Off the Cliff

When the weather page says 90% chance of rain at 4 p.m. one should not look at the placid grey sky and the dry sidewalk, think Guess they're wrong, and trundle over to Fiesta for crackers. Because the heavens opened as I came out and everything got soaked. That was yesterday. Today was sun and bulgogi at my tony Korean restaurant, which was twice as much rice as I wanted. I did finally ask for a fork, so if I go back I needn't worry too much because now they know. But I still spill stuff. Age sucks.

Won't talk about the piggery I indulged in over Easter which means I won't be weighing myself any time soon. But the Pour Boy restaurant sent me some elegant and manageable chopsticks with that pad thai on Sunday and I may keep them for use elsewhere.

And my tax return was delivered to the accountants in good order so I may assume it was filed in good order, though the Easter disruptions mean they haven't even cashed my cheque yet. They will, Oscar, they will.

An interlude of Fool's Spring saw temps soar to near 20/68 yesterday and stick to 15/ 60 sorta, overnight. My house holds cold as it holds heat when either gets in so I went to bed bundled in wool and feathers, and then sweated in the wee hours as, I presume, the heat got in. But today, though grey, was also blowy so I wore a jacket out when I went up to get more wine. At least it wasn't as spring-stinky as yesterday, so I limped down to the Essex school advance poll. This involves passing Fiesta Farms whence the local playwright had just been braving the Only Day This Weekend To Shop!!!! crowds. 'It's like a cocktail party in there,' she groaned. It was like a cocktail party outside as well, people shmoozing all over the sidewalk while parked on their rollators smack dab in the middle. 

However, once past those sidewalk blocks, the polling station was pretty empty and colour-coded as to substations, which is an excellent idea. Pollster thanked me for having my ID ready and this time I remembered to lower my mask so they could check same. Anyway, that's done. 

Temps will drop to 4C/ 39F tonight. Should do a wash and hang in the furnace room because I will need the heat on tonight. Or perhaps not: the warmth has got into the house and won't leave unless the right wind blows from the right direction.

Purolator succeeds in delivering me my tax return in a timely fashion and I succeed, I hope, in Fedexing it to Scarberia-- on a blowy chilly Novemberish afternoon--  so accountant can submit online and I can get my hefty refund in a timeliesh fashion as well. (Should you be wondering, the French for Misdirected is Malacheminé.) Not a patch on the people who file in February(!) but they, I assume, have only their work income to declare. And then I can reapply for the dental program which I profoundly hope will be still around after the election. Someone on a local forum was complaining that the advance polls were all happening on the Easter weekend. Diddums. It's not like Easter is one of the High Holidays that requires 24 hour attendance-- and even if it were, there's like four whole days and what's so special about Saturday or Monday, I ask me. Granted, Monday is a school holiday in lieu of Sunday, is how the advance poll can operate out of a school, but so, bring your kids with you.

SND put her garbage out early so I assumed she was off visiting family out west, but I just heard Oliver barking in the back yard.  So maybe she is and he's with a sitter. But I saw him doing zoomies about his yard late last night; crap, what's that thing darting about in J's yard?? (Is raccoon and coyote mating season, so yanno, worry.) But was just Ollie getting his energy out.

I've put out a full recycle bin because two weeks ago snowed, as well as what I've been intending to do for a while: half a bag of indifferent BL manga. Many more bags to go. Downsizing is not fun.

Reading this week was Murderbot 2&3 which apparently I bought in kindle. Probably the perennial Inspector Littlejohn, and the seemingly perennial High Vaultage which nears its end, fortunately. Then can start on the last Paarfi of which I have no expectations at all.

Accountant's minion emails me Saturday that my return is ready and I can pick it up in outer Scarberia at my convenience. I email her back that I'm near as dammit housebound-- only a slight exaggeration-- and can she courier it down to me, and she says Sure.  So now is to wait its arrival. I have a Fedex sticker on the door which I believe obviates the need for a signature, but I'd still be happier if I was in when it arrived. Porch pirates have been sighted in the neighbouring side streets. Is supposed to rain tomorrow, so I can stay in, but I have physio on Tuesday.

