Riso service

Aaargh! Furniture shifting and Riso-wrangling before breakfast, as the Service engineer is coming this morning “some time after nine”. The machine needs it: it’s coming up on the 2-million copies mark – actually 1,963,854 – of which I’ve done just over half a million, and it was last serviced four years ago.

Normally, I just need access to the front of the machine, so it just rolls out of the cupboard and rolls back again, but the engineer may need space all round, so it’s sitting in the middle of cleared floorspace.

CO2 equivalent

I’ve just changed my energy tariff. Octopus are now starting to offer one-year fixed price deals again, and for the sake of certainty I’ve gone with it. It’s £106 a month fixed, instead of the £110 a month I’m currently putting in against expenditure on a variable tariff, though unusually for Octopus there’s a charge if I leave early. As part of this, they sent me an up-to-date summary of my energy usage for the year – see pic. That prompted me to re-check my annual CO2 equivalent emissions, and led to this post on Facebook:

My CO2equivalent emissions will always be higher than I’d like – it comes of living on my own. But over the past three years I’ve pushed it down from 7.67 tonnes CO2e to 6.99 CO2e, which I’m rather pleased about: it’s just over a 10% reduction. That’s the full list, calculated by https://www.carbonindependent.org/ ,which includes a standard 1.1 tonnes allowance to cover the thing I incur as part of society – health, education, hospitals, armed forces etc.
It’s due to a whole host of small changes, mainly affecting domestic energy consumption. Things like using a multi-tier steamer for veg on an induction hob, instead of three separate saucepans. Slow-cooker not oven. Investing in a couple of smart switches, so it’s easy to turn all the hifi, TV, printer etc completely off instead of on standby. Every little helps!

aaargh! plumbing! aaargh!

Aaargh! Water to the kitchen sink turned off, old tap removed …

… but the new tap needs a very slightly longer fixing than was supplied (and the fixing off the old one is the same length, sadly). New component ordered for next-day delivery. Fortunately, the cloakroom washbasin is only four steps from the kitchen sink, which is a bit inconvenient but not impossible for one night.

Fibre-to-premises

This afternoon I changed from “fibre-to-cabinet” to “fibre-to-premises”, aka “full fibre”. It’s not so much a speed benefit – though there is one – as hoping that it will be less liable to dropouts in wet weather (of which we’ve had rather a lot!). A very pleasant and obliging Openreach engineer!

The changeover was followed by a busy three hours of scrabbling round to tell all relevant devices about the new router – so far, I’ve found 14 of them! Laptop, phone, desktop, iPad, Ring doorbell, Ring chimes x2, smart sockets x2, Fire TV stick, laserjet printer, fall alarm wristband, deskjet printer/scanner, and wireless thermostat. There may be other devices I’ve forgotten … no doubt they’ll make themselves felt in due course.

And, for anyone I haven’t told, this means that I no longer have a landline.

indoor orchids

The small moth orchid has opened on the kitchen windowsill. It’s the first flower on it in five years, and a delight to see. Sadly, the larger pink one seems to be going through a tough time, and has no flowers for the first time in an almost equal length of time.

Vile day !

A miserable day here: grey and overcast with occasional drizzle, and a maximum temperature around 13/14C. I put up with it as long as I could, but taking a couple of slices of bread out of the freezer triggered a most unexpected and unseasonal attack of Raynaud’s, so (for the first time in six weeks) I put the heating on.

It took five hours, and a snooze under a warm blanket, for the Raynaud’s to wear off, and now I have the after-effects of pins and needles and hot flushes in my hands. Anyone would think it was December rather than July!

Aaargh !

My much-loved Moto One phone was dying – as I keep it in my rear jeans pocket, the back took up the shape of my posterior, while the front remained flat, leading to it peeling apart!

Having bought a replacement Moto G9 power) before going away, I have now wrestled with transferring everything. No doubt I’ll discover assorted things where passwords etc will need to be found / re-done, but the basics are now working.


yuccas

This morning was re-potting the Yuccas. Probably my least favourite houseplant to do, but at least this time I remembered to wear glasses to avoid being spiked in the eyes!

It was originally a single plant, but four years ago I cut the top off and planted it – both old (small) and new (large) top plant have flourished.

vile weather

It’s not cold – the central heating didn’t even come on this morning – but vilely damp everywhere. Not good for aches and pains, especially as I’ve stopped taking multiple painkillers I needed to get through Local Election day (tramadol, in particular, is rather addictive, so I limit myself to three days at a time).

So, if we’re going to have February-like weather, I’ll treat it like February! A small fire is lit, and there’s a covered bowl of crumpet batter beside it, waiting in the warm for the yeast to do its wonderful work. That will take an hour or so, and a little snooze will pass the time …

It turned out to be one of the most successful batches of crumpets I’ve ever made – nearly all of them came out with an appropriate number of holes. I’d forgotten that I usually halve the recipe, so having had two at teatime there will be six to go in the freezer for future rainy days … though I think we’ve had our ration of those recently!