Moving on

Cherryfudge

When I come to think about it, my Mum's magazines on subscription used to come without the extras, though that was some years ago. @redofromstart, there were four packs of seeds on the one I bought, as well as the booklet with the 2 for 1 details. I got rocket, parsley, cosmos and zinnia I think. I wonder if it's worth contacting their social media about it? It might be they'd send you some more as a goodwill gesture.

I handed the ones I couldn't use to someone who can.

@badmemory, I have an image of yours arriving by air, leaving a little trail of seeds due to damage in transit, so the path to your door is marked by accidentally sown flowers. Not very practical, but pretty!

liselle

Yes if you know which month has the offer,etc, I would suggest that you start the subscription two months in advance (assuming it’s a three month offer of course!) as they seem to take forever to set the arrangement up.

Cherryfudge

I've been struggling to keep awake again!

We would normally have been to the car boot sale this morning but neither of us really wanted anything, and we were a bit short of time to do both that and meet up with the family. DH took another box of rubble to the tip and knocked another foot of concrete path to bits. I sat at the computer and went through old photos on my phone, which was telling me I had no space left and then started to act up. I got rid of various duplicates and screenshots so the percentage of storage improved and I've moved a lot of vocabulary into my notebook.

The next thing was what to wear, so I was very grateful that my daughter said she was going in jeans and jumper. I suggested shoes might be useful addition but by this time I'd sorted a few more of the winter jumpers into the big bag for the loft and filled the drawer with summer trousers. There's a temporary store of dresses (well crumpled) on the back of a door but the tee shirts are still in a heap. Anyway I found a nice shirt and scarf to wear with jeans, and off we went.

My phone went a bit crazy on the way there: the screen wouldn't stop flickering from side to side, which is a nuisance but usually resolved by the old 'off and on again' trick. This time, however, it wouldn't stay on the 'slide to switch off' screen but kept jumping to the passcode screen. It wouldn't take the numbers (they would appear and disappear) or my fingerprint. I thought I was faced with waiting till the battery ran out, but when I gave up and left it to sit for a few minutes, it went calm and let me shut it down. I left it like that for a while then put it on again and it was okay. However, it's somehow run me out of credit so I've added more. It doesn't seem to require an update, which is what solved it in the past, so I think I may have to look into replacing it soon. Mind you, I thought that a few months ago.

The restaurant was an artisan pizza place, including a good vegan one for DH. I paid on the understanding people pay me back, so that's now to be sorted out. D thought I was paying with a Clubcard, which earned him a chorus of explanations from others who use their credit card to get points. He never seems to think these things are worth doing, but obviously others do! However, money-wise, we added a tip which I think it's probably right that we take responsibility for, as we didn't consult the others. We also said we'd pick up the tab for J as we were partly celebrating her birthday, which then means we owe A a meal as the other part of the meal was for his birthday. Ah well. We are going to see them next weekend at the other family gathering so perhaps that's our chance to treat him.

We went back to J's for cake and chat. It's a shame L had to work but the rest of us had a nice time. Little N liked playing with J and L's laundry and J's cufflinks (!) and stamping round the wooden dining room floor, where I have to admit she was aided and abetted by her Grandma.

We've handed over a duvet from the loft with D's name on and the birthday present for L, so there's a little more room in the house. Also E has the surplus seeds from GW magazine and everyone has a print of the lovely group photo from the other week.

We got home by tea time (porridge followed by hot cross bun and coffee for me) and I haven't got much else done since. 

Expenditure:
Car (parking) ?
Entertainment - unknown - about £40 on food and drink, £22 on tip, whatever J's meal came to plus whatever temporary expenses were incurred paying the rest. 
Phone £6.
e-book (yesterday) 45p. (I do like whoever is now choosing Kindle daily deals as they rarely chose things I like so I'm not tempted. )

Cherryfudge

I made it to church this morning after some confusion as I hadn't realised I'd be working alongside DH and a group he's in, which has a few people in common with a group I'm in... so instead of not knowing who I was working with, or how much being in charge it might involve, I was just helping and didn't even have to set out or organise anything. I also walked to get there, so some fresh air and exercise.

