Friday Five!

I do post my score each day for my friends (mostly one person) who are playing, too, but I keep it in a single thread.  Hide that thread.  I totally won't be offended.  I won't even know you did it.

Maths... I love that, too.  I basically love any puzzle.

And you are ALLOWED to post your score!  Keep doing it.  Hopefully you can beat some of the smug ones out there. 

It's Friday, and I remembered!  Yay!

1.  My husband found a different baguette recipe, and I followed it.  Yesterday we had the most 'authentic' tasting/looking/sounding baguettes I've been able to produce.  I'm trying again today/tomorrow, and I expect it'll be good.

2.  Remember I mentioned I woke up to my husband buying three different types of bird feed in the middle of the night last week?  It's arrived and we have put some of each type out.  The birds love it!  We've had robins, coal tits, long-tailed tits (my new favourites!), blue tits, great tits, some little mostly-brown bird with a thin white line on its wing that I need to identify, and our usual magpies.  I'm so excited for next week's bird watch!

3.  We watched a Youtube video about making beef jerky on Monday, and then I bought a food dehydrator.  It arrived yesterday and is presently sitting in our quarantine space.  I'm hoping to marinate on Saturday and dehydrate on Sunday.  Nom!

4.  My husband I were living in different parts of the house (and he was without a window facing the right way) this time last year, so he didn't have the entertainment of watching from Cloud as "our" magpies build their nest.  But he's here for it as they rebuild it this year, and now he understands why it was so thoroughly entertaining for me last year.

5.  I'm considering getting a Chromebook.  We've got low-enterprise-grade home network gear, and fttp broadband.  I'll run my software remotely from the home server or the cloud, so my device doesn't need to be very powerful.  Anybody have a Chromebook that they love or hate?  Any opinions?

JFKimberly, we love our food dehydrator. Have fun!!

Happy Friday all!!

1.) I thought today was Thursday so I was so pleasantly surprised to see it was Friday when I woke up!   

2.) I have had a sh*t week.  Not work related, but due to small community jobsworth powertrip ar*ewipes 

3.) Need to do some organisation in the kitchen this weekend, things are getting a bit out of hand in there.

4.) More garden readiness this weekend 

5.) Dreaming of holidays. Damn, airfare is so expensive right now.  I can understand why, but it sucks. 

@jfkimberly several friends have purchased preloved  electronics from Back Market and have been very happy with condition, warranty, and return policy. Worth a few minutes looking.

4.  There's a web-based game by a software engineer who works at reddit, called Wordle, that I'm instantly hooked on.  Every day, there is a different five-letter word that you have to guess.  You get six guesses, and after each guess, it tells you if the letters in your guess are in the target word in the right positin, in the target word but the wrong position, or not in the target word.  Thing is, there's only one game per 24-hour day, so I find myself itching to play but unable to.  I've played three days, now.  I did not guess the target word on my first day, but I managed it yesterday and today.  My husband got it both days he's played, and he hasn't played today's word yet.  It chafes that he has 100% showing, and I have 67% showing.  I hope he fails today. 

Wordle! What a trip!  First time I did it I was completely stuck and had used 4 guesses already.. couldn't even think of a 5 letter word so I gave up, telling myself I was far too busy to waste time every day on this.  Later on I had a flash of inspiration went back to it and got it on the 6th guess.
Next day had luck, got it in 3 and now can't wait until the next time. I think it'll just take one failure to put me off it again though!   

Friday!!!

1.)  Chinese New Year (companies usually shut down for 2-3 weeks) so I'm not getting any emails to action in the mornings when I get to work. Always strange. 

2.) Gonna hit 12C tomorrow so definitely some gardening time!

3.) Diary is filling up again with musical events. So nice! 

4.) My body is flaring and so sore today. Stupid autoimmune disease.

5.) Hubby picking up a brisket from the butcher today.  Getting ready to smoke it tomorrow! 

Friday.  Sorry, can’t Friyay this week.   

1.  Covid positive. I feel fine. So far, I wouldn’t know I had it if I wasn’t taking daily tests due to others having it.  My husband sounded bad at the start but he looks and feels fine now (I was most worried about his autoimmune disease going wild). Daughters last day of isolation is today. She had a very very faint line on a test yesterday.

2.  I’m always reminded at what lovely friends I’ve managed to make when times are tough.  So many people have asked if we need food or anything.  One has collected and dropped my son from school yesterday and today since we can’t leave.  Another is taking both to the park this weekend (if son is still negative).  We are going to get them gift cards to a restaurant and babysit their kids one night as a thank you.  I don’t think my in-laws even know we have Covid. Such a weird family. 

