Author: Zogman

The rain came back – 15 November 2022

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We had two days of glorious sunshine. It was inevitable the rain would return.

It was a “chucking it down” kind of rain. Straight down, no messing rain that wasn’t going off any time soon. In fact it stayed with us until about 4 o’clock.

Scamp was out for coffee with Annette this morning. I was staying in, not just because it was raining, but also because Mr Bezos was sending me a shiny new SSD, yes, another one. This one will be a swapping drive to allow me to make a running copy of my Big Sur operating system, built using the latest method. It looks and feels faster than the first build I made. Also it was half price as Amazon have now extended Black Friday to November. I’d been sent an email to say that it would be delivered today before 9pm. Not a very exact time slot, but Mr Bezos is a busy man! It arrived just after 6pm.

Left to my own devices, I decided it was time to pick all the remaining chilli peppers and prune the plant back a bit. ‘Experts’ opinions vary on how fierce that prune should be. Some say cut about 25% from the bush. Others say cut it right back to the ground, it will regrow next year. I chose the middle ground and cut off about 50% of the green stuff after I’d removed all the ‘fruit’. I was being careful to work around the nettle that has taken root in the pot. The sting I got from it the last time I was removing chillies took a couple of days to go away. It’s done now and I think it looks a lot healthier after its trim. We’ll wait and see if it needs another chop.

The next thing to do was to phone the plumber to come and fix the kitchen tap. He’s promised to come on Friday morning. We’ll wait and hope that he’ll know how to fix it, or just replace it, whichever is easiest … and cheapest!

Lunch today was soup. It’s a long lasting soup that one, and there’s even a splash or two left for tomorrow. With that done I took a walk over to the butcher’s in Condorrat in the rain and on the way back got today’s PoD. It probably looks faked, but the only fakery in it is the removal of a couple of street lights that were spoiling the view. That misty spray from the cars on the motorway and the colour are just as it came out of the camera. It’s the low sun pushing its way through the clouds that colours the spray to the sepia hue. That’s why they call it the hour just before sunset, ‘The Golden Hour’.

I got another couple of photos in St Mo’s, because the clouds lifted, the rain stopped and the sun shone for about half an hour before it dipped back into the clouds again.

We heard from Neil that his check-up today went well with nothing untoward to report. Photo looks good Neil. They haven’t spoiled your good looks with the ’Nose Job!’ 😉. Nurse Hazy must be working hard.

Tomorrow looks like the best day of the week, but we’ll be staying at home waiting for Scamp’s new dance trainers. Hope they come before 9pm!

Off to see the big horses – 14 November 2022

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Today we were heading to Falkirk to get a pair of trainers.

We went to Falkirk today, looking for a pair of dance trainers for Scamp. She only spent about fifteen minutes in the shop because they didn’t have her size, but at least she got to see them and find out if they were what she was looking for. Afterwards we went to Morrisons, basically to see if they had the Neapolitan ice cream wafers, but they didn’t. They did have bread and milk and chocolate button ice cream cones, so we didn’t come home empty handed. We had lunch there, but the place looked like a tip. Food left all over a table and on the floor beneath. One cleaner came to wipe down the table and take away some of the rubbish, but despite her calling on the tannoy for help, nobody came. I don’t think I’d go back to Morrisons cafe. If that is the state of the tables in the cafe, what is the kitchen like?

Afterwards we drove down to the Kelpies and they were looking really grand in the afternoon light. They always bring a smile to our faces. I got a few shots of the beasts from a slightly different angle that avoids the pylons and the power lines. Light was really lovely with just a hint of haze beginning to gather in the distant hollows. One of those photos made PoD. I watched a group of folk flying a drone and posing for photos with it. Photos you couldn’t take any other way. I hope the shots turned out. I’d like to play with a drone, but I doubt if I’d be happy with the quality of photos it would produce.

I think today was the last day of sunshine for a while. Tomorrow looks wet and it remains changeable for the remainder of the week.

Scamp didn’t get the trainers in the shop, but she did order them from Amazon tonight, for delivery tomorrow.

No plans for tomorrow, although I’m hoping for a dry hour some time in the daylight hours. Just a little window to take some photos. Scamp is off for coffee with Annette.

Another sunny day – 13 November 2022

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Just a relaxing Sunday for us please. No driving and maybe a walk in the sunshine for a change.

For the most part, that’s how it worked out too. There was no point in going out too early for photos because the sun is in the wrong position for the effect I was hoping for. All I needed was no clouds in the sky around 3pm. I’d a few things to do, including writing yesterday’s blog post and also posting yesterday’s PoD. That’s what happens when you’re getting home after 11pm.

After lunch, and with the blog posted and the photos in Flickr, I decided I’d go for a walk in St Mo’s where there might just be PoD’s to be picked up. Scamp was off to the shops for milk and bread.