DH cooked dinner, which was salmon with pasta and sauce. He also remembered some veg that needed to be used, which impressed me a lot as I hadn't.

I sat around reading for a while after dinner (and watching Race across the World), then DH went on his usual Sunday Afternoon walk and I decided to bestir myself and do some gardening. It wasn't all that warm out, but finally having dry grass led to me seizing the opportunity and mowing, which soon warmed me up. I've not touched the plantain for three days now, and was quite disheartened by how much new ground elder has sprouted in two days, but objectively, I can see there's still less than there was, and now I've pushed it back a bit further. Then there were other tidying up jobs to try to get as good access as possible to the bits near the house where it's all overgrown. Some saplings that I'd cut right back a few weeks ago were a couple of feet high again so I've chopped those off, cleared the old growth off the fern that I'm hoping to divide and picked some shattered plant pot bits out of the soil.

I was really worn out afterwards so I had a lie down in bed to read my book and doze a bit.

This evening I did lots of Duolingo and got to near the top of Diamond league. The competition is fierce up there and within seconds I went from third place to eighth, but that's more about people trying to be at the top of the league on a Sunday night when winners are announced and positions are taken for the beginning of a new week. I'm trying really hard to take advantage of the freebie premium days but I think that runs out tomorrow.

I think DH bought milk today but I've not been near the shops. One of the children has asked for bank details to transfer the money for the meal, but I've not checked the status of payments. I was quite pleased with myself as I managed to sort the details into a little spreadsheet with full conviction that it would in this case serve me better than a Word document.

milann

Glad you enjoyed the family gathering 

Sun_Addict

I honestly wish I could do Duolingo without being in a league. I’m just happy to tick off the day’s challenges and get my early bird and night owl chests. The people at the top of the leagues clearly have far too much spare time on their hands 😐 I won top of the diamond league once - never again, it was extremely stressful 😣 

Cherryfudge

Sun_Addict said:

I honestly wish I could do Duolingo without being in a league. I’m just happy to tick off the day’s challenges and get my early bird and night owl chests. The people at the top of the leagues clearly have far too much spare time on their hands 😐 I won top of the diamond league once - never again, it was extremely stressful 😣 

The whole way it's presented is very clever: I read an article on their blog about it. Gamification. I'm with you on the competition at the top - my brain gets tired staying in the Diamond league at all and I'm impressed with you getting to the top!

It would be nice not to have to 'compete', but I do like the occasional freebie premium days. Mine have run out for now - but how's this for a real oddity? I'm a few months into Italian - past the 'there's a snake in my boots' stage and onto 'My neighbour is a cook' - neither of which I'm likely to use in real life. However, I spent a bit of time on the Premium vocabulary review and right in the middle of words like 'table' and 'credit card', they present me with 'sandblasting'. As the characters in their stories might exclaim, 'Cosa?!'

However, when we went to Venice and saw all the amazing glass animals, it was quite useful to know 'ant' and 'spider', which I'd thought were very random. Can't wait to see why I need to know 'sandblasting', but I didn't make a note of it as I'm sure I won't need it all that often.

Cherryfudge

Today has been almost alarmingly windy, but DH and I got out for a run in the morning. Couch to 5K week 3 run 1, so we had a couple of three minute runs in there and the extra challenge of the wind. It's been nice and sunny most of the time but on the chilly side. I intended to do more in the garden but gave up on that when I saw how much the trees were tossing.

DH did mackerel with baked potatoes and veg again for dinner, and I handed him a couple of tops to take to the charity shop. This in no way creates a lot of space but it's two steps in the right direction.

