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.
Sitting on the deck of our new house on the first warm evening of the year on the new garden chairs waiting for the fat (but waning) moon to appear over the trees
Lunting my way through Cherry Tree Wood on a fine morning"To lunt" = to walk while smoking a pipe. A long obsolete verb, but I'm determined to bring it back to usage, even if pipe smokers are now rarer than a moment of fun at a Barry Manilow concert. [Rosie]: It has a bed, a very very nice one :-)
Bouncing maniacally through grass as tall as you are, with one's tongue lolling, one's tail swishing furiously, and one's ears flapping about one's head. I hope it's clear I'm posting this on behalf of someone else without internet access.
Having the tax man pay for one's new bathroom and a holiday in the Greek Islands. Well, not literally, but that's about what the unsolicited tax refund I just received amounts to.
(Only recently discovered) Standing stark naked in a field at 2am, having a much-needed pee in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. (Elemental, my dear Watson)
Having next door's cat (called Yoda) come in and plonk itself down in the kitchen as I make breakfast. I mustn't feed it; it's not mine, more's the pity.
Coming home to the new house that's got better views than some of the places we stayed on holiday. The seasonally changing landscape of fields and trees, four new wind turbines in the past two weeks, but no sea view.
The earthy smell and steaming stacks of the sugar factory 3km from the back of our house (and part of our view), which has started up again with the start of the local sugar beet harvest. It'll run until April.
YouTube Fail Videos, especially the ones in which a dog gets the short end of whatever. Cats pushing dogs downstairs, dogs running full-tilt into glass storm doors, dogs being sucked into black holes. That sort of thing.
Sitting in a ball chair. I found one in a flea market, of all places. I've wanted one ever since seeing No.2's chair in "The Prisoner" and discovering it was a real thing, and I was very tempted, but it wouldn't really fit in my house anywhere.
[Raak] Change your house! (I mean rearrange/reorganise the furniture) It can always be changed back if you change your mind. Things can always be bought and sold.
[pen] I also discovered that you cannot read in a ball chair, unless I installed some sort of interior light. Can't really listen to music either without a set of speakers in there as well. But for shutting out the world and relaxing, there's nothing like it.
Sitting in my very own ball chair. As far as I can tell from pictures on the web, this is the exact Eero Aarnio design. I might velcro a battery-powered reading light to the roof.
"I am Number 2." "Who is Number 1?" "You are Number 6." "I am not a number, I am a free man!" **mocking laughter**
Village shops that not only have the cake-shaped Tupperware box that you need this afternoon in stock, but also gift-wrap the tea towels you bought for your sisters.
[Raak] Now all you need is a dial-under-the-base telephone, an Astro-lamp aka Lavalamp, a golfing umbrella, a weather balloon and some fishing line to tie it to your ankle and you are done (I assume you already have a suitable blazer). If I were any more envious of you I'd turn into a seethe. Will you be constructing a pit c/w hydraulic lift so you can rise from the mysterious Stygian depths seated in your magnificent chaise-ballon when greeting "guests"?
[Bismarck] I am planning to mow a fan pattern from one corner of my lawn. I may try to post a picture if it works. This may happen tomorrow, but is more likely to wait a week, as I have quite a tight schedule tomorrow, and the extra faffing about won't make me popular at home.
[Raak] So you work a magnet crane in a scrapyard now? Cool! Third best real person job in the universe. My research shows the following, as judged by reported job satisfaction and the number of people saying "I always wished I could do that" when the subject of what one does for a living comes up in conversation at a party:
Family visits American niece and boyfriend here for three days. Arrived by overnight ferry to Rotterdam from England this morning, we immediately packed them off to Amsterdam on the train, and looking forward to hearing what they made of it over dinner tonight. I'm cooking roast beef and Yorkshire puddings (by special request) obvs.
Discovering more things I can do with my new spectacles without having to constantly wear a second pair on top of my head and keep switching them over, such as seeing all the icons on the SatNav screen at the same time as driving; being able to use the PIN machine at a petrol station without digging around in my handbag for the second pair first; cooking; making use of all the settings on my camera instead of relying on 'P'; shopping and being able to read the labels. More updates to follow.
(pen) Yes, they're - good, varifocals. I've got them but I still need another pair for music because you need to look through the lower part which means the trombone would be pointing up to the sky. When your focusing mechanism really seizes up as it does to everyone over about 55 you'll have to be quite careful about getting the right prescription. Won't cost any more, though.
Bloody useless things. Everything you need to read in the real world turns out to be at "eye level" which means to read whatever it is I either have to tilt my head so far back the wind makes my nostrils resonate or I have to stand so far back that people wander between me and whatever it is.
