So far, so good

t has been nearly 24 hours for the new arrivals and they seem to be coping OK. I spent many hours working on them yesterday, checking their condition every 10 minutes or so until going to sleep. Time-consuming? For sure. Even gave me a physical headache. But the first few hours or days are critical, I wanted to be sure the creatures all get along and, if not, intervene before it’s too late.

Learned from experience…

I don’t expect this week to be busy anyway. Many things have calmed down, people go back to work, and this coming week/days/weekend there are many fans walking past the streets here to concerts, including the very weird fans of Melanie Martinez. The music scene has gotten truly bizarre.

They pretend to

ids of the 1980s did not have computers at home, except those born in the late 80s or mid 80s. People born in the early 80s seldom had a PC at home unless a parent needed one for work or was working in the “IT” or similar industry/occupation. Mobile phones did exist, but very few people had them back then. To us, the kids, phones were “on the hook” and TV was the thing to watch things on (with a remote control; some TVs didn’t have that yet).

Now, by contrast, kids grow up with skinnerboxes and computers, such as tablets. They’re being spied on, they get exposed to loads of rubbish, and politicians who grew up in the 60s get to decide if it’s OK or not OK.

Politicians don’t represent the public interest.

Staying in Manchester all August

HIS month is nearly over and we did not leave Greater Manchester, only Manchester ‘proper’.

Next year we plan to go somewhere sunny.

Thankfully Manchester was very sunny almost the whole month. It’s not good for Manchester’s water reserves and for nature; but it makes Manchester feel a bit like a holiday resort.

O tomorrow morning we leave for the day (or half-day) and enjoy the birthday, followed by a week of rest. We’re not getting younger, so we might as well make the most of life and making the most of it does not mean being online or wasting any moment in social control media garnering “likes” and digital greetings.

We still do greetings the old, traditional way. 20 years later it’s a lot easier to revisit things.

People who are too dependent on some “Facebook account” will have nothing analogue to show.

XACTLY one week ago, on Wednesday morning, I sent the papers associated with the lawsuit I’m lodging against the Serial Strangler from Microsoft. Afterwards I went to Superdrug and spent 30 minutes examining the prices of non-edible goods, seeing that packaging got smaller, prices are much higher, and services barely exists anymore.

At the Post Office, there are still human workers, but they’re nowhere near as friendly or useful as decades ago. They act like they do you a favour by actually serving you (which they must). They’re basically a private business now (the tasks got offloaded to local shops) and postage costs have grown about 5-fold in 20 years. What justifies those price increases? The cost of fuel? The sour face of staff?

The world is getting ruder, more expensive, and there’s a moral obligation (I think) to do something about it.

HIS morning when I went to town I took an umbrella with me. Rare stuff. Thankfully it was small and I never needed to use it. Later, in the afternoon, I got caught in the rain during a jog, so I ran back home.

Now there’s some strong wind (not gale force, but strong nonetheless) and more rain. The city needs this. The grass everywhere looks like it’s dying.

Climate change is real. Check the food prices.

began ‘breeding’ shells or snails last year. There are now well over 100 of them. They seem happy. I need to feed them more and more over time because their total number continues to increase. To me, they’re nature near the desk. They have their little colony and they don’t interfere with anything. I’ve never seen even one that is dead… so far.

How could I have missed this hobby of adorable pets (creatures) all those years?