After clearing the decks at chore-city this morning I walked (very slowly) into town with my middle daughter. She’s on crutches at the moment - recovering from anterior cruciate ligament surgery - a repair on an injury sustained in a rugby match about 18 months ago. It’s probably going to take a year to recover fully, but at least she’s up and about.
The reason for our journey was to drop leftover painkillers at the pharmacy. Given they were hugely powerful post-surgery drugs, apparently they are best disposed of by the authorities, rather than ending up in land-fill and being scavenged by drug users.
We continued on into town - about a mile walk - and had a late breakfast at the huge pub where she normally works. One of the managers came by to say hello, which lifted her spirits enormously. She’s been going a bit stir-crazy at home, so getting out into the world for the first time in weeks was kind of huge really.
Afterwards we wandered over to the book-shop and I very nearly bought a copy of “The Full Moon Coffee Shop” by Mai Mochizuki. Rather than buy any more, I’m trying to just write down the names of books that look interesting in a list, and I’ll re-visit it when I’ve caught up (like that’s ever going to happen).
While out I did pick up a calendar re-fill for my old paper filofax. I know it’s a bit of a throw-back, but I still tend to double-up whatever is in Google into a paper filofax on the corner of my desk. It never goes wrong, and it doesn’t require any batteries.
When we got home I put the order in for a new bullet journal - it should arrive on Sunday. Rather than live ALL of my life in the computer, I’m returning to using a bullet journal this year. I used them for years before switching over to modern toys like Obsidian, Bear, or Notion - and have missed them ever since. The book by Ryder Carroll about how the idea of the “bullet journal” came about is a fascinating read, if you’ve not read it. A lot more thought went into it than you might expect.
I might have also ordered a retro keyboard and mouse that I’ve been looking at for months this afternoon. I’ve gone through so many keyboards in recent years it’s getting a bit ridiculous. I usually buy the cheapest standard-shape keyboards from Logitech, but after having two in a row exhibit the same problems with bouncing keys, I foolishly walked into PC World a few months back and bought an HP keyboard - which looks nice, but is strangely horrible to type on. The retro keyboard that will arrive on Sunday is much more like the kind of keyboard you might have seen twenty or thirty years ago - with clacky keys, and more shape to it. I don’t get the obsession with flat keyboards.
Anyway.
Just wanted to empty a few thoughts out of my head about “Stranger Things”. I finally made it through the last few episodes last night. Am I really alone in thinking that it kind of “jumped the shark” at some point in season 5? What started several years ago as a goonies type adventure into the paranormal with a group of children, somehow pivoted in the final episodes to the chief of police machine-gunning a room full of mercenary soldiers in cold blood? And the final plot point (which I won’t ruin) was massively contrived.
The only good thing that came out of Season 5 was Mrs Wheeler - who turned into a complete and utter bad-ass while defending her youngest daughter from one of the monsters in (I think) the first episode.
Onwards and upwards. Fallout season 2 has arrived on Amazon. I wonder if myself and my other half can binge-watch it over the weekend?