Found that I bought Artificial Condition from kindle at some point so I reread that, because High Vaultage is slooow. Must get myself the Kobo app so I can buy stuff from them. But not soon because in addition to those tops, I bought the latest Points in dead tree from Indigo. This after buying it in e-form from the press, which said they wouldn't ship books to Canada. But it reads all wrong in ebook, so I suppose I'm glad to have it in a congenial format. However that and my cell phone exhausts the discretionary spending limit on my card. If I'm getting a refund on my taxes then I shall buy Murderbot 3 and all the Ferrars that Kobo has and Kindle doesn't; but if not, then it's belt-tightening time. Trump's flip-flops make it a bad idea to take money from my portfolio any time soon.

Yesterday rained and then snowed, flurries and snow showers that fortunately didn't stick. Today just rained, and probably blew as well in its April fashion, so I stayed in and read. Knees hurt, especially the operated one, which may be tendons not liking the weather or fallout still from banging it however many weeks ago. Cooked up the chicken carcasses yesterday and made chicken and rice soup with them today. Even with rice, soup doesn't fill me up, but too bad. 

Really want wine and really shouldn't have it, since sinuses are doing their April allergy thing. 

I had a long entry written about the chicken I was cooking last night- an Ina Garten recipe, the one with lemon and thyme in the chicken cavity on a bed of veggies, which does make the house smell marvellous. But then my tablet turned itself off and on again and of course DW's auto-save doesn't. So I went and compiled that 100 Influential Books meme, cudgelling brains for things from childhood and adolescence and forgetting obvious ones like Tolkien and The Three Musketeers. And then my tablet ran out of battery so I didn't post it anywhere.

As for the chook recipe,  note that no, do not cut the veg large because the carrots and potatoes and even some of the parsnips will not be done, not if you have a scant four pound bird that cooks for only an hour. Maybe a larger bird would work, but Happy Hen chickens cost so I got the smallest size. (Happy Hen aka Rowe Farms also does rotisserie, somehow larger bird for less money, but home-cooked is better.) And whatever my meat thermometer said about done-ness at the thigh, the breast today looked raw, so I gave it another half hour. Also no, there is no gravy to be had either: juices all go into the veg, which I don't mind but won't work if I ever cook this for someone else.

Today did not rain, for a change, so I took a library book back just for the walk, and as well I did, because my branch will be closed Wednesday and Thursday so they can finally fix the sliding doors that stopped sliding yonks ago. Bits of greenery start to spring up in the neighbourhood yards and someone down Barton has a whole yard of snowdrops, hidden by their evergreen fence. Had vague thoughts of raking some of last year's leaves out of the median strip between me and NND so our own shy buds have room to come up, but I believe you're supposed to leave the ground cover in place for the insects-is-it? to do their thing. And anyway, they're saying snow again this week.

Usual first of the month grow-up ie weigh one kilo more than a week ago and no idea why, unless it's not drinking enough water and drinking too much wine.

George Bellairs is all fine and good and easy to read on the phone, and the library has a lot of him, but either the man was a flat-out misanthrope or else it's that odd English middle-class thing of sneering at what the middle-class defines as The Vulgar, which somehow is never found in the true upper classes, I-wonder-why. We won't even start on physiognomy is destiny and ugly features as inevitable indication of ugly- or vulgar- natures. And what the hell is a fine brow or a good chin anyway? aside from indicating that their owner is not one of The (vulgar) Masses.

More rain tomorrow plus high winds so have cancelled physio. OTOH Fedex did deliver my tax stuff in good time so I can cross off that particular worry.

Peak couch potatodom achieved. Rain all day but downtown microclimate seems to have preserved us from the freezing rain. My weather app is set to Midtown and said ice, but I belatedly remembered that Midtown is probably a good deal north of me ie up the hill where the weather changes so that when I have rain, my sister at Davisville snows. Did put on boots and hooded winter jacket to check if the shiny pavement was slippery or just wet, and objective test said wet, so now I am back on the sofa with Amongst Our Weapons (and the slow-moving Mexican Gothic and the antsy for no good reason The Art of Vanishing, neither of which I much want to read.) Rain has made joints ache so I have accomplished nothing all day bar cooking up the thawed chicken breasts for salad tomorrow. And the tarragon I got from Loblaws was off, so even that was a bit of a failure.

(How can tarragon be off? No idea, but it smells moldy. Loblaws is not to be trusted but Fiesta didn't have any.)

