Today, I shall mostly be... Showing 1,201-1,250 of 4,719

[suzysunshine7]

I really can be such a daft Bobbin sometimes! - LOL!!! ;o>

[Lez]

I did that with my thermometer. I still worry about it - it works but doesn't beep!

[suzysunshine7]

I need to get a new Thermometer, Lez, but the Reviews seem to be very hit and miss on so many of them that I'm STILL very much in the process of looking and mithering and dithering over them as well!

We had two stored in the First Aid Box? - but I can't find them anywhere and we don't have that big of a House, or that many places in it to be looking for them in, and so I'm all out of ideas as to where they might be?

My Dad proudly presented me with one last week that isn't one of them but still looked vaguely familiar to me ... and then I realised what it was! ... the Thermometer that used to be attached to the inside of the Tropical Fish Tank that we had when I was growing up!!! ... HA HA HA HA HA!!!

I'll definitely not be ever putting it in my Mouth! - and it isn't even designed for taking of the temperatures of Human Beings anyway! ;oO

He's clearly determined to prove that it works though ... as I came across it at the Weekend neatly tucked away in the Egg Box Section on the inside of the Fridge Door!

[Lez]

I suddenly had an attack of the giggles after a scenario involving a goldfish and a rectal thermometer.......

[suzysunshine7]

LOL!!!!!!! ... Ohhh Lez!!! ;o>

We never had Goldfish but we did have Neon Tetras, Guppies, Angel Fish, Coolie Loaches, Corydoras Catfish, Black Mollies and Kissing Gouramis.

I didn't know that we still had the Tank Thermometer until Dad suddenly presented it to me?! - but I should-of guessed it would be stored away somewhere as he's an absolute Devil for never throwing anything 'useful' away just in case we might ever need again ;o>

We have a bag of Floppy Disks in the Attic that he won't let me bin!

[Lez]

J. never threw anything away, neither did his dad, so I inherited 2 houses full of 'useful' tools etc.. Some did come in handy for my nephew, though and it's quite nice to see him use the family heirlooms for his own house.

[suzysunshine7]

I love all of the generational heirlooms we have but could live quite happily without Dad insisting on saving every single Plug, piece of Cable or Wiring, Nail or Screw (some rusted and some bent) and having so many Planks of varying lengths and thickness of Wood stored up in the rafters of the Garage Roof! ... and don't get me started on the 50 years worth of offcut Rolls of Wallpaper and Carpet he has stored in the Attic in several battered-beyond-repair Suitcases that once belonged to his Grandfather ... !

[Serial]

suzysunshine7 wrote: "I love all of the generational heirlooms we have but could live quite happily without Dad insisting on saving every single Plug, piece of Cable or Wiring, Nail or Screw (some rusted and some bent) ..."

Now I have to say i see the sense in your dads collecting, especially bits of wood, they're so handy. And wire....now where would be be without a wire collection.

[theDuke]

Serial wrote: "suzysunshine7 wrote: "now where would be be without a wire collection"

Erm........wireless?! :)

[Craig White]

"a scenario involving a goldfish and a rectal thermometer"

perhaps best idea is not to get them mixed up....................

........................................or is it?

[Isabella]

theDuke wrote: "Serial wrote: "suzysunshine7 wrote: "now where would be be without a wire collection"

Erm........wireless?! :)"

Real wirelessness... that would be heaven. I never got it when I was a kid, the wireless had to be plugged in with what looked to me just like a wire. Okay, the signal was wireless but the cable was still there. Grown up me knows that power cables are unlikely to be replaced but I can dream, can't I? All those charger cables, power cables, connectors drive me nuts. It feels like we've got miles of the stuff.

[Brass Neck]

Isabella wrote: "theDuke wrote: "Serial wrote: "suzysunshine7 wrote: "now where would be be without a wire collection"

Erm........wireless?! :)"

Real wirelessness... that would be heaven. I never got it when I wa..."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/iGadgitz-Xtr...

[Lez]

My pride and joy is a makeshift oil-lamp fashioned by J.'s dad from a Lyle's Syrup tin. He said it worked but we were too nervous to try.
Picture on my profile.

[Gordon]

Lez wrote: "Our pride and joy is a makeshift oil-lamp fashioned by J.'s dad from a Lyle's Syrup tin. He said it worked but we were too nervous to try.
Picture on my profile."

Great lamp, Lez. I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be safe to use, although it's likely to get a bit hot.

Quote from the book I listed as number 1 on the lists thread ( http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zen-motorcycle.pdf)...

