Iesus Non Amat Me

Happy official first day of autumn! I've chosen to celebrate this day by changing my theme to something appropriately pretty and autumnal.

I'm also choosing to be positive, which was difficult to do earlier cos work was unpleasant and stressful and all I wanted to do was pack it all in and go live in a cottage by the sea. A cottage by the sea with excellent internet and TV signal of course.

It felt quite autumnal when I got up this morning, by which I mean it was misty and chilly. I took Tormund for a walk after work and it had warmed up a lot. Some of the leaves are showing signs of turning but most of them are still very green. I suppose it is still early days so I can't expect too much yet! I look forward to seeing them change as the season goes on though.

My two staples of autumnal TV, Strictly and Bake Off, have both started again now. I don't know who I'm supporting in either show yet, but I'm sure it won't be long before I find some favourites to latch on to. As well as Oti, of course, who I will always love.

Speaking of TV, I've been too busy recently to watch the latest episodes of Lower Decks so I have about four of them to catch up on. That's quite nice, actually, cos it means I have a good amount to enjoy. Something I noticed when I was watching the first season was how great it was having new episodes to look forward to. As much as I like the comforting familiarity of re-watching things I've seen before, I have missed the excitement of not knowing what's going to happen next and the anticipation of finding out.

Taskmaster starts tomorrow, which is something else I'm looking forward to. I also have the book Bring Me the Head of the Taskmaster, which contains clues to solve to locate a replica Taskmaster head. I probably won't be the one to find it, but I still want to try. I've got 26/100 just on my first quick readthrough, so hopefully I'll be able to solve a few more when I have the chance to sit down and work at it properly.

To celebrate Alan Turing being the face of the new £50 note, GCHQ have released a series of puzzles called The Turing Challenge. They call it their toughest ever puzzle but that's clearly a lie. I have the GCHQ puzzle book and most of the things in there make my brain hurt, but I raced through the first ten of these. Number 11 took a lot longer and I'm still a bit annoyed about it. And then number 12 had me raging about how pre-decimal coinage makes NO SENSE and I ended up having to reverse engineer some of the answers cos I'd never even heard of them! Still, it was a lot of fun and I loved doing it. And now I can feel smart and accomplished. Yay me!

Hey! Sorry, it's been a while since I've been here but then with lockdown still going on not much has been happening. I had a week off work near the end of June during which the original plan had been to go to Denmark, but obviously that didn't happen, so I just sat at home and melted in the heatwave. I also made pizzas from scratch which turned out pretty well, although the bases rose a bit more than I'd have liked (a combination of making them too early and the weather being so hot, I think.)

I've been doing a few online escape rooms with friends over Zoom and that's been fun. A lot of the puzzles are the type that I love doing anyway and have a lot of experience with, so I'm usually able to solve quite a few of them. I like that. It makes me feel like I'm actually of some use to the team!

Also, the LJDQ is back as the DWDQ so I've been playing that every week and basking in the quotage. I got a full house not long ago, which I was very proud of! It's a lot of fun so I would highly recommend people come along and join in. (And if you're European you can become a member of the DWDQEU. All are welcome. Even the English!)

I've started a rewatch of Once Upon a Time and am very much enjoying season one so far. I'm a bit worried about what's going to happen once I get to the seasons where things started going off the rails, but maybe knowing where it all ends up will allow me to enjoy it more. And if not, there's always fanfiction to turn to when it gets bad.

Something I had been particularly looking forward to was the Hamilton film coming to Disney+. Originally it wasn't supposed to be released until October next year, but I suppose that since no one can see it in the theatres now anyway there was no point holding it back. Part of me was worried that it wouldn't live up to my high hopes, but I shouldn't have doubted. It was brilliant. I loved seeing the original cast in the roles after hearing them on the soundtrack so often. And it was great to see close up shots and catch all the little details that I hadn't been able to see when I saw it live cos I was too far away or focusing on something else at the time. Also all the things I did see but forgot about!

And finally, I think we have bees living in the roof of the side passage. Looking online seems to indicate that they're just using the space that's already there and not doing any damage, so I'm inclined to just leave them bee. (Sorry, I'm no good at puns...)

On Tuesday I went to see the new production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and it was brilliant. Last time I saw this musical was over ten years ago when Lee Mead was in the title role (and wow, now I really feel old!) This time Joseph was played by a total newcomer, who was excellent, but the main names were Sheridan Smith as the Narrator and Jason Donovan as Pharaoh. Both clearly having a whale of a time! The whole production was so much fun and it completely embraced the kind of musical Joseph is, never taking itself too seriously. I wouldn't mind seeing it again but it's completely sold out now, so I was lucky I got tickets when I did.

And I'm really glad I got to see a production with Jason Donovan in, even if he wasn't playing Joseph himself. I was also a huge fan of the giant guitar playing Egyptian gods that were in the Song of the King set piece!

Then yesterday I went to the Science Museum cos I was interested in their Top Secret Codes and Ciphers exhibit. It was pretty interesting, although I was disappointed that all the puzzles were aimed at children. I had been hoping for some codes to try and work out myself. The rest of the Science Museum was pretty cool too. I forgot how big that place is and managed to spend about five hours there in total.

And last night my friends and I did the pub quiz. It was great to see people again, and we won which made it all the better!