Returning from my jaunt down to the library and then to Sushi on Bloor-- which now has drinkable wine and a very nice waitstaff who helped me out of the restaurant's double doors-- I watched a garbage truck roll up the street and stop. Oddly, because pick-up was at 9:30 this morning. But this was mattress pick-up: guy lets down the back, takes what I would call a marlinspike or possibly a billhook, not that I've ever seen either, hooks it into mattress and hooks mattress up into the back of the truck.  Repeat two or three times (while the fourth car waiting behind him honks in that witless and arrogant Torontonian driver fashion: if you don't know when garbage days are, buddy, stay off the streets) then off we go. Enlightening, but I wonder at the specialisation. When do they pick up other furniture?

The quondem New Generation storefront is now a vegan sushi place that was on the other side of the street. I have absolutely no idea what a vegan sushi place can possibly serve, let alone how it stays in business, let alone how it moves into a spot that closed because the rent was too high. Can only think it's a money laundering outfit.

Otherwise have stocked up on wine to wait out the rainy next four days. Have also stocked up on masses of root veg because the ginger stew I made with same before turned out to be most tasty when it had time to age.

Another crise de conscience. My preferred organic breakfast cereal is made in Canada but with American products. Do I support the Canadian company but also the American farmers? Because there doesn't seem to be any wholly Canadian cereals available (odd) except for oats. So maybe it's back to the overnight oats for me. (There are cereals from England available but they seem to be sugar-heavy. Mostly granola.)

However I got myself over to Bathurst in spite of the winds of spring that made climbing the broken curbing at Dupont a dicey proposition, and John's Shoe Repair can indeed resole New Balances, even if John himself can't be arsed to help a customer wrestling with his door, a walker, and the winds of spring. So will get shoes resoled but not any time soon. Especially since we've been snowing and sleeting yesterday and today and have a freezing rain warning for the weekend.

Laundromat was achieved so now I have underwear, or will when they finish drying. Hanging on the drying frame which is hanging from the living room chandelier, because I still don't trust me on the basement stairs. Also have face cloths and hand towels because I snagged a dryer before the guy with a good six bags of laundry could grab them all. No, I'm being unkind. He only used four dryers and there was no one else there.

Recurring nightmare last night, only this time the person I cut open and dumped into a non-existent pond was my father. Woke from that, was having nothing to do with the 6 a.m. aftertaste so went back to sleep and dreamed something pleasanter which I have now forgotten. Was still logey when I got up and had infinite trouble with the day's Squaredle. Could be allergies starting, I suppose. 

Being in a funk because of All That, I bought a litre and a half of white wine yesterday, and have gone back to 40 minute sessions with the bike machine. I think the exercise is probably more efficacious than the wine, and if allergies really are starting, I should keep the wine for cooking with.

Got downstairs yesterday before breakfast to weigh myself because I was afraid my bagel and butter habit of the last week plus not moving much on my twinging leg would have had deleterious effects. Mind, the aging metabolism doesn't usually register these things for ten days, but still. In the event, am exactly the weight I was last week. So I'm not gaining, or at least not yet.

Got out to the store yesterday in between thunder showers and shower showers. Missed a chunk of Fidelio on the CBC thereby and when I came back they were playing something else, very oompapapa.  Except that was the end of Fidelio.  No idea how they stretched a two act opera into three hours: must have been a long intermission with talking heads. And since the voices of the CBC's male talking heads annoy me in their lack of mellifluousness, just as well I missed it. Mind, I'm impossible to please, because the extreme mellifluousness of Classic FM's female announcers irks me even more, and yes, Marilyn Lightstone, I am looking at you. 

Stayed in today because there was no break in the rain until too late for a Sunday shop.  Beaver on through False Value which is bearable-ish once you get past the split nareative chapters, and don't try to unravel the relentless Douglas Adams' references, which in my case I have not read, and for a break read Abigail, which is far more entertaining.

Sigh. Five years of pandemic. Do wonder if I've ever caught it and that's why I keep shedding like a sheepdog. And can't find lint rollers anywhere to remove it from my dark clothes.

Must have been Tuesday that I called the dentist's secretary to straighten out the confusion over my receipt. She had no idea how I came to have a receipt for $13,000+ either. But the correct one came in the mail today, so that's one thing off my list. I might even get my forms to the accountant before April, first time ever.

Read somewhere the account of a guy who was in a coma or anyway unconscious for a spell and in that time lived a life in minute detail with a girlfriend whom he married and had kids with: and then woke up to find that his very real life didn't exist. Not that bad for me, but in my two hour sleep-in this morning I dreamed a whole affair with this guy from when we started dating to when I broke off with him because, basically, I really didn't know how to have a relationship with someone and especially not this guy. Who had gone and rented an apartment for us without asking if I wanted to move in with him. Which I explained to my mother was what's called a red flag. This was at a pseudo-Bedford but much larger and fancier with my family still living there. No wonder I didn't want to move into an apartment.

