draxil

Christmas was planned to be in Edinburgh this year, but in a house full of cats our still-not-cat-friendly pupper would not go. So we stayed home. Nice Christmas, although I feel we're both a bit burned out. Did get to play Baldur's Gate a lot, which stood in for getting any relaxation in.

I'm working again now in twixtmas, although immediately off again tomorrow for my friend Babs funeral.

Puppy is HARD WORK! But hopefully will be worth it. He does have a bunch of issues, but he's young (6 months) so we should be able to turn him around.

The big thing as always is feeling safe with the cat and then a lot of things get more chill. We're a ways off that, but have de-stressed him with sheep which is a good sign.

After much fruitless applying to adopt dogs, from a small pool as dogs trust are reticent to say a dog can live with a cat, we are meeting one tomorrow! His name is Alfie and he's a gorgeous collie. Like our old dog blue he has a blue eye, but unlike blue one is 100% blue the other is 100% brown. I'd put a pic on here but I'm superstitious about posting before it's done and he's settled.

Honestly the only reason I feel I can post this at all is nobody I know reads this any more so it's virtually a private diary :p , no offence to you lovely random internet people who do see this.

Anyway, exciting times and I'll of course be posting more about this whatever happens.

Back from a most excellent week in (& around) Norway!

( cut for photos and stuff )

At the weekend I met up with my old school (and 6th form) mate Dave, who I haven't seen for twenty years. In a surprise to me it was a lot of fun and reminded me of a whole chapter of my life that I think I'd dumped in the memory bin.

I'm truly awful at keeping in touch with people, I think it's a rare piece of self doubt that as soon as I don't see people for a while I can't imagine that they'd ever want to hear from me again. I must remember that this is stupid, and I have met some fantastic people in my life span and should occasionally make some effort to see them!

Additionally I learned there's a nice pub in Bamford called the Anglers (something featuring the word angler at least) and it's definitely going to have to feature on a future "nature walk".

Lovely day today in Manchester with Kr0n. We intended to spend all day there today, but the dog's continuously deteriorating health cut it short as we felt we couldn't leave him for too long.

I finally got K to take advantage of my 50% discount at work and get herself some clothes. But aside from that we went back to North Tea Power, my "work from a cafe" home when we lived in MCR. Amazingly one of the owners (Jane), who isn't there as much nowadays was in and we had a little reminisce, and noted how we've both made the switch to living in the sticks.

NTP's food has got even better, K was blown away by how good the coffee was and I had my staple "white hairy monkey" which was also very much on form.

Also I'm now sipping a tasty spicy cup of "sticky chai" as were were able to pop by Bird & Blend.

I would sort-of like to spend a day working there in the modern era, although my newer jobs have involved far more talking to people which is a pain. Perhaps I'll build up to it by working from our local nice cafe some more (Little Fika).

Time for the second festival of the year (Arctangent). A bit anxious leaving the pets. I think partly due to the pandemic, we're not used to leaving them any more.

Blue didn't have a stellar time at the kennel last time, although his leg is much better now than back then.

Piggy has really become super personably so I think she's going to miss us. She's getting regular visits while we're gone though. 🤞 it'll all go smooth.

Aside from all that looking forward to the music!

Piggy (the cat) has now been caught red handed (pawed?) dropping a live frog in the dogs water bowl. So this is now confirmed to be part of her psychological warfare.

Previously I thought they might just have been hopping in there after escaping from her, but no, it's deliberate.

Yesterday Nigel and yours truely went on a "nature walk":



Official stats: 8 miles, 7 pubs and 7 pints.

Feel like we missed a trick there.

Took the dog to the pub for the first time in a very long time. We've been getting an increasing amount of "nice to see you, where's the dog?" comments in recent times. So we finally took him. I underestimated just how much he enjoys going to the pub. He's had a super smug happy glow for the rest of the day.

We're going to have to take him back soon, as a lot of his fanbase were missing tonight.