Two work-funded piss-ups in one week outside of Christmastide is unusual and welcome, but it was made up for by the demands of the deadlines. Altogether, recent work experiences have increased my determination to produce the desired goods, whilst making it seem more achievable. When plans are mapped out in great detail and with concrete dates, life looks different, especially to people like me who don’t deal with planning their own lives very well. Ask me what I’m doing for Christmas and I’ll shrug. Ask me where the project at work will be on that day and I can tell you precisely where we hope it’ll be. Consequently, as that date approaches, if we’re behind I’m going to end up working stupidly long hours just to get back on track. It’s a very clever way to keep us all on our toes. But also quite reassuring in a not very reassuring way.
The latest weekend is all but over and now Leo is preening himself on my left arm. Meanwhile the latest addition to the family, Bertie the foster cockatiel, is running around the bottom of his cage desperate to come out. We have to re-home him but until then we just have to make sure he’s content. Fortunately he is like all cockatiels I’ve ever met: entirely adorable. He will make someone an extraordinarily good companion.
Yesterday Michele and I went to Fort Washington State Park with the intention of watching the hawks migrate. It turns out we were late for the migration season and so we had to make do with the more quotidian bird spotting. We got chatting to another fellow bird watcher who turned out to be a German radio Ham (his handheld radio was singing morse code melodies through his jacket pocket). We had a long chat during which we discovered he lives a few streets away from us and was delighted at the prospect of mentoring a new, young (hah!), Ham. The experience rekindled my excitement about getting a Ham licence.
The rest of the weekend was pretty mellow: comedy TV, a great curry, a bit of garden maintenance, cracking some Mac software (gdb and hexedit were the only tools required btw), and fixing “The Meanness”. At least it feels like something has been achieved.