Hydro bill also comes in, with a minus amount. Fine, that's a good fifty dollars saved. And then run across a FB ad for a Muslim food bank which, like all food banks in this burg, is running out of supplies, with the added wrinkle of halal and Ramadan. So send them the money saved on overpaying my electricity last month. Goes around, comes around.

I have no objection to DST, especially not now that I don't have to deal with confused tinies whose nap and feeding schedules are off whack. Would infinitely prefer to be on it permanently but for no good reason we need Quebec and New York state's agreement. But not Manitoba's? And howcum Saskatchewan stays on standard year round with no fallout from its neighbours east, west, south, and north?

Massage and acupuncture eases the spasming midback for a bit at least, so I went and had coffee at Loblaws and watched snowflakes whirl about from the splendid grey March sky. Am at an age when rationally I know I may not see this particuar topos again, if not quite like those Zen masters who turned their teacups over at night because there was never any guarantee they'd wake up in the morning. So I carp the diem and enjoy one of my favourite sights while ignoring the flip-flops of the Orange One doing Will I won't I, will I won't I, will I won't I, impose those auto tariffs. And do not buy parsnips for that ginger chicken soup recipe I found because Blawblaws parsnips are from the U.S. Do buy wine because frankly I miss it.

Come home to my gas bill which have been dreading because February was cold, dammit, and had been steeling myself for something north of $300, since February is also an estimated month. Actual damage was half of that, most pleasantly. Still overpaid because March is looking to be winter still,  but the extra hundred can go to the luxury of more acupuncture and massage in a fortnight.

Because March is being March ie freezing rain tomorrow and rainfall warning on Wednesday, I got myself to the laundromat for probably the first time this year with a load of towels and hoodies.  Half the dryers are out of order-- always something there-- but I was early by my standards and managed to get everything washed and dried in good order. Am now home with filling sinuses. The warmth of last week didn't bother me as much as now, so I suppose last week brought the tree buds out. Or maybe it's the weather system moving in. This is not a happy time of year.

I think my acupuncturist hit a nerve she wasn't supposed to, or sent a muscle into spasm, or something. Front of the hip joint is very unhappy. Hope it unspasms before I have to get out to vote tomorrow. Ah well. Reflex has got the better of me, and what will be, will be. Bridges, cross, when I come to them.

Looked up how much water I should be drinking. Two and a half litres! Um, no, not likely. I may get through one litre of water and half of other things, but no way I can add an extra litre without adding more food.

Being in a funk all week, all I finished was System Collapse, a weary slog to have it done. Should slog on through Ruin of Angels as well but I still resent having to read that in paperback.

The Graun has a series of articles on people's petty peeves. Discovered one of mine today: people at checkout who stand gazing dumbly at the register screen, or into space, while the cashier tots up their purchases and the purchases pile up at the end of the belt, and then pay for them, *and only then* start to bag their junk. No, we do not have baggers: you do it yourself, hopefully with the bags you've brought,  and if you have no bags you ask for them first so you have something to put your junk into. Any true Torontonian starts bagging the minute the first item is scanned because true Torontonians are always in a hurry. And no point in suggesting we take things more slowly because the cashiers themselves aren't allowed to, and if customers are leisurely, you'll have a huge pile of stuff at the end of the counter and shopping carts blocking the way out. As has happened to me more than once because some people won 't even move their carts out of the way.

Ventured out again today with ice chopper in the basket of my walker, to see what the street was like south of me. Impassable was what it was, because the Mad Italian Nonno and his neighbour didn't shovel at all in the last week, and cars clearly ran up on the sidewalk leaving great snow ruts. In spite of soaring temps (6C/ 40 something F) the slush was beyond my ability to move,  and the underlying ice was still immovable. Thus no trip to Fiesta for me yet. So I turned around and went north where someone had removed the slush ponds of yesterday and the sidewalk was clear to Dupont. Except of course there was a literal pond at the corner on one side and the usual narrow footprint walkway between snow berms on the other side. Solved this by using the driveways just to the south of Dupont and avoided the corners entirely. There are emergency no parking cones between Yarmouth and Dupont so evidently the city intends to clear that block at least.