I had to wait a while to get the light I was looking for, but eventually it came to me and I took another chance with a shot into the sun. It worked and the evidence is at the top of the page. A fair bit of post processing was needed, but that’s sometimes the way of things.

Spoke to Jamie and found out that he’s all on his lonesome this week. Even Vixen is off living the life of luxury in kennels.

That was about it for our lazy Sunday. Weather doesn’t look so good for tomorrow.

Dancin’ and Singin’ – 12 November 2022

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As usual on a Saturday we were off to Brookfield for dance class.

Very small class today only four couples and one single woman. Apart from the single woman, they all have nicknames, none of them particularly complementary and none of them will be used here!

First dance was a Melody Foxtrot which did have a musical Melody attached, but no discernible Foxtrot steps. Some knew it, some didn’t, some did ‘kind of’ know it. I’m talking about individual members of the pairs here. I was in the ‘kind of’ category while Scamp was in the ‘know it’ one. It took us all about half an hour of staggering around the hall to get more or less adept at this fairly simple sequence dance.

Next was the main lesson, The Cameron Quickstep which, although danced as a sequence because it finished at a point where the dance could start again. We’d danced it for the first time last week at Perth and it looked and felt just like a normal quickstep. We’ve not had much chance to dance quickstep and this looked like a great introduction. We’d practised it a bit at home, but a living room is not anything like a dance floor. Today gave us a much better chance to work on the dance and of course we had expert help at hand. Unfortunately the teachers are off watching rugby next Saturday, so we’ll have to wait a fortnight before we get to have a real practise, although there is the chance of a tea dance later this coming week. A couple of sequence dances rounded off the day and we were back on the road home.

I did actually get out this afternoon to take some photos in the sunshine that had lasted all day. PoD went to a view through the trees to the setting sun. Nice to get an outside photo without too much fakery, or post-processing as photogs call it.

We drove over to Larky later. Me to have a jam session with Crawford and Scamp to go with Nancy and Jacquelyn to a concert in Strathaven. I wasn’t really looking forward to jamming with Crawford. I don’t practise playing guitar, relying on what I did way back in the late ’60s, but my fingers were far more supple then and could reach all those hard to fret strings. However we did cover some weel kent songs and had settled down to a blether by the time the girls returned. Another cup of white tea for Scamp and some arrangements for a return visit to us in December and we headed home and actually found a parking place just after 11pm.

Watched a confusing Brazilian GP with Kevin Magnussen in first place and Mick Schumacher in last place. Both drivers from the Haas team! Unfortunately Magnussen couldn’t hold on to that lead after the sprint race.

Tomorrow the weather looks good again. Two days in a row, is that too much to ask? I’m hoping to tell you tomorrow.

Another day, another surgery – 11 November 2022

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This time it was the doctor’s surgery for my annual check-up.

That wasn’t until the afternoon. It was a dull, depressing morning, but at least it wasn’t raining. Scamp went off to her FitSteps class and I started hacking into my SSD drives. Not literally, but I wanted to see if there was any advantage to using a new method of forcing Big Sur into a partition of one of the SSDs and that meant finding some space to put the truncated version of the operating system in. Following the instructions by the author, Andrew Tsai, to the letter (for once), after a couple of hours I had the OS in place but there was no appreciable improvement to the boot speed. At least I know that now and I hadn’t spent any money finding it out. That experiment took up most of the morning.

Soup for lunch and then it was time to steel myself for what might be bad news at the doc’s. I needn’t have worried. I’d lost four pounds (lb pounds not £) since last year, my cholesterol was down my glucose levels were also down and my BP was just where it should have been. I got a gold star from the sister for being a good boy. Feeling better, I went to get the makings of tonight’s dinner which was to be Baked Haddock and Cabbage Risotto, which at least a couple of my readers have had before.

Driving back home I realised that the light had gone. It was just after 3pm and I was driving with the auto headlights on! That’s Scotland. The wind was still gust and almost gale-force. The bins that were emptied yesterday were lying where they’d fallen last night. There was no point in lifting them, because they’re top heavy when empty and would just fall down again. Worst of all, there was no point in taking a camera out. It was just too dark. Today would be an indoor photo, and probably Flooers!

The risotto is one of the easiest ones to make, because the oven does most of the work. I’d bought some tomatoes in Tesco and I thought that as the oven was going to be on anyway, I’d use it to roast the tomatoes for making soup tomorrow. In these straitened times you have to do a bit of lateral thinking at times.

One of Scamp’s Pelargonium plants became the PoD. Not the best photo in the world, but it was better that than nothing at all.

