Tuesday 8
The Apple App Store-thing recommended a game called Paper Mingle. You swipe tiles up, down, left or right. Tiles of a similar design get merged when you swipe them together. You either have to gain a set number of points from your swipes or merge enough tiles to make a particular style (there are four designs at each level). And you only have a set number of moves each time.
It’s quite distracting, actually!
The only problem now is that, sometimes, when I close my eyes I see a board with tiles on it…
Sunday 13
I realise that I miss the routines of work. Not at work, necessarily, but of work. I’m hopeless in the morning so I used to shave the evening before. This also meant I didn’t run the risk of bleeding over the collar of my work shirt – very important if it’s a white one.
I think I’ll get back into the shaving habit on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I’ve a short-notice interview (with a 10-minute presentation to give) tomorrow, so I’ll have to shave for that.
Wednesday 16
Five years since Jo Cox was murdered. I remember the day well, as it galvanised my desire to take voluntary redundancy and escape the utter idiots we seemed to have in charge. And the ‘digital PR’ person who couldn’t even send a simple tweet after hours, so I had to do his job as well as mine while trying to grieve.
The last five years have not gone the way I would have wanted, on any level. But at least I don’t have to work with or bump into that fool any more.
Thursday 17
My printer finally gave up the ghost last month. Technically, it was an accidental mercy killing; HP printers have this odd design where you have to lift up the whole top part of the printer to change the ink cartridges, and my OfficeJet 7410 never sounded happy when I opened and closed it. It won’t close at all now and the panel is unresponsive so off to recycling it goes. It’s at least 12 years old though, possibly 14 years; the wifi stopped working after a few years, the sheet feeder not long after.
So now I have an HP OfficeJet Pro 8085e. One difference is that there are now four cartridges instead of the previous two. There’s a tab to pull which is designed to then tear the protective wrapping off, but it’s attached to the label on the cartridge that tells you which colour it is. And the instructions use those silly pictograms to tell you what goes where, while not telling you how much effort it takes to snap off the protective covering over the part of the cartridge where the ink is.
On the plus side it seems to be working well. Which is nice.
Wednesday 23
More printeryness. It seems that my older 7410 used to reduce the print size somewhat. Looking at my CV the text is larger on the new printer and the margins smaller. Some reformatting has been necessary. But I have just printed out a document from Word on my iPad, which is awesome!
Tuesday 29
World Cups and the Euros always remind me of Italia ’90. I took my first solo holiday, by train, ferry and train to see Birgit in Münster. So I was lying on her bed when David Platt scored that extra-time winner against Belgium. She was next door with a friend, I hasten to add.
She did text me before the game to congratulate me on the England win, which I did suspect was an attempt at psychology. In the event she was correct, although you would have bet your house on Thomas Müller scoring. Onward to Ukraine, and the player who seemed to be wearing a sports bra…