His handlebars had started slipping. Not badly, he said, just a little when you shoved hard on them. I warned him not to use his adjustable wrench on the tightening nuts. It was likely to damage the chrome and start small rust spots. He agreed to use my metric sockets and box-ends.

When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the ends of the collars were pinched shut.

"You’re going to have to shim those out," I said.

"What’s shim?"

"It’s a thin, flat strip of metal. You just slip it around the handlebar under the collar there and it will open up the collar to where you can tighten it again. You use shims like that to make adjustments in all kinds of machines."

"Oh," he said. He was getting interested. "Good. Where do you buy them?"

"I’ve got some right here," I said gleefully, holding up a can of beer in my hand.

He didn’t understand for a moment. Then he said, "What, the can?"

"Sure," I said, "best shim stock in the world."

I thought this was pretty clever myself. Save him a trip to God knows where to get shim stock. Save him time. Save him money.

But to my surprise he didn’t see the cleverness of this at all. In fact he got noticeably haughty about the whole thing. Pretty soon he was dodging and filling with all kinds of excuses and, before I realized what his real attitude was, we had decided not to fix the handlebars after all.

As far as I know those handlebars are still loose. And I believe now that he was actually offended at the time. I had had the nerve to propose repair of his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW, the pride of a half-century of German mechanical finesse, with a piece of old beer can!

Ach, du lieber!

Since then we have had very few conversations about motorcycle maintenance. None, now that I think of it.

You push it any further and suddenly you are angry, without knowing why.

I should say, to explain this, that beer-can aluminum is soft and sticky, as metals go. Perfect for the application. Aluminum doesn’t oxidize in wet weather...or, more precisely, it always has a thin layer of oxide that prevents any further oxidation. Also perfect.

In other words, any true German mechanic, with a half-century of mechanical finesse behind him, would have concluded that this particular solution to this particular technical problem was perfect.

For a while I thought what I should have done was sneak over to the workbench, cut a shim from the beer can, remove the printing and then come back and tell him we were in luck, it was the last one I had, specially imported from Germany. That would have done it. A special shim from the private stock of Baron Alfred Krupp, who had to sell it at a great sacrifice. Then he would have gone gaga over it.

That Krupp’s-private-shim fantasy gratified me for a while, but then it wore off and I saw it was just being vindictive. In its place grew that old feeling I’ve talked about before, a feeling that there’s something bigger involved than is apparent on the surface. You follow these little discrepancies long enough and they sometimes open up into huge revelations. There was just a feeling on my part that this was something a little bigger than I wanted to take on without thinking about it, and I turned instead to my usual habit of trying to extract causes and effects to see what was involved that could possibly lead to such an impasse between John’s view of that lovely shim and my own. This comes up all the time in mechanical work. A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge.

What emerged in vague form at first and then in sharper outline was the explanation that I had been seeing that shim in a kind of intellectual, rational, cerebral way in which the scientific properties of the metal were all that counted. John was going at it immediately and intuitively, grooving on it. I was going at it in terms of underlying form. He was going at it in terms of immediate appearance. I was seeing what the shim meant. He was seeing what the shim was. That’s how I arrived at that distinction. And when you see what the shim is,in this case, it’s depressing. Who likes to think of a beautiful precision machine fixed with an old hunk of junk?

I guess I forgot to mention John is a musician, a drummer, who works with groups all over town and makes a pretty fair income from it. I suppose he just thinks about everything the way he thinks about drumming...which is to say he doesn’t really think about it at all. He just does it. Is with it. He just responded to fixing his motorcycle with a beer can the way he would respond to someone dragging the beat while he was playing. It just did a big thud with him and that was it. He didn’t want any part of it.

At first this difference seemed fairly minor, but then it grew—and grew—and grew—until I began to see why I missed it. Some things you miss because they’re so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don’t see because they’re so huge. We were both looking at the same thing, seeing the same thing, talking about the same thing, thinking about the same thing, except he was looking, seeing, talking and thinking from a completely different dimension.

He really does care about technology. It’s just that in this other dimension he gets all screwed up and is rebuffed by it. It just won’t swing for him. He tries to swing it without any rational premeditation and botches it and botches it and botches it and after so many botches gives up and just kind of puts a blanket curse on that whole nuts-and-bolts scene. He will not or cannot believe there is anything in this world for which grooving is not the way to go.

