Slowdown
Posted: Mon 7 December, 2015 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Old(er), Health, M1 Leave a comment »Having had an utterly chaotic and busy three months – I’ve covered 1,500 miles just in the last month – things are finally calming down.
This weekend spent in Manchester was my last full weekend away ’til mid-February, although I still have a number of things booked in for days, and a couple of busy weekends doing lots of stuff, at least I’ll be back home in between for each one.
This is definitely A Good Thing.
A Bag For Life
Posted: Wed 2 December, 2015 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, People, Shopping, Shopping, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the weekend, while I was out shopping, the person in front of me’s “bag for life” split open.
What really surprised me though, was the attitude of the person on the till, and (by inference) that of the store.
You see, the ‘bag for life’ was from a different store – so the till person (quoting store/company rules) wouldn’t change it for one from that store.
“Oh, you can only change that at those shops, we won’t take them”
Which begs the question – why? If it were me in charge of doing that, then I’d be happy to take a competitor’s bag and give my customer a branded bag advertising my own store/company instead. But no, it seems that each supermarket/store brand will only exchange bags of their own brand, rather than taking those from other stores.
Seems bizarre to me.
December
Posted: Tue 1 December, 2015 Filed under: 2015/16, Bankruptcy, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten) Leave a comment »So here we are, the last month of 2015. How time flies when you’re having fun…
It’s started well though, with my final payment of the bankruptcy scheme. It’s been three years of payments, and in that time I’ve paid nearly £25,000 – which is kind of scary, seeing how it all adds up.
From January, I’ll still be making payments – but they’ll go towards my own savings, which will be a very positive step.
At the moment, current evidence is all looking like 2016 should be good…
Snotty
Posted: Fri 27 November, 2015 Filed under: Domestic, Health Leave a comment »This week has been a harder one than usual, due to feeling rougher than a badger’s backside in wintertime. I’ve not been seriously ill – it’s been a heavy cold at worst, but it’s just hit me.
I think it’s been incubating since the weekend in Durham, where I got spectacularly wet and cold, and it all kicked in just in time for last weekend’s London trip. I know by the time I’d walked back to Barbican to pick up the car, I was pretty much shattered (which isn’t the normal state of things for having walked 15km) and Sunday was spent doing as little as possible as a result.
On Monday I was nothing short of a snot-fountain, but it had eased up a bit on Tuesday, and has been improving since.
I’m not normally one for popping pills for a cold, but in this case it was all sat in my sinuses, so I ended up breaking the back of it with hefty doses of Sudafed – and for once it’s worked pretty well.
I’m just about back to normal now (or at least my version of normal, before anyone else says it) so that’s counting as a win. But it’s not been a fun week all told.
Looking Forward
Posted: Thu 26 November, 2015 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Festering Season Leave a comment »
This is almost a part of the tradition of the Festering Season round here now, but I still feel it’s quite fitting anyway.
Just think, in one month’s time, we’ll be done with Festering Season stuff for another nine months. And we’ll have Easter Eggs on the shop shelves tomorrow. After all, it’s only three months away (March 27th 2016 is Easter Sunday)
Sunrise
Posted: Wed 25 November, 2015 Filed under: Commuting, Domestic, Driving, Milton Keynes, Photography, Weather Leave a comment »One of the few good things about the way the days are getting shorter right now is that I get to see sunrise, which is always one of my favourite times of day.
This week has had a couple of stunners – Monday was beautiful (if bloody chilly) as I was driving to my current client’s office. As I was on the road, I couldn’t stop to take a photo. But sunrise through mist and clouds, silhouetting trees on the hill-ridge, that was a thing of beauty – and one of the few times I wished I’d got either a dashcam to save the image, or a camera linked to my field of view.
Today I was in my own office as the sun came up, and it was another stunner…
Hell, it even made Milton Keynes look pretty…
Re-tyred
Posted: Sun 22 November, 2015 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, eTyres, Getting Organised, M1, Technology, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Over the last month, the car has had a complete set of new tyres (admittedly, bought two at a time) as it was definitely That Time Of Year when it’s a good plan., with the onset of winter with added rain, snow and ice. It’s been at least a year since the front ones were changed, and longer since I did the rears, and while they’re still well within the legal limits, I know they were nowhere near as good as they could/should be.
The front ones got changed a couple of weeks back – something I was really pleased about while I was driving last weekend. At that point, the road conditions were vile – heavy rain, standing water, and one particular section of motorway surface that could best be described as interesting – and the car stayed solid on the road, which is something that some others certainly weren’t.
I avoided using eTyres this time – partly because I’m not convinced of their services etc., but also because they didn’t stock the tyres I’d decided I wanted to try out.
Having looked around, I opted this time for Michelin Cross-Climate tyres, which seem to be a good option for going across the full range of road/weather conditions I’m likely to hit in the coming months. I’ve also never had a full set of the same tyres on a car, so it seems like it should be interesting.
The rears got changed today, and the change has been significant, even in the short time I’ve driven on them today. I’m pretty sure it’s not just a psychosomatic thing, the whole vehicle felt more rooted to the road, more stable.
We’ll see how things go. This morning was also the first serious frost of the year – I was driving through snow on the M1 yesterday – and I’m pretty sure we’ll have a few more days like it in the coming weeks. I’ve got the best part of a thousand miles to cover over the next couple of weekends (not including the usual weekly travel) so by the end of that, I’ll know a lot more about how the car feels with the new setup.