w/e 2024-03-31
I enjoy Dan’s weeknote videos. I find it oddly relaxing to hear him describe what he’s been up to and what he plans to do, and doubly so for his end of 2024 Quarter 1 quarternote, because I admire both the recording of how he’s spent the past quarter and the planning of what he’ll do for the next. Even if it never works out exactly as planned, I like the idea that one could be as organised and get stuff done.
§ When foreigners, usually Americans, comment on how much it rains in Britain I used to tell them it’s not that bad, don’t be silly, why do you only eat burgers? I must now apologise to the New Worlders, because it does rain that much, having hardly stopped for months.
Since we got a second car we’ve had to park one in a usually-unused bit space which wasn’t fully paved. Which meant that, because Britain, we had increasingly deep and muddy ruts through the grass to get to the brick paving.
So we’ve had that side of the drive extended for a surprisingly large amount of money. I mean, I had no idea what this kind of thing costs; it seems a surprising amount to me. They called this week to say they could come next day and do it, presumably suddenly finding themselves with a spare day or two before Easter.
We went out for lunch and came back to find five guys, and a surprising amount of vehicles, had almost finishing laying 20m2 or so of brick paving.
At our request they left a surprising amount of dug-up earth for us to use elsewhere in the garden. Consequently I’ve spent much of this Easter weekend shoveling dirt. I’m digging through this heap of damp, clay-y earth, extracting the lumps of turf buried within as if they’re the last examples of living plantlife buried by an earthquake. And moving everything, one hard-earned wheelbarrow at a time. So far I’ve filled 30 wheelbarrows with this heavy claggy stuff and wheeled it to the other end of the garden. Maybe 10 more to go.
I’m quite tired.
§ A Mastodon post from earlier in the week:
In the car, in the rain, waiting at the traffic lights.
‘This Is The Day’ by The The shuffles on.
“Maybe this *is* the day I start feeling happier,” I think, as usual.
The lights change.
I pull the gear stick off.
“F…”
I was in “Drive” so tried not to panic and kept going until I found a quiet street on which I could stop. I could feel that, inside the skirt thing, the knob was no longer attached to the shaft. I managed to sort of put it back on enough to use, although it still felt loose, and got home.
Thankfully, the Internet. A couple of (probably) guys showed me that below the knob, under the skirt, was a thing you could turn that locked it back onto the shaft and now it’s fine.
You don’t get that kind of panic as a public transport passenger.
§ We finished watching Netflix’s 3 Body Problem this week. I couldn’t even remember if I’d read the book (I had), never mind what happened, so I cared even less than usual how faithful an adaptation this was.
The good things: I really enjoyed the first couple of episodes and was gripped. It was impressive how they created some of the ideas and events I’d have imagined as being almost impossible (even if it was sometimes excessively gruesome). Benedict Wong was excellent and I really want to see him as an investigator, as the lead of his own show, maybe still with Liam Cunningham as his boss (I saw someone suggest a kind of X-Files show, which, yes).
The bad things: I did not believe any of those people were scientists – I find it weird how so much effort goes into creating amazing visuals of all kinds, only to saddle the show with unconvincing characters and dialogue. And the whole thing became gradually less and less interesting, and slower and slower, until the final episode when I couldn’t wait for it to end.
§ My only Q2 plan is to do less digging.