3.  We booked a holiday!  In June halfterm a cruise to Norway.  No idea if it’ll go but if it does, we will be on it!

4.  A giant box from Hickory’s Smokehouse just arrived. They had a 50% off code last week!  Corn dogs, tater tots, and a family BBQ bundle. Eeeks!

5.  I really really hope both kids are in school next week. I know I’ll still be stuck in, but I could do without the kids whining, moaning, and complaining continuously.  Just want to be on the road to a healthy house!

Glad it's all going mild so far KFDancer. Hope it continues!

Aww, KF, I hope you get some peace and tranquility next week.  At least you have some tasty noms to indulge with during this slog.  Keep improving!

PB, everything sounds great except your #4.  Hopefully the pain will pass and you can enjoy all the greatsthings you have going on.

My five:

1.  Great Garden Bird Watchthis weekend, and we are now seeing so many new birds, I'm really excited!  I hope we pick a good hour.

2.  I think I'm happy with my traditional baguette.  Shaping is a bit iffy, but the flavour and texture are incredible.  I'm about to get a couple into the oven for lunch today, and I've got a poolish in the fridgefor the next batch.

3.  I bought a grade A refurbished Chromebook, which is due to be delivered some time today.  OS support is good until 2026, and I expect that'll be long enough for the quality of the device.

4.   My husband is now looking at proper servers for our home network.  We're going to have our own cloud.  (Not to be confused with the place where we sleep!)

5.  My husband, who was only told he's been made permanent two weeks ago, was asked to set up an automated calendar for his team to track meetings and tasks.  While setting that up, he put in a dummy entry for a meeting to talk about wine... you know, to test it.  The calendar sent out automatic email invitations to this virtual meeting to his entire team, including the manager, and the managers going up the chain two levels above that.  He was mortified, but it all ended okay, when the tippy-top manager replied to his apologetic email with a laughing emoji and a joke about Boris Johnson, and asking if there would be cheese.

5.  My husband, who was only told he's been made permanent two weeks ago, was asked to set up an automated calendar for his team to track meetings and tasks.  While setting that up, he put in a dummy entry for a meeting to talk about wine... you know, to test it.  The calendar sent out automatic email invitations to this virtual meeting to his entire team, including the manager, and the managers going up the chain two levels above that.  He was mortified, but it all ended okay, when the tippy-top manager replied to his apologetic email with a laughing emoji and a joke about Boris Johnson, and asking if there would be cheese.

 

Well, it’s been a week for me:

1. I got an email from the water company last week saying they thought I had a leak somewhere as I seemed to be using water constantly… turns out it was the toilet siphon letting water out, so I had to get it repaired on Wednesday

2. The blinds for my windows finally arrived, but then I found I couldn’t install them properly because of the metal beams in the wall above the window frames, and using the side fixes wouldn’t work because the blinds weren’t wide enough (I’d ordered them to be fixed at the top), so I had to improvise, and while all the blinds are now up, now there are various holes in the walls and they aren't quite fixed the way they should be!

3. I’ve had my bedroom window taped up with cardboard for the last couple of months, due to working nights and needing to block out the light, but I decided it was finally time to order a blackout blind… problem was, when I took the cardboard down after installing the blind, I discovered that the top half of my bedroom window is full of cracks  (the inside pane of the double glazing)! So, I also had to get someone out to give me a quote to repair it - hopefully should be fixed in a couple of weeks.

4. I had thought my exercise bike had the resistance set too high (as when I used my parents’ bike, which is the same model, the resistance levels on theirs were completely different to mine), so I had an engineer come out to look at it on Tuesday… only for him to tell me that the resistance seemed fine and that it was probably my parents’ bike that wasn’t quite right!

5. Five weeks left until I go to Ascension… I can’t wait - I’ve been saddled with a load of extra admin lately, plus last-minute shift changes, and I have also been dealing with a frustrating colleague (she’s always late for work, is not a team player, and will only help out others if it benefits her), and I just need to get away from it all!

Aww, KF, I hope you get some peace and tranquility next week.  At least you have some tasty noms to indulge with during this slog.  Keep improving!

PB, everything sounds great except your #4.  Hopefully the pain will pass and you can enjoy all the greatsthings you have going on.

My five:

1.  Great Garden Bird Watchthis weekend, and we are now seeing so many new birds, I'm really excited!  I hope we pick a good hour.

