Happily Imperfect Week 7 Notes

Reading time: 3 mins

A week of highs and lows, busy at work and getting busier, and still trying to get into a routine.

Life

HIGH – Jack has been attending Squirrels, he’s always a bit reticent to join in new things (which is fine, he’s 4) but he’s starting to enjoy it!
LOW – My niece is on our Apple family plan, she’s 10 so I have her account locked down. App purchases require approval by me, and whilst I don’t mind a few quid here or there, we got caught out when I forgot to cancel a trial of Duolingo. £68.99 whoooshed out of my account and as soon as I spotted it that morning I whooooshed Apple a request for a refund. It was granted. The money may take up to 30 days to be returned. Annoying. Not whoosh.
LOW – Driving to Blairgowrie this week involved a road traffic incident, avoiding an oncoming BMW in the middle of the road, I mounted the kerb with a loud bang, and by the time I’d wrestled the car back onto the road, the offending vehicle had disappeared. Car likely to be written off (an 18 year old Mini). FUN TIMES, NOT. (More on this later).
VERY HIGH – Scotland win the Calcutta Cup, and what a victory.

Artemis by Andy Weir – big silly moon thriller, great characters and only made me roll my eyes once.
Babi Yar by Anatoly Kuznetsov – a stunning, horrifying, and true retelling of the destruction of Kiev before and during WW2, from the point of view of a 12 yr old boy who survived. Hard to read at times. Tellingly current though, scarily so.

Resist and unsubscribe – this has been shared in a few places and it’s laudable, but I wonder how many people would ditch ALL of these. Is it worth doing a few? I think so.
How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters – this won’t go away, and they continue to make the choice to host these newsletters.
Olivia Colman sometimes thinks of herself as a gay man – and the press went nuts but everyone needs to take a chill pill.

Down Cemetery Road – finished this and, it was ok. A little bit too “suspension of disbelief” but great performances all round.
Pluribus – One episode in and I’m HOOKED.

Pony – Clearly Cursed. Punky pop with super catchy riffs, what’s not to like?
Deftones – private music. Not sure how I missed this last year but it is exactly what you expect. Play at 11.
My work focus playlist, Electroburbleworktime got a fair amount of airtime but aside from that, mostly been comfort listening to The Beatles.

Two visits to the gym this week, forgot about the DOMs!
Current Weight 103.2kg – Lost 0.4kg, slowly slowly and all that. Although I do need to eat better.
Avg. Sleep: 6hrs 37mins (down 2 mins on last week)

Bye bye gmail – because I’m not doing enough it seems… more about the rest of my digital detox soon.
Blank Spaces app – Almost had me, but with no way to deal with the iOS dock, it loses it’s appeal (you remove apps from it in one focus home screen and it disappears from all of them, not ideal).
Facebook deactivated as I barely use it and can happily live without it.
Bluesky embraced because I can’t go full cold turkey.
And my blog plans now become focused on creating my own custom WordPress theme. I’ve built them in the past but it’s been a few years, learning curve ahead!