About Me

Llantwit Major, Wales, United Kingdom
I am mother, librarian, avid reader, sf fan, writer (unpubished), singer(amateur), animal lover, needlewoman.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Not flooded!

Hurray

Work didn't flood.  The car parks around and the fields did, the road further down did, but we - thankfully didn't.  I am very relieved.

We have left all the boxes on tables just in case though we aren't being rained on at the moment.

An odd and irritating consequence of my ordering splurge is RSI in my arm, which is ridiculously sore today, though why it has waited till after I have had a weekend odd is baffling.  Hope it goes away tomorrow.


Sunday, November 25, 2012

Cars can be pricy

My car radio died recently.  Usually you would just either get it fixed or else get a new one fitted.  Not if you own a Honda Jazz.  They have cunningly built the thing right into the dashboard and the fascia panel has the controls for the heater etc in as well, so you can't just replace the radio, and to buy a new Honda radio costs £350 which is nuts!!  So after a conversation with a repair place who looked at the car and went 'oh dear' and told me it would be at least £130 to fix the old one (if they could) I decided to get a new one.

It has been put into the glovebox and it has a remote control so I can at least use it when driving.  Hurray.

B, on the other hand, had a problem with his car, and had the nasty shock of it being £650 worth!  Just before Christmas too.

I have been poor at blogging recently because I haven't actually had much to write about  Life seems to be work, home and work, with some Christmas shopping, some social stuff, but nothing really writable about.

Work - hmm
We are worried about flooding again as it is soooo wet here, and the river near work was over the height pole on Friday so we put all the boxes we had full of books onto tables in case it flooded.  However as I haven't had a text to say I am assuming that it hasn't been flooded.

We are going to be starting a series of training events on how to use eBooks soon so we have put in an application to buy some eBook hardware which means we will have lots of toys to play with while we are working out how they all work.  That will be fun because I am a geek really.

I am spending money industriously because it is getting close to the end of the year and and I have been given extra to spend.  Spending and extra £10,000 sounds like fun, but - actually - it is surprisingly hard work because I have to make sure I'm buying things we haven't already ordered, that people will want to read etc etc.

I have done most of Christmas shopping though.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Outings

I have been out a lot recently.

Last week we went to see a live broadcast of Timon of Athens from the National Theatre in the cinema in Cardiff.  I think Simon Russell Beale (who plays Timon) is wonderful and when I read the reviews of the play I really wanted to see it, so when I discovered these live broadcasts were available and that there was one in Cardiff I promptly bought tickets.  It was wonderful.  It is slightly delayed so you are watching it about 15 minutes behind - something to do with how they stream it I suppose.  We also had a little film introduction about the play with the director and cast, plus an interview with the director in the interval.  The filming was wonderful, the picture quality excellent and the play every bit as fabulous as I had hoped.  The NT do these every few months, so I shall be going to see some more next year.

Friday we went to see Music Theatre Wales perform 2 new short operas.  One of them was very good, I enjoyed the music and the story, based on a Thomas Hardy short story held together very well, though it suffered from  being transposed to the current day.  The story centred round a husband and wife who didn't get on but in the Victorian setting they were unable to separate, whereas in a modern setting the wife came across as a brat who stayed with a husband she despised - why?  Money? We didn't find out, and that sort of marred it for me because I felt irritated by her..  The other one suffered from a poor plot, poor libretto and less interesting music.

Saturday we changed tack again and went to see the new Bond film which I really liked.  B was a bit less enthusiastic, but unlike Quantum of Solace this film has a plot, and humour, and characters.  Not as good as Casino Royale perhaps, but I thought it was really good.  Well worth going to see.

I felt quite tired after all that!