That’s the dimension he’s in. The groovy dimension. I’m being awfully square talking about all this mechanical stuff all the time. It’s all just parts and relationships and analyses and syntheses and figuring things out and it isn’t really here. It’s somewhere else, which thinks it’s here, but’s a million miles away. This is what it’s all about. He’s on this dimensional difference which underlay much of the cultural changes of the sixties, I think, and is still in the process of reshaping our whole national outlook on things. The "generation gap" has been a result of it. The names "beat" and "hip" grew out of it. Now it’s become apparent that this dimension isn’t a fad that’s going to go away next year or the year after. It’s here to stay because it’s a very serious and important way of looking at things that looks incompatible with reason and order and responsibility but actually is not. Now we are down to the root of things.

[Craig White]

ah, one of my great failures to finish!

anyhoo, i'm too busy being entertained by some live performance! from the wee boy next door (you may remember him from the 'damn you china!' crisis), singing his way through (and along to) the soundtrack for 'little shop of horrors', loud and large with much running up and down the garden - inventive use of props too (the paddling pool is audrey 2, of course! if that boy ain't the new john barrowman, then i don't know nuthin'! there it goes, 'feed me, feed me now!' i like to think that i'm encouraging his future career instead of braining him with a hauf brick!

[suzysunshine7]

HA HA HA HA HA!!! ... I seem to have missed the 'damn you china!' crisis but the Little Shop of Horrors performance sounds rather fun!

Put that brick down and put some Reggae on! ;o>

[suzysunshine7]

Today I shall mostly be ... trying out a Chippy in a nearby Village that we occasionally used to use several years ago now.

I mentioned on here that our local Chippy did us a one-off Delivery a few weeks back - but charged us so much more for such pathetically small portions of overcooked and barely warm Food that it completely put us off ever wanting to even think about going back to them again ;o<

Almost all of the Takeaways around here have never done, and still don't, do deliveries - but I've just rediscovered that this one reopened on the 4th of June, has continued over the last few years to have excellent Reviews, has always done a Home Delivery Service, is still very reasonably priced ... and has no problem with taking Orders over the Phone instead of insisting on the use of exclusive Apps!

We may be waiting for up to an hour yet but ... ! Fingers crossed ! ... we might finally be getting to enjoy a yummy Fish & Chip treat tonight! ;o>

I hope so, if only for my Dad's sake, as he was so disappointed by my first try at finding somewhere we can still get to order his all-time favourite Takeaway treat.

[Serial]

Making Elderflower wine, cutting hedges, drinking IPA, and looking forward to one of my girls 10th birthday tomorrow.

[suzysunshine7]

Awww ... Happy Birthday to your Daughter! ... x

Well, Dad's very happy! - and we now have a new Chippy! ;o>

The Fish & Chips were very hot, very fresh, and seriously tasty too. It was Cash on the Doorstep but we rounded it off so the friendly Delivery Guy (a local Taxi Driver) got himself a small Tip and we didn't have to take back any Cash off him as change - and we will definitely be doing this again! ;o>

[Serial]

suzysunshine7 wrote: "Awww ... Happy Birthday to your Daughter! ... x

Well, Dad's very happy! - and we now have a new Chippy! ;o>

The Fish & Chips were very hot, very fresh, and seriously tasty too. It was Cash on the..."

Yay! Sounds good, Suzy.

We're getting pizzas and chips delivered tonight for the birthday girl, much to her delight. we're about 3 1/2 miles from town and the delivery is 3 euro, good value I think.

[suzysunshine7]

Brilliant! - I hope you all have a lovely Meal ;o>

[Lez]

I'd love fish'n chips but my chippy doesn't do deliveries. I don't think the 2 Chinese and the pizza/Indian/Italian/kebab all-in-one would send a single portion!

[suzysunshine7]

Well, they might do, Lez? - but they would probably charge you extra on Delivery for ordering under a certain amount ... or at least that's how it tends to work out here.

The Chippy wanted £1 for Delivery but that was because we were just outside of their 2 mile Delivery Area. Otherwise our Delivery would have been free because we spent over £13 with them ;o>

[Brass Neck]

Lez wrote: "I'd love fish'n chips but my chippy doesn't do deliveries. I don't think the 2 Chinese and the pizza/Indian/Italian/kebab all-in-one would send a single portion!"

Both the local Chinese I use are happy to do a single meal order - try 'em. They'll be even keener under lockdown as they don't want/aren't allowed potentially diseased customers in the confines of their shops. They charged somewhere around £1-1.50 extra.

[Lez]

Brass Neck wrote: "Lez wrote: "I'd love fish'n chips but my chippy doesn't do deliveries. I don't think the 2 Chinese and the pizza/Indian/Italian/kebab all-in-one would send a single portion!"