Equally the view along Yarmouth shows it clear for at least the first block, so I'm guessing I'll be able to get over to the polling station on Thursday, which is a relief. Getting to a car or taxi over the ice and slush still remaining on my side of the street would not be easy even with this week's continued above freezing temps. 

Ran into Mrs. Islamic Studies on my way home, returning disgruntled from the subway station which is awash with snowmelt and cars roaring up Christie and spraying pedestrians with same. She opines that DoFo called the election early because he expects Poilievre to be elected federally in the summer (absit omen) and knows that if the FedGov is Conservative, Ontario will at once boot him out. He's leading in the polls because he's the strongman who (paid $85,000 to secure an interview with Donald Trump Jr.) (is the only one who can stand up to the big bad president and protect Canada) (TYP). I always hope polls are wrong because they call people on landlines and only the aged have those, but I'm afraid the rest of the province thinks the PCs are just the bee's knees and wouldn't vote Liberal, let alone NDP. And there's the National Post, owned by Americans, saying Trudeau can't stand up to Trump but of course Ford will. Yeah, sure. Nobody can stand up to Trump, guys.

Grocery delivery delivered, even if he passed my house looking for a parking spot and disappeared around the corner, and also gave me one wrong bag. Fortunately he'd called me on the cell so I had a number to call back and make the switch. Don't know if the guy who delivers is the guy who shops, but anyway it all got sorted and he was nice about me calling him twice (first time to say Uhh you just passed me are you coming back? Living at a confusible number has made me paranoid.) Granted, with the tip I gave him, he probably felt obliged.

The temps may be in the minuses C but spring is coming, because I'm starting to cough. We'll get above freezing next week, meaning slush everywhere. Still not sure how I'm getting out to vote on Thursday though the NDP has offered me a ride, but as ever, garbage day and snow berms. But maybe the plows will have cleared some of that by then? People are grousing about the slow pace of the cleanup, caused by the city under Tory the Tory having contracted out its snow clearing to a private company at 1.5 billion a pop, that has had diddleysquat to do the last two years. If you're going to make a few people rich, you can at least make them efficient.

There are snow berms a metre high between the cars on my side of the road, and higher on the other side where the plow dumped them. Am clearly not going anywhere for a while so I put in a grocery delivery for Friday, and hope the guy finds somewhere to put his van.

Election is a week Thursday. Frankly wonder if I'll even be able to get out to vote. Guy came round today from the NDP with the addresses of the advanced polls, none even close. Even they don't know where the actual polls are because DoFo is sitting on that information. And if the flyers don't make it into the mail in time, or rather, if they don't get delivered in time, we'll be looking at the lowest turnout in history. 

So we may get another 20-30 cm/ 8-12 inches of snow on Sunday. Thus, no help for it, I manhandled the walker through and over the snow drifts, snow plow berms, and simple 'can't be arsed to touch the stuff' packed snow to Fiesta to stock up for the next week. And forgot to get the ibuprofen I'm running low on, of course. Am not supposed to take ibuprofen anyway but there's times I really need it. Like when I'm chopping next door's snow bank to clear a path up the street. Why does my back hate me so much?

The Baptists for a wonder had shovelled their half of the block and a snowplow had done Christie, so half the walk was doable if I folded the walker. The alleyway was of course impassable and the lower half of my block very intermittent. In the event, half the time I walked in the street. Drivers hate people doing this, of course, especially when there isn't room to step out of their way. I mean I did, but they didn't believe they had room to pass me. Well, if you will drive big ass SUVs, guy, you will find things a touch narrow.

Luckily Prof Islamic Studies and Mrs have rented a car which they parked on the street and carefully cleaned off this morning. Not sure where they put the snow, but it left the level low enough that I could get the walker over it, or through it, even with my groceries in the basket. And now to hole up and hope for no outages.

If I want to get my steps and heart  points in, I need only wear my blue coat, the one with the deep pockets that keeps my phone somewhere in the area of my upper thigh. Thus I register over 9,000 steps and 30 heart points. Didn't feel like I walked all *that* much, but up to Loblaws to find them out of road salt and down to Fiesta which had plenty of same (and a 5'1 cashier who insisted on getting it down from the high shelf for me: the cashiers usually expect you to get it yourself and she wouldn't listen to my 'no I can get it.' And I could have if the slow moving woman ahead of me had started bagging her stuff as it was run through, as any good Torontonian would. But no, she had to look at the cash register screen as if it would tell her anything new, and then pay for it, and then bag it, while blocking my access to the shelf with the salt on it. Of course Fiesta should really put its salt on the near side of the registers because this is a chronic problem.)

