AndrewC

One of the gents we met up with in Haarlem at the weekend, tested positive yesterday after being near a travelling plague rat on Sunday. He was masked as well. I tested neg this morning. Phew.

Greetings all from the boring borough. Whump! What was that? Reality Feck Last of the annual leave used up. 6 decent days away. Lots of good beers and catching up with people who we haven't seen in 3 years. Back to work today. I could use another week to recover. About 25 pages to catch up on so I'll go back when I have a few minutes. Just one note though. Simon, when I did my shoulder in 5 years ago the GP, specialist, and pharmacist all said not to naproxen and codeine within 4 hours of each other. Had a nasty hiccup with the shed while we were away. Something in the greenhouse tripped the rcd on the shed's consumer unit. Freezer with about £500 worth of bbq meat. I think you can see where this is going. Got home last night to find after 6 days there was still ice in the freezer and about 2/3 of the stuff was still very frozen. Internal temp was 1.5c. Hats off to Kenwood. In the end the loss was less than £100 worth. Time to get back to work. Coffee awaits. No latte until I can get to the shops for milk. <sigh> Enjoy the day.

Greetings all from the boring borough. Still in meh mode. Chiropractor at lunch time so at least I escape the endless meetings of nothing for a couple of hours. <sigh> Like Simon, I've had stupidity from car rentals. Once upon a time we booked a Britrail rail-drive pass. This let us take the train, then pick up a car, etc. Booked car from Gatwick to Bath over 3 days. All good. Second booking was for Shrewsbury. Confirmation letter etc, all supposedly good. When we dropped the car at Bath I asked the girl at the counter to confirm our Shrewsbury booking. After several minutes of faffing about, she discovered the Shrewsbury location no longer existed. Closest available car was in Stoke. <insert naughty words here> Train to London, then to Stoke. Picked up a new roller skate with 2 miles on the clock. I think my coffee maker had more horsepower. Managed to get a drop off in Anglesea near the station with no drop charge for all the inconvenience. Went to drop the car with the letter from Stoke saying "no charges". Waited an hour past their supposed opening time. Nobody showed up. Finally dropped the keys wrapped in the letter. We didn't bother trying to rent another even though we still had 5 days of rental available. On returning home we received a £50 charge for dropping off instead of returning. A long phone call to tear them a new one until it Hertz was made. In other news....... eff all. Pumpkin spice latte at the ready. Enjoy the day.

Thanks. Sadly the math says we have to keep working until the mortgage is gone. In our situation we basically started from scratch (with a couple of small Canadian pensions and gov pension locked away) when we moved here just under 19 years ago. We bought just under 15 years ago and still have 8 1/2 to go. We probably could have knocked 5 years off that if we didn't add on to basically rebuild the interior 4 years ago. Oh well. Such is life. Although we lose ££ for ever year short of the magic UK full pension contribution years as well. July 2031 seems to be the earliest viable date still. <sigh> As for trimming or even purging, I've done that in the past and sometimes regretted it. I had a friend who did the same. I bought most of his stuff and ended up selling it back to him a couple of years later after his regret tuned in. This time it feels different. I really have done nothing in the shed apart from maintain it and play darts for the past 3 years. (darts is now verboten after my elbow surgery) The only modelling of note was to rewire a set of Freemo modules I bought 2 years ago. I just can't seem to get motivated. Technically I've got over 100 bits of stock all crying out for weathering. By the time I'm finished work for the day I'm just mentally knackered and can't face doing anything except an early night. My cunning plan to compress my work week and have Friday as a modelling day / bbq cooking & smoking day just hasn't worked out so far. Oh well. The shed had a 10 year warranty for the walls and roof. Shiplap and roofing felt doesn't last forever in this climate. What I'd really like to do with the roof is strengthen it and slap up a large bank of solar panels. It has a 2m by 7.2m south facing roof that and the bit of house roof that faces south, theoretically would generate around 5kw/h of juice. The cost of doing a reinforced roof that would take the weight though is almost as much as the panel installation. Maybe what I need to do is empty the shed, do a proper fix on it and then set up all the existing modular bits. If I get the bug to play trains then great. If not time to move on and do something different.

Moaning all from the boring borough. 00:00:00 of the proceedings were watched yesterday. A quiet day on the garden patio was enjoyed instead. Little else going on these days. There seems to be a big black dog running about. 8 years 10 months till retirement and I really can't picture myself lasting that long. I seem to have zero motivation for anything anymore. 4 days off and did the sum total of eff all really. I'm again seriously considering downsizing and disposing of most of the model railway stuff, scrapping the shed and replacing it with a much smaller outdoor office building. The train shed is now 14 and despite replacing the insulation, floor, and interior lining last year, it still needs a fair bit of work. Some of the outside panels are showing real signs of decay which will need replacing. The roof as well is starting to bow and the roofing material needs replacing as well. Enough self pity, time for more coffee and endless bloody meetings.