Both the local Chines..."

Thanks, I'll give them a go.

[suzysunshine7]

I hope it works out for you, Lez ... getting in some of these kind of treats has really helped to make things outside in the wider World feel far more 'normal' to me - and to make my own permanent Lock-down (through being housebound now) into being a lot more endurable as well.

It's so painfully ironic, isn't it? - that an International Health Crisis and Lockdown enforced on everyone has actually helped folk like us to now get much more in the way of Doorstep Delivery options than we ever had any kind of access to before?!

[Lez]

suzysunshine7 wrote: "I hope it works out for you, Lez ... getting in some of these kind of treats has really helped to make things outside in the wider World feel far more 'normal' to me - and to make my own permanent ..."

It's also nice that 3 people I usually only hear from at Xmas have been in touch by phone or card, asking how I'm managing!

[suzysunshine7]

I hope I don't start feeling like I'm becoming invisible again when the Lockdown ends ;o>

[Val]

I hope some of the delivery services don't dry up. I wanted a few things from Ikea but I didn't want to drive half an hour down a busy highway, park in their ginormous cavern where I might never find my car again, walk around the tortuous maze for a couple of hours and probably go past, or not find at all, the items I wanted. I was pleasantly surprised to find I could have my order delivered for £4.50. Worth it if only for saving my time! Likewise, I need to buy 6 A3 poster frames and find I can get them delivered from K-Mart for a minimal fee. Again, much quicker and easier than having to drive to my nearest store (admittedly not far) but I would have to park at some distance and require a trolley to cart the frames back to the car. I don't think I'm becoming lazy, it's just I value my time so much these days.

[Gordon]

Lez wrote: "Thanks, I'll give them a go..."

I'm planning to get a Chinese takeaway this evening. I haven't had one for months. It's just about 40 metres away, so I don't need delivery, which they don't do anyway. I assume I have to phone the order in then go and collect it, as they won't want people hanging around in the shop.

I have some lamb curry (home-made) left over from yesterday but I prefer not to eat the same thing two days running, so I'll have that tomorrow.

[Serial]

Gordon wrote: "Lez wrote: "Thanks, I'll give them a go..."

I'm planning to get a Chinese takeaway this evening. I haven't had one for months. It's just about 40 metres away, so I don't need delivery, which they ..."

That Lamb curry will be all the better for sitting a couple of days.

[Brass Neck]

The curious thing about takeaways in our suburbanised village is the choices available; two fish & chip shops, three Chinese, a pizza place, a Syrian place (Kebabs, basically) but ZERO Indian - I've been here over a quarter of a century and no entrepreneur has noticed the yawning gap in the market.

[Brass Neck]

"That Lamb curry will be all the better for sitting a couple of days." hopefully properly refridgerated or he'll be s*itting for a couple of days?

[Collette]

Trying not to eat too much of the coconut ice D made yesterday. I also plan to listen to some Nelson (defo my next nom on Fave Artists), then for dinner we're gonna have either a Chinese or a munch box as a treat to make up for the disastrous takeaway we had a fortnight ago. Tonight I shall open a nice bottle of white and watch Pay The Ghost.

[suzysunshine7]

Ohhhhhhh Coconut Ice!!! ... D certainly is a keeper, isn't he?! ;o>

[Brass Neck]

Doing a naughty drivers' course this afternoon - was due to do it a week or so before lockdown, now going to be online for 2.5 hours instead of 4 hours at nearest centre which is 30 miles away so a bit of a lockdown bonus on time and distance. Here's hoping Teams programme works. My crime? Went through a red light ONE second late at about 11pm in a deserted Nott'm city centre. I blame chatterbox Blind Col as we'd just come out of a gig!

[Brass Neck]

Collette wrote: "Trying not to eat too much of the coconut ice D made yesterday. I also plan to listen to some Nelson (defo my next nom on Fave Artists), then for dinner we're gonna have either a Chinese or a munch..."

If you do nominate the flaxen-haired love gods, Nelson, please make it any collaboration so I can nominate something from Tinted Windows, a supergroup with the late Adam Schlesinger, Bun E Carlos, James Iha and ….. one of the Nelsons;

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0tE...

[suzysunshine7]

Well, that'll surely teach you not to use Blind Col as your back-up look-out man whilst waiting at Traffic Lights ... (*giggles*) ... ! ;o>

[Craig White]

Nelson? Haa ha!