2.  I think I'm happy with my traditional baguette.  Shaping is a bit iffy, but the flavour and texture are incredible.  I'm about to get a couple into the oven for lunch today, and I've got a poolish in the fridgefor the next batch.

3.  I bought a grade A refurbished Chromebook, which is due to be delivered some time today.  OS support is good until 2026, and I expect that'll be long enough for the quality of the device.

4.   My husband is now looking at proper servers for our home network.  We're going to have our own cloud.  (Not to be confused with the place where we sleep!)

5.  My husband, who was only told he's been made permanent two weeks ago, was asked to set up an automated calendar for his team to track meetings and tasks.  While setting that up, he put in a dummy entry for a meeting to talk about wine... you know, to test it.  The calendar sent out automatic email invitations to this virtual meeting to his entire team, including the manager, and the managers going up the chain two levels above that.  He was mortified, but it all ended okay, when the tippy-top manager replied to his apologetic email with a laughing emoji and a joke about Boris Johnson, and asking if there would be cheese.

  This isn't exactly my area of expertise, but you might be able to use a raspberry pi as your home network server.  You can connect it to an external flash drive for storage and then do something called a pihole to act as an adblocker for your entire network.  We set up a minecraft server on ours and it worked like a champ. 

4.  A giant box from Hickory’s Smokehouse just arrived. They had a 50% off code last week!  Corn dogs, tater tots, and a family BBQ bundle. Eeeks!

  Oh my god, I had no idea this even existed.  Can I get the %50 off?  Maybe if I join the mailing list or something.  Tell us how it tastes!

I'm too lazy for a full Friday 5, and you guys are waaaaay busier than me.  But, today was my last day at the job I had to take to keep from starving during covid.  The market has recovered so I quit and got a new one.  I start the new one Feb 7th.  Right after I quit, the company imploded with profit and revenue warnings and people being let go with hardly any notice.  Our team should have 5 people for the amount of work, after I leave there will be 2.  Death spiral coming up as they let the people go who do the work and then try to sell the product but there's noone to do the work and existing clients start to get bad service.....

My application came through and my citizenship ceremony is next month!  My wife worked so hard on it! 

I've bought a  new (to me) car, a Skoda Yeti.  Used cars used to be cheap as chips but now prices have shot up!  I still can't believe that all I got after being hit by a bin lorry was the ABSOLUTE lowest valuation for my car. The lawyers offered me £2800 for my car and I wrote back saying the car was worth £3500 and I would settle for 5K for everything.  I honestly thought they would say yes after their guy almost friggin killed me.   It probably would cost them a thousand quid just to write the letter saying no, but saying no is exactly what they did.    I complained and threatened and in the end I got £2800.   They (and every British person I talked to) thought I was crazy for asking for extra money for all the hassle.  I even had to to go to the doctor for my (eventually non-serious)  whiplash and got absolutely nothing.  And before certain killjoys step in to say I can only recover actual loses and not hassle, soreness or entire weekends looking for a car, yes I know.  Doesn't make it right though. 
I've attached a pix of my new car, it's not actually a 4x4 and has fairly low emissions.   And Jeremy Clarkson let a helicopter land on his while he drove it...

Because of a temporary kitchen and how big the box was, tonight we had corn dogs, brisket, baked beans, and Cole slaw. My husband was making yummy noises the whole way through.

Tomorrow the kids and I will have mac and cheese for lunch (gluten).

Dinner tomorrow will be ribs, chicken wings, tater tots, pulled pork, and leftover cole slaw.

I order a bottle of margaritas and I’m hoping it kills the Covid. It’s a smoky margarita which isn’t my favourite.

The flash sale was like a 24 hour thing. I’ll holler when it happens again though. SO MUCH FOOD (and margaritas) for £40!

Because of a temporary kitchen and how big the box was, tonight we had corn dogs, brisket, baked beans, and Cole slaw. My husband was making yummy noises the whole way through.

Tomorrow the kids and I will have mac and cheese for lunch (gluten).

Dinner tomorrow will be ribs, chicken wings, tater tots, pulled pork, and leftover cole slaw.

I order a bottle of margaritas and I’m hoping it kills the Covid. It’s a smoky margarita which isn’t my favourite.

The flash sale was like a 24 hour thing. I’ll holler when it happens again though. SO MUCH FOOD (and margaritas) for £40!

  I'll be over in 45 minutes!  Don't forget I know where you live