We practised the Cameron Quickstep tonight and I discovered how to make a slow-mo video on my phone, because you really need to see the steps at half speed. Also it’s quite funny to listen to the teachers’ instructions at half speed. Cleverly the app can reduce the speed while keeping the pitch of music or speech at the normal level. It just sounds a bit slurred.

Tomorrow we are booked for our normal dance class at Brookfield. It hardly seems like a week since we were at Perth!

A host of fillings today – 10 November 2022

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I’ve had two fillings come out recently. I was hoping this was third time lucky.

I expected she would complete the fillings over two days, but I was wrong. One filling and about half a dozen caps. It’s early days yet, I know, but they feel fine for now. I’ve been warned only to eat soft food for the next two days. So, does that mean chocolate and ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner for me? I hope so.

I think evening began about 2pm today. Black clouds were rolling around and the threat of rain was always there, plus the wind had been gusting all day. I went for a walk. I wanted a photo to become PoD and it wasn’t going to be flowers, anything but flowers. The light in St Mo’s wasn’t really any better than back home, but at least there was standing water there that I could use. It was a water based photo that made PoD. It was the outfall from the pond without any ducks for a change. The ducks, mainly mallards seem to get good feeding near the outfall.

After that I walked down to the shops and got some of that aforementioned chocolate, although I realised soup and pudding was a more reasonable alternative. The rain never really came, but the clouds got thicker and lower all the time. So different from yesterday when rain showers and sunshine took it in turns to change the landscape.

We got a message from Neil to say that he had a good night, although the pain got worse after breakfast but was still bearable. He was intending to rest for the remainder of the day. That sounds like a plan.

Tomorrow Scamp has FitSteps in the morning and I have a meeting with the nurse tomorrow afternoon.

We did lunch – 9 November 2022

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Wednesday looked like the best day of the week. We thought we’d go for lunch somewhere nice.

We drove over to a cafe Scamp had heard about from Isobel. It was a find! We’d been warned that it was along a narrow country road, and it was. I really didn’t think we were going to get a table, judging by the number of cars that were in the car park, but we did. It was possibly the second last table in the place. Two things caught my eye on the menu. Mince ’n’ Tatties was one and Sri Lankan Lamb Curry was the other. Now I can make mince ’n’ tatties and Scamp can make it far better than me, so working on the theory that it’s now worth paying for something that I can make myself ( that came from Chris, Jamie), I opted for the curry and wasn’t disappointed. Neither was Scamp. She chose one of her favourites Mac ’n’ Cheese. I can only say that was the best lamb curry I’ve ever had. Spices were perfect. Heat was just this side of uncomfortable and the curried pineapple (yes, pineapple) was a brilliant surprise. I hope that’s a regular on the menu. We both had coffee, but since I can never taste coffee after a reasonably hot curry, I cannot comment on it.

We had a walk round the farm shop on the way out, but all we bought was half a dozen large eggs. Lots of expensive alcohol and some interesting sweet things, but nothing we couldn’t get elsewhere … for less, probably. Some decent hardwood furniture too which was a bit incongruous in a farm shop, but heavy stuff. Even the coffee tables would take up too much room in our house. I was on the lookout for a cheap SSD and hoped I’d get one in PC World, but they had none. In fact they had very few of everything. Most of the sales staff were engaged in conversation with each other while Amazon are probably stealing their livelihood away.

Scamp wanted some Neapolitan wafer ice cream in Morrisons, but it looks as if the company that used to make them for all the supermarkets has gone to the wall. None to be had in any of the places where we used to get them. That IS a pity.

I’d got some photos looking over to the Ochil Hills when we came out of the farm shop, so I didn’t really need any more. I was pretty sure I’d a PoD in amongst them, so we drove home in bright autumn sunshine. I made some soup when we got home. What Scamp calls Just Soup. Two leeks, three carrots, some broth mix, a chunk of turnip chopped, some cabbage and half a red pepper boiled up with water and some stock pots and left to simmer. Easy Soup. It was dinner after a large lunch.

Heard from Hazy that Neil got home today about 9pm. A bit later than he’d hoped, but the op had gone according to plan. Which was good and a weight off everyone’s mind.

I’ve got the dentist tomorrow morning, but the rest of the day is our own

No Soup Today – 8 November 2022

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We went as far as the shops today.

Today was wet when I got up, and it stayed wet for most of the day. We did go out in the early afternoon to get some veg to make soup and also some chicken to make paella for dinner.

Spoke to Hazy for a while and heard more about Neil’s op. Probably more than we really wanted to hear. I don’t envy you the surgery, Neil, but I hope it brings you the relief you’re looking for.

No chicken breasts or thighs to be had in M&S, but plenty next door in Lidl. Are M&S chickens that much better quality than Lidl? I don’t think so. Tiny wee turnips in M&S for 95p each. Big turnips in Lidl for 65p. Ok, maybe the chickens in M&S come from better farms, but a turnip is a turnip. It smacks of food snobbery. That’s my moan for the day. I used the chicken and did make paella, but the soup will have to wait until tomorrow.