Happy End of the Old Year! I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

My Christmas was good. It was just me, Mum and Rob as usual. I did stockings for us all this year cos I thought that Father Christmas had been neglecting us too long and it's always fun to open stockings in the morning. I also made some crackers (from a kit, but still pretty impressive!) and once again made Mum work for her presents. I'd made her an Advent Calendar at the beginning of December and each day contained a hint or riddle to which the answer was a letter. And then I locked up her main present with a combination lock and a tag that indicated how to use the letters to work out the code needed to open it.

( Photos Under the Cut )

I did hit a low point a couple of days after Christmas Day though. I felt so thoroughly miserable, which I think was probably due to a combination of Christmas Day being over (there's all this excitement in the build up to Christmas and I love it so much that when it's over there's a huge emotional crash) and having to go back to work (especially when I keep seeing all these people on Twitter talking about how the days between Christmas and New Year are this no-man's land where no work gets done and you just watch films on the TV while eating chocolate and leftovers all day, and meanwhile I'm back at work at 7:30am the day after Boxing Day.)

I was also at work at 7:30 this morning, and I have to be there at 8 tomorrow (half an hour lie in! Woo!), so I hope I'm not going to be too tired to see in the New Year tonight. I'm hoping to make it to midnight, watch the fireworks, and then crash. I saw the Sydney ones earlier on the TV in the break room at work and they looked pretty spectacular.

Last week saw the Lateral Drinkers come second in the pub quiz. Not a bad result, but I can't help but feel we should have done better.

The next evening we all went to a Bletchley-themed cocktail bar, which was a lot of fun. We overthought it quite a bit though, trying to solve puzzles and codes where none actually existed, and I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't get told what our cocktails actually were at the end. Still, it was a very good evening.

On Friday Paul and I went to the ABBA Super Troupers exhibition at the Southbank Centre. I had no idea what to expect but it turned out to be a brilliant little tour through the band's career via various immersive rooms including a 1970s living room, the hotel room they stayed in before winning Eurovision, a recording studio, and an aeroplane!

I then returned home on the Saturday to a weekend of jigsaw-building and Bones rewatching. I'm currently on season 4, so there's a long way to go!

Every August I like to take a week off work. I consider it my Summer Holiday, even if I don't actually go anywhere.

Today is the last day of my Summer Holiday. As is usual for me I spent most of the time doing puzzles, building Lego (Knight Bus FTW!) and baking. This means that the past week has involved a rather unhealthy diet of chocolate rum pots, meringues, chocolate chessboard biscuits and blackberry dessert. Dad and I picked the blackberries ourselves and I still have a lot left over to do something else with. Probably crumble. Everybody likes crumble.

Also, cocktails. I've been trying out new ones and expanding my repertoire in that area. Pretty soon I'll be a cocktail machine. Although not literally, cos that would be weird. But having a cocktail machine would be pretty sweet. Hmm... Once I figure out exactly how one of those would work I'm totally going to take it on Dragons' Den and make millions.

Oh. Apparently it already exists. And it costs £35,000. Damn. If only I'd invented it first, then I could afford one.

(Of course I do have a birthday coming up. Just saying...)

This holiday weekend I have been mostly:

- Sitting on the patio to make the most of the lovely weather. In fact that is where I am right now. Next to me I have a glass which used to contain ginger beer but which is now empty. Alas.

- Watching Bones. Well, two episodes. They were good, although I still don't really get this whole rogue sniper storyline that came out of nowhere.

- Watching Chuck. I love Chuck. I think what I love most about Chuck is that it's a happy programme. You can watch it safe in the knowledge that everything will be all right in the end, good will triumph over evil, the people you love will be happy and Chuck and Sarah will be together.

- Watching 'William and Kate: The Movie'. Now, I went into this knowing that it was going to be amazingly bad but I simply wasn't prepared for just how excruciatingly dire it was going to be. It had everything you could hope for in an American TV film about British royals. Terrible accents! American plug sockets in supposedly British houses! Prince William publicly singing karaoke to apologise for ignoring Kate at his birthday party! The University of St Andrews apparently being renamed St Andrews College and looking absolutely nothing like the university that I visited a few years ago! Constant references to university as 'school'! (It's that last one that got to me the most. If I'd had a drink for every time I shouted "We don't call university 'school', you idiots!" at the TV I'd have been completely wasted before the film was halfway through.)

- Sorted out my room. And by 'sorted out' I mean 'moved stuff from one big pile into other, slightly more organised piles.' That's really the only way I do any kind of tidying up.

- Sleeping weirdly. Apparently my body has decided that during the holidays I need to wake up around 4, stay away until around 8 and then, just when I'm thinking I could probably get up at this point, become so tired I can't keep my eyes open until around 10:30. It's rather annoying.

- Building puzzleballs. Two today.

- Watching Doctor Who. I should have mentioned it earlier but I forgot. Possibly because it was a bit of a blah episode that didn't exactly grab my attention. Hopefully it'll be better next week.

I now find most of my free time being eaten up by Sporcle. NaNo is not looking good this year...

My day:

1. Took Rose to the vet to have a mammary tumour removed.
2. Went to Tesco with Mum.
3. Had a dentist appointment.
4. Went to work. Spent almost the whole time doing overstickers. So many pages of overstickers!
5. Found out that I'm working Saturday next week but not Friday. That's going to throw my internal calendar out of whack.
6. Bought Eternity II clue puzzle 4 but haven't started it yet.
7. Picked Rose up from the vet. She seems to be doing well.
8. Had to decline invitation to birthday party in Canterbury due to lack of time at weekend. Shame.
9. So tired. Need sleep now.