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A varied update
I have had a rather busy time of late. We had extended family visiting, and staying with us in the flat, so we readied for that, then hosted them. It all went quite well, I think. My particular anxiety involved being the only driver and taking everybody for a road trip around Britain. In the event, it included such joys as being hit by a bus (while stationary) in a Welsh town, and having to drive a rented Volvo XC90 in the centres of London and Cambridge. I remain glad that I have plenty of experience with driving various vehicles in various places so it all worked out but large vehicles in England is a combination I prefer to avoid. Then, it was straight into Worldcon, which was its own kind of challenge.
The Volvo's most annoying feature was an audible alarm for exceeding the speed limit, that it was reluctant to let me disable permanently. It was very often wrong about the speed limit, beeping away at me for exceeding 30mph or 40mph while trying to merge onto a 70mph highway. I have hardly any experience with Volvos and the annoying alarm does not incline me to consider owning one. It remains disappointing that such technology gets past quality assurance.
I have also been involved with a major product launch at work and have been somewhat covering as colleagues have also been taking some days off. At least work stuff has gone fairly smoothly and I have enjoyed getting back to writing some code. My work-life balance is back under control, at least to a first approximation.
Given the above activity, last weekend was my first reasonably free one for quite some time. I spent the Saturday with family visiting from Dundee. Now we are to ready the flat for relisting for sale through a different agent. Among all that, we will try to find another weekend for camping, not that the current weather is encouraging.
L. our dog is now a year old and still weighing around 20lb so I suppose that is how large he will remain for quite some time henceforth. My own weight remains in excess of fourteen stone but, for whatever reason, I am finally finding the willpower to return to some approximation of my previous diet. I was overweight for many years, then I suddenly had the willpower to lose weight and I kept it off. Moving from the US triggered regaining my weight but now it feels as if the willpower is finally back, again rather suddenly. I believe that I am eating well again though it will be weeks before I see enough of an initial trend to know if the diet needs adjusting.
I have not yet got around to exercising. It's important for health but I don't think very relevant to my weight loss. I maintained my good weight back in the US even after my more substantial exercise routine was ended by masks no longer being required in the gym at work. I will give exercise more attention once our flat sale is sorted, one way or the other.
Especially with the family visit and various other inconveniently timed surprises, finances have been tight, though that IRS refund did come in the end. This evening's job is to review and revise the monthly budget. I've already pulled some of the relevant papers, it shouldn't take very long, then for our flat sale I can also tell the new agent our typical costs, as it's not uncommon for prospective buyers to ask about bills. The latest annoyance was from Octopus, our energy provider, where I had thought that our arrangement was that they simply read the smart meters then charge me monthly for my usage. The latest bill being many times greater than the previous, unrelated to our usage, prompted me to review the past few bills which revealed that they require rather more supervision than I had believed.
The Volvo's most annoying feature was an audible alarm for exceeding the speed limit, that it was reluctant to let me disable permanently. It was very often wrong about the speed limit, beeping away at me for exceeding 30mph or 40mph while trying to merge onto a 70mph highway. I have hardly any experience with Volvos and the annoying alarm does not incline me to consider owning one. It remains disappointing that such technology gets past quality assurance.
I have also been involved with a major product launch at work and have been somewhat covering as colleagues have also been taking some days off. At least work stuff has gone fairly smoothly and I have enjoyed getting back to writing some code. My work-life balance is back under control, at least to a first approximation.
Given the above activity, last weekend was my first reasonably free one for quite some time. I spent the Saturday with family visiting from Dundee. Now we are to ready the flat for relisting for sale through a different agent. Among all that, we will try to find another weekend for camping, not that the current weather is encouraging.
L. our dog is now a year old and still weighing around 20lb so I suppose that is how large he will remain for quite some time henceforth. My own weight remains in excess of fourteen stone but, for whatever reason, I am finally finding the willpower to return to some approximation of my previous diet. I was overweight for many years, then I suddenly had the willpower to lose weight and I kept it off. Moving from the US triggered regaining my weight but now it feels as if the willpower is finally back, again rather suddenly. I believe that I am eating well again though it will be weeks before I see enough of an initial trend to know if the diet needs adjusting.
I have not yet got around to exercising. It's important for health but I don't think very relevant to my weight loss. I maintained my good weight back in the US even after my more substantial exercise routine was ended by masks no longer being required in the gym at work. I will give exercise more attention once our flat sale is sorted, one way or the other.
Especially with the family visit and various other inconveniently timed surprises, finances have been tight, though that IRS refund did come in the end. This evening's job is to review and revise the monthly budget. I've already pulled some of the relevant papers, it shouldn't take very long, then for our flat sale I can also tell the new agent our typical costs, as it's not uncommon for prospective buyers to ask about bills. The latest annoyance was from Octopus, our energy provider, where I had thought that our arrangement was that they simply read the smart meters then charge me monthly for my usage. The latest bill being many times greater than the previous, unrelated to our usage, prompted me to review the past few bills which revealed that they require rather more supervision than I had believed.