And then I went over to the bank of Montreal at Bathurst and Bloor to deposit my bribe in case I can't get there anytime soon. Came home, rested, considered weather forecast and went back to Loblaws to get gift cards for my physio and the front desk at the clinic. One is supposed to boycott Starbucks but occasionally it's the only game in town, and coffee is a necessity when you have a desk job.

We're having an election in a little over two weeks. The custom since time immemorial is to send cards out to the voters with a list of early polling stations and location on the day itself, and I registered that I hadn't received mine. Which is because the province has sent out flyers requiring you to confirm your identity via, wait for it, a QR code. And if you lack a smart phone? SOL. And half if me is incensed by this (because finding info on the advance poll is an utter faff) and half considers that my cohort is apt to vote Conservative and the fewer of those who do that, the better. And since you need a computer, computer skills, and infinite patience to prise the information from the gov't, even if you bypass the QR code, I imagine a number of votes will be lost.

Either my Good Neighbour or a bobcat shovelled the 4 in/ 10 cm of snow from my sidewalk last night. Or maybe both, because bobcats don't clear steps and someone did mine. Or maybe a Very Good Neighbour because I could see in the distance, down the block, the occasional area of white which a bobcat should have taken care of. Whatever, I didn't go out today except briefly to clear my slightly snowed over front path and to remove the snow mounds from the garbage bins against Thursday's pickup. Forecast says flurries all week, which may mean occasional flakes tumbling from the sky like today, or may mean another 4 cm.

Didn't go out yesterday either because I was listening to Der Fliegende Hollander, oddly enough since I have little use for Wagner. But wiki tells me this is an early work and hence not as discordant as the Ring. Still a bit, umm, oompapapa for my tastes, but then I have no taste. And then it was 4 o'clock and thinking about snow, so I made devilled eggs instead of going out. Note that devilled eggs made with Kewpie mayonnaise are the bomb and also extremely indigestible.

Have also been micro-cleaning, given the intransigent spasming of my hip flexors that nothing will unkink. So yesterday I vacuumed the living room and hallway, and today I mopped the accessible portion of the front hall and lick and promised the stairs. But also finally got the screws put into the dirt devil to fasten the canister holder to the stem. And if you want bad design, this was it. The socket for the screws is right beside the long stem, meaning no room for your hand to turn the screw. Thus you turn from the outside a quarter turn, then move back for another quarter turn, then move back etc etc. And it's extremely tight and not at all doable by anyone lacking the upper body strength of a young male. But it's done, only now I need some young male to loosen the filter holder for me because that one's frankly impossible.

Shall note that there's a bloody big Conservative election sign four doors up at the house that sat on the market for months and months because no one is buying. I believe someone finally did but this is the first evidence of life I've seen, from someone who has no idea what kind of neighbourhood they've moved into. The polls all say DoFo is leading. Which would be disheartening except for my belief that feds are always the opposite of Ontario so Polievre the Trump toady will stay out of power. But these are the end times and maybe that bit of common wisdom won't hold anymore.

Was going to make hamburger stroganoff but by the time I'd sweated the onions, added the ginger and mushrooms, thawed and chopped and added the frozen veg and broccoli, I wasn't up for cooking noodles. So I just had a good semi-keto bowl with a dollop of Greek yoghurt. And very good it was, though low carb always leaves me feeling hungry.

My 200 buck bribe came in the mail and my gas bill came in e-mail, and the equivalent of the former was spent on the latter. Actual bill was for less than that but one needs to have a surplus on account because next bill is an estimation month, not a meter reading one. I used twice as much heat in January '25 as in '24, but it's been twice as cold and looking to stay that way.

Some day I'll get my organics out but the green bin is frozen shut at the moment. Tomorrow is supposed to get above freezing but unless the pickup is in the afternoon it may have to wait till next week.

Books finished?

Night Watch. Popularly considered Pratchett's best, but not really a favourite of mine. Prefer Thud or Feet of Clay, or even Making Money.

A couple of Miss Silvers: The Chinese Shawl and Miss Silver Deals with Death. A Lorac: Death of an Author. A skimmed Golden Age, Charles Kingston's Murder in Piccadilly, which dragged.

Reading now?

Another Martin Edwards compiled selection of short stories, Continental Crimes, and yet another Miss Silver.

Next up?

Who knows. Probably more mindless detective novels.

I briefly considered doing a dry February. I have now thought better of it.