It's not like I have time to do this...

but it's only Wednesday

I've managed to grab my laptop back from Mouse to write this (and to do some work) while it is still early enough that I have the energy to write.

I shouldn't mock, but as a twenty-first century child, Mouse has taken the loss of the main house computer (blue screen of death) as a personal slight. Even although there is a good chance that he was contributory, by filling the hard drive with so much junk many essays and reports that it simply couldn't cope anymore, we have to recognise that he is the worst hit in the household, because it's just not fair, and he needs it. So, to console himself, he constantly nicks my laptop... because Handsome's is slow and not worth pinching. Whenever I try to get it back he claims to be revising, therefore instantly casting me in the 'bad parent who is trying to stop her child working' role.

Aaaargh.

He changes the settings, and turns the volume up so high that when I play clips or music I'm instantly deafened ("but I was listening to music concepts, Mum, I was revising"), and despite the fact that I have forbidden him to download anything at all, I'm sure it's running slower than it was.

Thankfully I've got a new book to read, so that when he arrives in about ten minutes and says "Mum, haven't you finished yet?", I'll be able to curl up and read instead.

new toy

I've bought myself the house an energy saving monitor, so that we can all see and hopefully cut down on the electricity we're using. The last bill was truly horrific. I lied when I said I bought it for the house, really I bought it for me. I've wanted one for ages; I think they're fascinating, and I love the idea of being able to say "Just by switching off that monitor or lightbulb or dishwasher we're saving tons of money", and also so that I could sit smugly reading a book and point out that I was only using enough energy for a lightbulb (and an eco-bulb at that). It looks like this, except mine currently says £0.04 per hour. That's because Mouse has gone to bed, and the electronic playroom is switched off. 

I fully intend to see just how low we can get the reading once everything is switched off at night - obviously not including the things that run all the time, like the freezers and the central heating clock and the alarms. It'll be an interesting challenge.

I am however currently running my laptop on battery power, and it will need to be recharged at some point - and my book is an ebook, and also needs recharging. I wonder how much my multicharger costs to run?

cleaning

Still no server, so today I completely gutted my office and the main library desk. I ruthlessly threw away everything that I've been keeping for years in case I needed it; I hoovered; I cleaned the surfaces; I re-organised the filing heap into several smaller filing heaps, and then I threw one of them away and I actually filed the others... I even moved the filing cabinet into a different and more ergonomic corner.

It all looks much, much better, and I stand a chance of being able to find things (unless I threw them away of course) for at least a little while, until it all creeps back into being a disorganised heap again. Which it will, it's a foregone conclusion.

Working from home today...

...because they're replacing the server at work, and what I am currently working on needs access to the internet.
However, I did find time to take Handsome out to lunch as well - after all, it is Valentine's day, and he has spent most of it re-tiling our bathroom so he can fit the new shower.

 

renaming

I'm going to have to think up a new blog-name for Hairy - he got his hair cut!

adventures

Mouse and his musical mates have been attempting for some time now to sort out an evening for a band rehearsal. They all live in the middle of nowhere, but unfortunately they are in the middle of different nowheres, which demands some parental input. My share of this involved following a hand-drawn map (which was upside down - for goodness sake, they all take graphics - and had 'here be monsters' written on it) around various pot-holed South Lanarkshire roads and then down a single track, dark lane to a steep, angled railway bridge, through a farm yard and over a cattle grid onto a mud track that was slightly wider than a path and had water-filled ditches on each side. At this point the only reason I was still going forward was because there was no-where to turn 'round, and also, as Mouse pointed out the cattle grid was on the aforementioned hand-drawn map. I don't know how he knew that, it was awfully dark, and the map was drawn in pencil. After some time on the path track we finally spotted a gate in front of us - no sign of any sort of dwelling place, just a gate, which was shut, and which had dropped on it's hinges, so took some opening. Once through the gate and around a corner we finally found the drummer's house. I dropped Mouse off, and retraced my steps route, carefully.

Of course, two hours later I had to go back and get him - and his guitarist friend, because it made little sense not to give him a lift home too, as we drive past his little patch of nowhere on our way to ours. And the rehearsals will have to be at the drummer's house because a full drum kit (especially one that's in the attic) is much harder to move than amps and guitars and ukes and mikes.

I think the monsters were sheep, they were all huddled in a corner of the field, and as the headlights swept over them their eyes shone creepily yellow.

The blue 6a was pretty tricky

After way too many reasons not to be able to climb - parents' evenings, illness, celtic connections, health-and-wellbeing walks, general lethargy - we finally got back to Eica after work tonight. I was convinced that I would be hippo-climbing, but actually I wasn't too bad (although still not as good as Handsome, I'll need to handicap him somehow - perhaps removing a leg might do it). The good thing about not having been for a while, is that there are quite a few new climbs, including one wall labelled egg (yellow), bacon (red) and beans (orange). There's a blue climb on that wall too, but they obviously couldn't think of a name for it. I did two new 6as, first time on each, and then quite demoralisingly had to chicken out on a 4+, but that was okay because it was pink...

Considering that Celtic Connections runs for two weeks, you would think that we could all be a little better organised than to have concerts two nights in a row, both on work nights.

Nope, we couldn't, but it was truly worth it (although I am tired out tonight).

On Tuesday we saw Richard Thompson who was, quite frankly, a bit earth-shattering - although not very celtic really. Who cares? And last night we saw Seth Lakeman, supported by Fisherman's Friends - much more celtic, but equally awesome. I danced in the aisles and embarrassed Handsome.

Too busy reading to blog

That and attempting to enroll students onto a very recalcitrant Duke of Edinburgh website - it took me and Handsome way too long to get three of them on, the others will have to be done later...

OPPS

Or 'Over Protective Parenting Syndrome'...

One of my regular readers - a thirteen-year-old boy - has all of his reading material carefully checked by his mother. Now, theoretically I approve of the fact that she is interested in what he is reading and furthermore interested enough to look at it thoroughly, but in practice there are a few difficulties. She seems to have some firmly-held illusions about what boys of her son's age read (I can't remember the last time anyone else asked if I had the Famous Five books) and for every three books her son chooses, two of them come back with little notes in, along the lines of "I thought this was a bit too upsetting for X" - on Michael Morpurgo's Warhorse; "Perhaps this should be in the teen section?" - on Charlie Higson's The Enemy (her son is thirTEEN); and my absolute favourite, which I will confess I have unprofessionally pinned to my office wall "This isn't very realistic, is it?" - on Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan.

Once, some time ago, I attempted to justify one of her son's choices. It was obviously a battle that I wasn't going to win, her mind had been previously made up. But it is a little dispiriting, because X is actually a reader, and there are so many books I could give him which he would love - but they'll just come back unread by him and commented on by Mum. I sent him away with Philip Reeves' Mortal Engines today, having done a quick mental read-through to try and make sure it was OK, but to be honest, her reasons for books being unsuitable for X are so unpredictable, that I'm not sure I can preempt them. I just have to hope that I can find enough one-in-threes for him to keep reading.

On the other hand, I'm beginning to wish that I had realised when she started sending me little notes and inscribed envelopes that this was going to be a continuing thing. I could have enough material for a book of my own by now.