I persist with two pairs, although I might go progressive some day, and keep my old non-reading glasses for playing cricket, which I imagine would be disastrous in multi-prescription glasses.
Yes, I'm finding the limitations of these progressive lenses already. For being outside taking photos or on my bike, I need a thinner sliver of reading prescription at the bottom, and a deeper stretch of landscape-viewing prescription. And the sides are weird. I can set up lapping waves along the dining table by sitting in the middle spot and tipping my head back and forth. If testing myself for mal de mer was ever something I needed to do, I have the right glasses with which to do it. But they are perfect for supermarkets.
Sending messages from the smartphone by selecting the first word proposed. Needs to be seeded with a couple of words and often ends up in an infinite loop, but there is a certain disquieting quality in it.
Each of the first few sort-of-words uttered by one's grandchild. He said "ready" yesterday, when we were playing the "ready, steady, sit down" game I invented.Hidden textAnd yes, I have surreptitiously trained my grandson to sit on command :)
Diff'rent strokes, as they say. I hate hot floors. My fave is walking across a cold stone floor on a hot day... ahhhhh. My feet are definitely heat sinks.
Dressing up like my character in the Deadlands:Reloaded weird west game I'm involved in. The GM turned up in cowboy drag too yesterday. I am an inspiration to the younger generation.
I should hasten to add I only do this on those days we actually play the game, and I confine my wild west RPG cosplay to those regions that can be seen when I sit at the table. The lower Steviebod is clad in my usual pink tutu, black vinyl hotpants and rubber waders.
The prosect of once more having muddy boots when I work on enhancing my expertise of fruit tree pruning and Dutch fruit tree vocabulary, next Saturday morning, and the next four Saturday mornings after that.
[pen] Were it not that you liked it, one might assume that you would claim "Penelope's exemption," whereby expat Penelopes may claim they work and enjoy the rewards, but actually do nowt. Mme Fillon being the current example.
[Bismarck] If you knew me, you'd know how untrue that was. I have a full-time university job, plus volunteering for the Netherlands' natural and historical heritage. We penelopes despise Mme Fillon and her pretence of working that brings the penelopes of this world into disrepute. (And I can actually write articles that get printed, unlike her)
A snowy landscape outside the living room windows, and a whole Sunday of baking and cooking - the in-laws and nieces are coming this afternoon. Carrot cake, cherry tarts, a big shepherd's pie, and baked stuffed apples.
Listening to my recently acquired "best of The Mutton Birds" CD. Jeepers, I wish I'd found these buggers years ago. Poppy tunes that cradle some of the best song-stories I've ever heard. I have no idea what "White Valiant" is about but it scares the living snot out of me every time I hear it.
And following [Bismarck], despite having to take the counter-intuitive long way onto the Rotterdam ring road (driving first in the wrong direction) in order to get home tonight because of jams, the route goes past a storks' nest with brooding storks on it.
Driving to and from work while the schools are on holiday. The town I have to drive through is like a ghost town at the moment whereas it is normally a 10mph crawl.
Hotel wi-fi that works like it should. No password, no stupid web proxy in the way, no signing up. My laptop sees the wi-fi and connects, the same as at home. And a sensible amount of bandwidth too.
The end of roadworks on the motorway bridge at the beginning of my drive to work every morning, and at the end of my drive home A chunk of metal from the bit of the bridge that lifts to let tall ships through came off two weeks ago, and they've been trying to fix it ever since. In the meantime, the 70km/h speed limit causes tailbacks at peak hours. My detour to avoid standing traffic is very pleasant - through the lanes and villages to join the motorway again 4 junctions up - especially at this time of year, but it doesn't put me in the mood for coming to work. I have three weeks off from 24 July... The end of roadworks hasn't happened yet but it will be sooo good when it does.
Sausages? Why didn't you say so before?! What kind of sausages though? I have just imported 3kg of best Lincolnshire sausages into the Netherlands after our stay there last week. I feel as rich as Croesus with a freezer full of sausages. In fact, I'm loathe to eat them. Hmmph.
The re-opening of Streatley Hill after 6 weeks of mending a chimney (damaged by a lorry), eliminating 16 miles from my daily drive, and meaning I can get to the Tesco Express that opened the other side of it about 4 weeks ago in about 8 minutes instead of 18.
The pleasure gained from caring for and learning from my youngest granddaughter and then sending her home after a very exhausting day. To explain: My own children's childhood, apart from weekends (not many), I more or less missed. That was due to work hours, sometimes days at a time, plus my involvement in a number of local volunteer organisations as Treasurer/Secretary/President/Dogsbody.
