Happy New Year! I must admit I’ve not been a particularly fervent celebrator of the occasion since the overhyped (and one year early) celebrations in 2000, but it is mildly terrifying that that was somehow already a quarter of a century ago.
This was the second of my two weeks off work, and as predicted I’ve done virtually none of the tasks that I really need to get round to one day. Back to work tomorrow, which may be something of a shock to the system, although at least I don’t have to physically go into the office until Tuesday.
The vet was happy with Nobby’s progress. Although his respiratory infection has cleared up, he prescribed another week of the antibiotics in case the kidney issue was also an infection, and he has to go back for more tests in a couple of weeks.
For the first time in a few years I bought a couple of games in the Steam sale – the old Tomb Raider trilogy (one of which I already had), and the slightly odd (but cheap) Firewatch. I’ve finished the first Tomb Raider, and just have the final battle to get through in the second, and I finished Firewatch today (it’s a pretty short game). This may go some way to explaining the lack of chore accomplishments.
As is traditional of late, on New Year’s Eve a bunch of us cycled to Felixstowe, had a run along the prom, got very briefly in the sea, then cycled home again via a couple of pubs. We were pretty lucky with the weather, although obviously the sea was a bit chilly.
The next day saw a bonus parkrun, and Justin organised another of his not-parkrun runs to make it an unofficial double (now the real thing no longer happens). I ran to the park and between the two, but the heavens opened as we were feet from Justin’s door afterwards, so I wimped out of the run home and got a lift back.
I went to the shops on Thursday and noticed that the seville oranges were in, so I stocked up and made two batches of marmalade. I’d had to buy one jar before Christmas to tide me over, so I might need to make one more batch to be sure.
I didn’t scrub the pan properly after the first lot, and the peel stuck to the bottom a bit the second time, so that batch ended up much more caramelised than the first (also slightly over-set). I’ve sampled a bit of each though, and they both taste fine!
I bought a cheapish second-hand (but as-new) drone from eBay, but the weather hasn’t really been suitable to fly it yet, other than a quick play in the garden to make sure it all works. I have a feeling this might be one of those “why did I buy that again?” purchases, but we’ll see.
The weather’s been odd this weekend. Sub-zero temperatures for parkrun yesterday, then I woke up at around 4am and looked out of the window to see what looked like about half an inch of snow. By the time I got up properly though it was raining and hardly any snow remained, and by the afternoon the temperatures was back up into double figures. It’s a good job no important world leader positions are about to be taken up by anyone determined to wreck any last slim hope we might have of addressing climate breakdown or anything.