I've finally got down to emailing pensions about how to move forward. They seem to think I've left, but that will be because I left my previous post and my current one doesn't pay enough to make contributions. I've asked if I can make voluntary payments at source, in the hope that the employer will automatically pay their share too: I think it would work out better in the long term to have less now (I have savings and inherited money to fall back on when needed) and more of an income when I'm older. I sent DH a copy and he thinks it makes sense but I'm going to see what the pensions department says.

An odd little thing at work: I was asked to work my 'usual run', which turns out to be one I did twice last week. There are others I've done more often, but I'm wondering if the manager has me in mind to do this one more often? On the other hand, it turned out one of the rooms needed extra cleaning so perhaps that had something to do with it. I also bumped into someone I know through my TA post so we had a quick chat.

Some (largely unplanned) spending has happened. I called in for my prescription on the way home and noticed my favourite brand of hair care products was on offer so I bought a couple of items while they are at a good price (£7 off the full price). Then I went to L!dl for pastries but didn't fancy any when I got there so I bought hot cross buns instead, and various other bits, particularly protein that was marked down. There was just enough room in the freezer for it all. So yes, unplanned spending but hopefully will save a bit in the longer term.

I also need to make a decision on the cappuccino I have on repeat order from A mazon. It works out as less than a penny cheaper per drink, but I don't currently have Pr!me so with postage it would be more expensive. Time to pull out for now, I think, next order is due in September.

Expenditure:
Toiletries £7
Housekeeping £23.70

Cherryfudge

It's lovely and sunny here today, and not so windy, so two loads of washing have gone on the line and DH has been out of doors sanding down the last of the dining chairs. We've also decided it's time we had the washing machine looked at - it's around 14 years old and utterly reliable but increasingly noisy. I hoped it might be something we could tackle ourselves, by which I mean DH could tackle it, but he doesn't think so.

I'm working really hard at not getting down to preparing for my friends coming round this evening. I've got as far as washing my hair, because when I'm really not wanting to settle to something, any little annoyance is magnified and the hair was annoying me. It did give me the opportunity to try out the new conditioner, and it's 'so far, so good'.

I've only had an automatic reply to my pension email, so no decision to be made yet. We're away this weekend and into next week, so that will be a second week in which I can't work much, and I only accrue holidays according to how many hours I work, so it's just money not earned, not annual leave.

Right, I'm off to plan the food for later and type up some notes.

Cherryfudge

The evening didn't go to plan, see here. That will teach me to check my diary! Never mind, I wanted a quiet week.

I spent some more time fighting the ground elder - it really does form new leaves in a day or two, or maybe they were forming anyway and just seized the opportunity to open up when the bigger leaves were gone. I'm dividing garden time between searching for new leaves in areas I've already cut and the slower work of making inroads where ground elder is growing among other things. The idea is that I deplete it as much as possible before trying to rescue plants I'd like to keep.

DH asked, but the local washing machine repair place won't repair a machine as old as ours, so I think we will just keep running it till it stops and replace it with something as like as possible. Ironic that we bought what was then a larger capacity machine to cope with having three teens with us, but it still works for us as just two adults.

I've done a bit of decluttering: 10 'paper decisions' are now in the recycling. I've also had an email acknowledgement from Duolingo as I reported that my account won't let me do the practice sessions to build up my 'lives'. That's slowed me down a bit! The phone problems I had on Saturday are still coming and going - saving all my photos to the cloud and deleting them off the phone should have cured it, and probably would if the photos had gone, but they haven't. I don't know what I did there but it clearly wasn't the right thing. I do seem to be having a chapter of accidents and mishaps, but at least it's nothing major. (Thinks of a few friends with really hard things to cope with).

DH has bought A's birthday gift ready for next weekend, so I need to see that we have a card for him and perhaps find a little something to add to the gift, as I know we spent more on his sister and I wouldn't like him to fall short, especially as he's sharing his birthday with someone's UK wedding celebration so he doesn't really get to be in the spotlight.

Expenditure:
Gift around £20.
Housekeeping £16.19
Medical £1.60