North Sea only 20 miles away, swallowing the city's skyscrapers as it approaches.
The Alps in summer. The really green bits. With the cowbells. And the wildflowers. Don't care if it is like the Sound of Music.
Serving dinner to hungry teenage boys.
Being able to do simple diy stuff, like today, clearing an airlock in the hot water system; repairing a useful bag with a staple gun; making a jig to remove downlighters without damaging the ceiling.
What!?!?!? No! That cannot go unanswered!

Ripping the living bejaysus out of any recalcitrant home fixture with my mighty Tiger Saw prior to replacing it with one that works.

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