GoGoGadgetLemon,
originally uploaded by Purplekitten.

It’s been a while, and we’re probably the only people who care about them, but it’s time for an update on the lemon-children..

Sadly we lost two of them over the summer, to ravening hordes of something-or-other. Leaves vanished and eventually the poor trees died. Still not sure why. The losses were Spindly Lemon and Sturdy Lemon (turned out to be a bad name, really!)

So we got a replacement from a bona fide garden centre thing, and it seems to be happy enough. Not sure how old it is, so at the moment we have no expectations of fruit.

GoGoGadgetLemon is growing yet another strange robot arm thing, despite our best effort at attempting to persuade it into a nice tree shape. It has also grown the largest leaves I’ve ever seen on a lemon plant: large shiny, luxurious and deliciously scented. It seems ridiculously happy, for a tree.

BifurcatedLemon is still plodding onwards. Has a lovely shape but is clearly unwell. There are strange brown things on the leaves so I need to take it outside and give it a good scrub with soapy water and it’ll be fine.

PointlesslyTallLemon has been brutally truncated in the trunk department (it was either that or a ceiling extension to the house..) so is now not so pointlessly tall. It also nearly succumbed to whatever took its brothers, and is left with only 3 leaves. These remaining leaves do look happy and glossy, so I think we’ve rescued it in time. I hope.

Finally we have – a new addition to the family. A Christmas present from my mother-in-law and presented early in case anything happened to it at her house! We’ve decided to use it as a Christmas tree, as it has ready-made baubles of a lovely lemon hue. Delicious.

I recently watched ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and was so taken with the song that I decided to seek it out and learn it. Probably driving the husband nuts in the meantime

Oh okay, where to start..

We went to the isle of Mull again and had a wonderfully relaxing, chicken-filled holiday. There are various pictures available on my Flickr. Not so many of the chickens, but I video’d them mostly and haven’t processed the videos yet. One is 550MB. Ahem. Hey, I like chickens. Especially the ones that roost in trees…

We did go and see a house while we were there, and formed plans of purchase, but these have come to nothing as the lady has realised that it’s a jolly nice house and is going to stay in it. Oh well.

I managed to pour orange juice into my trusty dell laptop. There was a fruity electrical-burning smell and a sad fizzling noise. A day of being open to the elements seems to have sorted it all out though, as it is back to life. However, I trusted Phil’s adamant opinion that the thing was toast, and ordered a shiny new bottom-of-the-range MacBook (didn’t want to remortgage the house to afford a nice one!). Am totally in love. To be fair, I could have cancelled the order, and could have sent it back, but you will have to claw this MacBook out of my cold dead fists as it’s BEAUTIFUL. MINE.

I’ve taken the advice of Merlin83b and MattT and purchased a copy of Delicious Library, whereupon the husband and I have spent an hour or so gigglingly scanning in barcodes of various items (including a jar of Branston Pickle, which it declined to recognise). Amusement was heightened when scanning in various Harry Potter DVDs and a spooky voice hissed ‘VOLDEMORT’ at us. Very funny, you strange people.

NaCl,
originally uploaded by synx508.

Last weekend, where weekend begins on a Thursday for purposes of this tale), Phil and I headed out to Bristol to meet up with my brother Andrew, his friends from uni and some beer. We also went to see Pete Atkin in a church in Bristol.
Pete, as usual, was fabulous, if nervous, and a good time was had by all.
Friday, Phil and I wandered blithely around Bristol, making our way to Clifton for an evening of drinking with Andrew and friends. I can totally recommend Bath Ales’ “Gem” if you enjoy a warm toffee-ey ale with plenty of flavour. Much merriment and foolishness ensued, but the very pinnacle of the evening was Chris and Aaron’s chemistry-symbols-with-fingers display. They also do organic molecules, with long-chain molecules dependent on obliging friends to provide extra carbon chains.
It was fun. We should meet up with those guys more often, they are delightfully strange and deliciously intelligent, being Maths and Physics graduates all. Sadly, I’m the dunce of the family.

I’m not sure then why I decided to order some random items from Althaea Soaps and Herbals, a lovely lady in America who hand makes soap from Marsh Mallow and other yummy ingredients.

I am so glad I did. My delicate flower of a husband cannot tolerate most cleansing products but her Mr X Angry Skin Soap is not only tolerated but actively enjoyed.

Also fabulous is the Oatmeal, Honey and Milk variety of the Althaea sugar scrub. Not to say that the other varieties aren’t fabulous too, it’s just I’ve only tried that one. So far. I shall definitely be back for more, and shall try more flavours. It’s been tricky not to keep sniffing my own skin all day.

Melanie ships to the UK so it’s not just a treat for you Americans. Seriously, try some. I’m a total soap convert now.

It was well received, judging by the table contents. One entry amused me greatly – from a user who hadn’t read the email explaining the use and purpose, and discovered the new menu option on his own (it should be noted that ‘1154′ is the name of one of the screens in the application):

“JMC Vessel Red Dwarf Log 26/02/07
The scutters have just found this facility on Level 1154. Rimmer is convinced it’s some form of alien life. Will monitor over the next few days, then jetison as a waste pod if Kryten is unable to connect his groinal attachment.
Lister

JMC Vessel Red Dwarf
Log Addendum 02/03/07
Kryten has reverse-engineered the particle flow accellerator using spares from the android cargo ship we picked up last month. We’ve lost most of the functionality but the memory dumps are very effective for recording notes. Rimmer is dissapointed he couldn’t blast it with the phaser guns.
Lister

JMC Vessel Red Dwarf Log 06/03/07
Ace Rimmer and The Cat are down in engineering to investigate the blockage in the soup dispensers. Last time they were gone for three days. He’s such a smeg head.The laundry deck’s now back on line and Kryten’s caught up with the ironing but I wish he hadn’t put such sharp creases in my boxers.
Lister

JMC Vessel Red Dwarf
Log Addendum 07/03/07
Rimmer and The Cat got back this morning. Bad News. We’re down to out last 4000 poppadums.
Lister”

I use Tellico, which lets me type in ISBN/UPC and retrieve the rest of the detail from Amazon. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now and I think it’s fantastic. I didn’t get on with Alexandria (but I can’t remember why) and I couldn’t be bothered making my own, when Tellico (previously Bookcase) does such a good job.

I’m going to have to learn XSLT it seems, as I don’t like the reports that come out the other end, and they appear to be hackable, but not by mere mortals like me. Something for another day, perhaps. In the meantime, here is the new book list.

Looking again at Alexandria, its output is more along the lines of what I was looking for, plus it’s Ruby, which wins points automatically. I shall give it another try. But not right now. After a day spent hoiking books around, I’m all graunchy around the edges, so I shall now have a bath.

To celebrate the recurrance of this date, I decided to make philb breakfast in bed. As his breakfast of choice is Weetabixâ„¢, this wasn’t too much of an effort..

Breakfast for philb

Also on this day (this year), the Mogret device performed the funniest operation to date. It should be noted that she has climbed in the washing machine before. Today, she climbed in and managed to start the drum revolving, so there was a brief session of hamster-like scrambling in the washing machine before she leaped out in horror and embarrassment. I laughed. Hard. She panic-washed and then exited through the cat flap.

He has submitted his artwork to thingsonsticks. I am so honoured. It’s a fantastic painting (sadly already claimed, otherwise it would certainly have found a home in Bragg-land) and I’m all teary-eyed with joy.

Yes, I’m a soppy fool. So?