[Collette]

Tech XXIII wrote: "Nelson? Haa ha!"

Whadya mean "Haa ha!"!! Look at them. They're perfection. And they've aged well since. 😛

[Collette]

Suzy...some cyber coconut ice is winging it's way to you right now. 😘

Mr B, is it not Taylor Hanson that's in Tinted Windows? You silly sausage! 😝

[Lez]

Brass Neck wrote: "Doing a naughty drivers' course this afternoon - was due to do it a week or so before lockdown, now going to be online for 2.5 hours instead of 4 hours at nearest centre which is 30 miles away so a..."

You should have said Blind Col was driving....

[suzysunshine7]

Collette wrote: "Suzy...some cyber coconut ice is winging it's way to you right now. 😘"

Oooooooh! - Yummy! ... thanks Collette ;o>

So the Nelsons are Sister Steve's Brothers and Nephews of Mark Harmon?

Interesting - I never made the connections until now ;o>

[Brass Neck]

Tis no matter since someone f***ed up. I tried to access the meeting at 1pm but things were going so slowly so I restarted and successfully got through to the course organiser to show him my (old school paper) licence and passport at about 1.25 which was fine. He then said he'd log me out and would I use the link to log back in at 1.35 to which, given the earlier problems, I could only answer, I'll give it a go. I gave it a go but was just staring at an empty blue Teams window. At 1.40 I went back to the link page and clicked on the web browser option which did offer me the opportunity to log in and I could see my ugly mug in the window. Being 5 minutes late I was denied!!

Now I'll have to wait and see how fascistic they decide to be since I had, after all, successfully contacted the course organiser and furnished my details - he logged me out. Do I just lose the course fee, get the 3 points AND a fine (my glass half-empty mindset leans that way) or offered a course at the original centre in August?

Bugger, bugger and thrice bugger!

[Collette]

suzysunshine7 wrote: "Collette wrote: "Suzy...some cyber coconut ice is winging it's way to you right now. 😘"

Oooooooh! - Yummy! ... thanks Collette ;o>

So the Nelsons are Sister Steve's Brothers and Nephews of Mark H..."


Yep Suzy. Gunnar and Matthew are the younger twin brothers of Father Dowling Mysteries actress Tracy Nelson. Their dad was the singer Ricky Nelson.

[suzysunshine7]

Brass Neck wrote: "Tis no matter since someone f***ed up. I tried to access the meeting at 1pm but things were going so slowly so I restarted and successfully got through to the course organiser to show him my (old s..."

Good grief!!! ... so it's taken you almost all day to end up in getting nowhere fast?!! ;oO

They'll be driving you to drink at this rate, Mr B!

[Brass Neck]

"They'll be driving you to drink at this rate, Mr B!" - I wouldn't say no to a designated driver …… if only there was somewhere to go for a pint or two or.....

I also got a call this morning to say that the Hope Tavern was holding its first post-lockdown blues session on 12 July with the wonderful Cinelli Brothers (eye-candy alert, ladies; I'll post a link). I've never felt so conflicted; I desperately need a live music event but the opening of pubs has not been officially sanctioned yet. I presume it'll be outside - there's a sizeable field at the side where I'm told they regularly did the gigs on the back of a flatbed lorry in Summer a few years ago so we wouldn't be crammed in shoulder to shoulder in the compact and bijou interior and it was indicated there would be waited service for beer. The regulars are all relatively elderly so are likely to have been shielding to some extent which should keep the infection risk down and it's in rural Lincolnshire. Do I go or not (almost certainly the former)? What if Cummings tells his puppet, Bozza, pubs can't open until August - be a hoot if 50 or so coffin-dodgers got busted and £1,000 fines!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyQZ4... (The singer and drummer are the brothers)

[Post Soviet]

Yay!! Rory Gallagher International Tribute Festival 2020 in Ballyshannon moved dates to the end of August.

[suzysunshine7]

Make sure you have a couple of Face Masks (as it never hurts to carry a spare) and plenty of Hand Sanitiser ... and then give it a go, I reckon?

The key thing is to avoid small enclosed spaces frequently used by so many - so even if they provide Portaloos I wouldn't dare risking using them. It's not an ideal situation and I'm thinking that the field is going to get very 'messy' very quickly - but this is the main reason why Public Loos are currently staying locked shut - because of the inability to be able to repeatedly and thoroughly deep-clean them as often as is necessary and the much higher risk of coming into contact with the Virus through using them.

[Serial]

You should go along, Brass, and if it's gets too crowded around you, just practice coughing.