meridian_rose

An update in which I feel I'm constantly repeating myself


Internet is still not fixed. We did get another engineer out who said the previous dickheads who refused to lift the slabs had marked the job as complete, which is why no follow up until we complained again. He was very apologetic and sent a note to his manager and gave his contact details in case we don't hear back so he can push it.

Whereforeart thou summer? It's sometimes temperate but frequently chilly, lots of rain, grey days. It rained yesterday (my dad's 72nd birthday which also happens to be St Swithin's Day) so legend says it'll rain for the next 40 days and the rain from last night continued well into this morning.

It's a busy last week of term so lots of end of year school admin to do. Eldest nephew's leavers assembly was today, an emotional time.

I've tried to catch up on my reading here at DW but still have a few tabs open and a whole inbox to sort at some point.

I'm behind on GYWO, not loads but a bit and that sucks too but I'm struggling to write at the moment. Maybe I'll get back to it soon. I have a load of challenges including graphics to do for lands-of-magic.
I am absolutely not signing up for anything else right now!

So one new wifi hub and pc dongle and another week of intermittent connection/outages, Virgin Media admitted there was still a problem and sent out another engineer. He traced the issue to bad connection between main line and where it enters the property.
So we're waiting 2 weeks for new cabling to be installed!

It's not all bad...when the weather is nice, there's gardening to do and reading outside. And I do need a decent balance of online/offline activity.

It has been frustrating in terms of work however, and my Dreamwidth reading has fallen by the wayside. I've been working on anything with a deadline (completed some landsofmagic challenges, posted for unconventional courtship and today posted intoabar) with everything else having to wait.

Not sure if I'm 'missing' the sunshine challenge but as for the snowflake challenge I think the prompts stay open for whenever you want them :)

Now if we could have a few more dry days it would be nice and the temperature to remain around the 17-18C we've been having that would be nice!

It has been a Weekend.

1) I've had and am still having internet issues which is frustrating. Wifi is on, then slow, and then off. Certain sites are slow to load, others won't function. There have been issues with ISP in the area but they're supposed to be fixed now. Might be router or our wifi extender. /sigh/

This means I'm struggling to keep with anything. I did manage to post the mega music mix with songs relating to colours which was good because I'd put a lot of work in and needed to make the deadline! I also discovered some new songs while making it which was good.

2) Youngest nephew came down what looks like norovirus on Friday evening. All the weekend plans went out of the window, including needing his and sis's baptism to be postponed. He's still being ill so they've called 111 and were told to get in touch with GP. Fingers crossed.

3) I did go to church and it was Pentecost and I still wore my red dress for the annual congratation pic. One of the young girls, 11ish, saved the day when Reverend Mandy's husband couldn't get his phone camera to work and the girl discovered he was using 'time lapse' and not 'timer'!

4) We've had good weather finally, though with some cloud cover and strong cooler winds so I've been able to read outside a little in lieu of doomscrolling as I'm wifi lacking, but not as much as I'd have liked.

5) Talking with melagan, re the question she answered about "what have you got in your pockets"? /obligatory gollum reference/

Having had kids she's learned that one approaches with extreme care, what's in those little pockets before going into the laundry. Hopefully, it's nothing that moves.

My response: "My brother in law is just as much a culprit for putting things in wash without emptying pockets. Loose change more than once and one time a screw from doing DIY.
Speaking of things that move: amazingly one time sis had washed a throw so a quick, half-load job. I opened the washing machine to help her put the throw on the line and there was a butterfly, still alive clinging to the door. We put it outside on a plant and it flew away. It must have been above the water level, an incredibly lucky escape."

6) I'm still editing the unconventional courtship fic. I don't need wifi for that. I'm on the text-to-speech part, with Balabolka reading to me I'm more likely to catch mistakes and clumsy sentence construction that I'd skim over when reading it for myself.

7) A cute OFMD merman love drawing "Don't Die" by mific at drawesome or directly at AO3

Thanks to everyone who left me messages/comments/hugs. It's appreciated. I will get back to you all soon. I took a brief hiatus which was the best thing.
( Read more... )

I've finally responded to all the comments on my previous personal (BAG) post, I think. Apoloiges for the delay, and posting my next update before replying to the comments on the previous one. After my much needed rant I took a very short break and I seem to have been playing catch-up ever since - see also ISP issues, below.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my post, which received a decent amount of attention at Tumblr too. I've polished it up and posted it to my professional blog and promo'd at my professional Tumblr: The Myth of the Relationship Hierarchy Strikes Again wordpress tumblr
I'll reblog the original post with links to the professional post when my ISP lets me properly access resource hungry sites like Tumblr/Feedly/Facebook/Photobucket. I'm having serious issues with Virgin Media and from what I've read, I'm not the only one.

I posted a brief note/mini meta about Leverage's Parker here

I've got three trope bingo fills to post and then I can claim bingo, fingers crossed.

It snowed briefly today, didn't settle, but highly unusual for this time of year in the West Midlands. We're almost at Mayday, Beltaine, where is our late spring weather?