After we walked home we went out to look at the garden and drain some of the pots. The entire back garden is simply waterlogged just now. Maybe if I’d pulled up one of my leeks I’d have remembered to make the soup, but I didn’t. Instead I took the smaller A6000 out for a walk in St Mo’s. I got a few shots, all landscapes, but they all seemed to be dark and underexposed. It took a while to tease a decent photo out of the morass, but I was quite pleased with today’s PoD, taken from the boardwalk and looking right into the sun.

Back home the paella was a bit dry, but I was using a new pan and this is the first time I’ve made paella for ages. That’s my excuse.

That was about it for a day that started wet, stayed dry for an hour or two in the late afternoon and returned with more rain later in the evening. The garden will be even more waterlogged. Actually, we have mushrooms growing in the front garden! We saw them today.

Tomorrow looks a better day. We may go out somewhere.

Coffee – 7 November 2022

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Well, not really coffee because this was a Costa hot milk drink to paraphrase an american lady I heard once in Dubrovnik.

I joked three weeks ago about Crunchy Nut Cornflakes breaking my tooth. That’s exactly what happened this morning.  A crunch and the filling came out in two pieces. It was due to be replaced this week anyway. It will have to be now and I will have to apologise to the dentist for breaking a second filling.  Having said that, it couldn’t have bonded properly to the tooth in the first place, so not all My or the Crunch Nut’s fault!

Scamp was meeting Isobel and I was meeting Val at Costa. I’d forgotten that Val was using two walking sticks now. We talked for a long time about his plans for their new bathroom and possible remodelling of their kitchen. Of course we talked about tech too. Val’s Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of memory, but after that he lost me in the tech. Also, Val is an experimenter who loves making things that look like a box of wires, but act just like a desktop computer does. I like the idea of that, but will it run Lightroom? Will it turn on every time I want it to? Great fun to play with, but it’s not a fully fledged computer yet, at least not for me, besides, it runs on Linux which is like black magic to me. But the Raspberry Pi  is very, very clever and so is he!

We discussed my experimentation with running MacOS 11.7 from an SSD and the next stage I want to take it to once I get the actual process settled in my head. We even talked about changing the washer inside our kitchen mixer tap. Sometimes you just have to come down to the basics! When we were done talking Val left to meet his wife and I went to find mine. We’d agreed that we’d try to get everyone together for a coffee before Christmas.

Scamp and I drove to Tesco and bought a trolley full of messages, plus a couple of bottles of wine. After lunch I took a camera out to St Mo’s. Just one camera and one lens. Not a lot of light and I’d no idea what I was going to photograph. In the middle of winter I like to rest a camera on the ice and photograph the weeds poking through the ice with a macro lens. I tried the same thing today but without actually resting the camera on the surface of the water! I got a similar effect and after running it through noise reduction software it looked perfectly clean and tidy. That was PoD.

Pasta Carbonara looked and tasted more like scrambled eggs tonight.  Over cooked the sauce, not for the first time.  Must try harder.

No plans, and no meetings set for tomorrow. We’ll see what transpires.

 

On our way home – 6 November 2022

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Up and out for breakfast after a good night’s sleep, then more dancing.

For myself, I’d have been perfectly happy to leave after breakfast, but Scamp wanted one more waltz around the floor. It looked like half last night’s dancers though the same way as her. We had a very pleasant hour of dancing and even got invited by Stewart to dance to a salsa track. Others were up on the floor as well as us, but none of them danced as well as us! They were dancing ballroom salsa while we were dancing Cuban. Then, suddenly, after a Midnight Jive that had been renamed the Midday Jive, it was all over. We said our goodbyes to Stewart and Jane and to the folk who were left from our table and left. I was really glad we’d stayed for that extra hour. It closed off the weekend so well.

We found the car, used the half price ticket we got from the hotel and were on our way south. Driving through an almost deserted Perth on a dull Sunday morning, was quite depressing. Scamp said it was the remains of the endorphins leaving our system that brought our spirits down, and I think there’s some truth in that. A fairly easy run home, but the weather was nowhere near as grand as when we were driving north.

We needed bacon for tonight’s Macaroni Cheese and we also got some pancakes, but really we were just going for the walk. As sometimes happens, I left Scamp to carry the bag home while I went for a circuit of St Mo’s. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s the seedhead of a cow parsley plant taken with the Lensbaby Sweet50 which gives that wee bit of controllable blur.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and found out about his flying visit to Switzerland.

Tomorrow Scamp is meeting Isobel and I’m meeting Val for coffee, in the same Costa but not at the same table!