Greetings all from the boring borough. Due to work issues this is my first Friday off in ages. I plan on enjoying the 4 day weekend. @Tony_S You will be pleased to know that no mice were involved in the intranet cable issues. A dodgy crimp of a cable to blame. Back to getting 1900mbit in the office. Little else of note. Enjoy the weekend. Time for along hot bath.

With the mourning queue at about 5 miles in length it is almost as long as the queue for the toilets at the Great British Beer Fest.

Good day all. This seems to have change to the epicurean thread. Smashed avocado on toast is lovely. SWMBO makes her own quasi-guacamole with tomato, chives, avocado, and a bit of hot sauce. mmmm Tomorrow's plan is to finally cold smoke the cured bacon I've made. After that it will be sliced, vac packed, and frozen in easy to use portions. It is so much nicer than the water injected crap from the supermarket and about half the cost of the good stuff from the butcher. The <censored> bunch of tw@waffles at DHL's local depot managed to forget to load a package of frozen food from the Sausage Man on Tuesday. It arrived yesterday with the contents thawed. £100 of food in the bin. Replacement arrived. Jager schnitzel tonight for dinner. For my next trick I have to trace a dodgy ethernet cable. I ran 2 cat6 lines into the office from the router a while back due to sporadic wifi. Noticed today that one of them isn't performing very well. The speed test confirmed that it is running about 10% of expected. I'm hoping it is either a bad connection to the jack or the cable from the jack to the switch. Otherwise it means the long cable is compromised. <feck> Lunch time. Enjoy the day

Like Ian I have my initials on the bottom of each car and loco. When I have a module as well as stock I tend to keep my stock list down to under 20 items. Even then it can take 10 to 15 minutes to round them all up.

Ahh you must mean Melissa's. One of the best places there is for steak anywhere. Been around since the 70s. Then again Alberta beef is fantastic. (no antibiotics, hormones, or other crap) So they have a good starting point. Once I started bbq as a semi-serious hobby I have yet to find anywhere in the UK that can do as steak as good as I can. (ego a go go mode on) Mostly they are cheap cuts, no marbling, not aged properly, and just stuck over a gas flame or worse still in a frying pan. I'm lucky that I have a UK source for Alberta beef. Not cheap but well worth it. The current trend with steak is called reverse sear. The meat is rubbed or marinated as desired. Thrown in a smoker at around 110c until the steak reaches 45c internal. This can take about 20 to 30 minutes. Let the meat rest for about 15 minutes, then place over a very hot grill at around 300c. No more than 60 seconds per side. Et voila a steak that has a slight smokiness, and will melt in your mouth. Never more than Medium. If you want well done, I'll throw an old shoe in the microwave for you to chew on. 😁 The slow heating in the smoker starts to break down the fat and collagens in the meat making it more tender, while not losing too much moisture. The hot fast sear seals in the juices and gives you that great outer bark. <bbq bore mode off> Good moaning all from the boring borough where more rain has interrupted my plans on cold smoking 4kg of bacon today. Oh well. Little else to report. Cough still with me. Feeling drained still. Work sucks. meh. Enjoy the day.

Go on, you know you want to.

Greetings all from the boring borough. Back home again and have finally caught up on ERs. That was a week I really want to forget. Late flight, even later flight, poor directions to client office, and the worst cold I've had in years. (3 neg covid tests as well) My sum experience of 6 days in Copenhagen was airport, metro, hotel, client site, whole day in hotel trying to shake the cold, more metro, more client site, more hotel, airport. The really fecking annoying thing is half the people in the workshop sessions were on bloody Teams and not in the meeting room. There was no real reason for me to have been there in person. <grrrr> Managed to trip on Saturday and smash my bad knee. That was the end of any attempt to get stuff done around the house this past weekend. Still coughing and wheezing, but now with the added fun of being barely able to walk. Post-op elbow has become rather tender as well. Time to play a game of frustration and book an appt with the quack. Little else to moan about. More coffee needed. Enjoy the day.

Good moaning. Just a drive by Birthday greeting to @Tony_S Happy Birthday Tony. 🎂🍺

I keep receiving similar emails. The ones that make me borderline homicidal are ones with the sender marked as a late good friend. Obviously, his account was compromised after his passing and the f*ckers are using his contact list as a way of pushing dodgy malware links.

Greetings all. Back in the boring borough for a few days. Way too much to properly catch up on. I've sprinkled some thumbs and hearts as appropriate. 6 days of Belgian beer fests and tastings done and dusted. 93 new (to me) beers sampled along the way. Back to work for the week. <sigh> Planned meal out with friends on Saturday scuppered by Covid. Little else but to wish everyone a great day. Laterzzzzzz