peds

Anyone got anything fun planned? Schools closed tomorrow, and the fella I work for on Fridays has rightfully said we'll call it off... so in my house we'll probably have a lie-in, relaxed breakfast if we've got power, then I might take the dogs for a cautious stroll up the hill, observe the carnage. What's the threatened damage around your way?

Thank God they don't have to hire women anymore! Unpredictable, flighty creatures. Things will be more level-headed once they've left the workforce.

Brittas Empire... now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Would it be worth a rewatch, all these decades later? For the record, I think I'm LANTRA qualified for stumpgrinder. I don't know how to use one. I'm also LANTRA woodchipper, and I do know how to use one. So, yes, it's just like the Brittas Empire.

Lads! Hold your horses! I've been taming an escaped griselinia hedge yesterday and today. The homeowner, a builder, arrived midmorning to grab his trailer with, I think, a plumber's mate in tow. He, the plumber's mate, started chatting about the relative merits and complaints of the different species of hedge. At least you can bring griselinia back under control, I told him, after he complained about how quickly it grows. Not like leylandii which, as we well know, has to be removed if it manages to escape. You'll never get a hedge back, I tell him, because if you cut past the green and into the brown, it won't grow again. "Yes it will." He replies. Err... "I cut back a leylandii hedge with the flail mower, right down. It grew back fine." Umm, are you sure it was a leylandii? I ask. "Oh yes." So there you have it. Don't worry about going past the green, it'll grow back just fine.

Very thorough, you've got to give them that.

HUGELY annoying to walk away from a pair of boots in storage for a while and come back to crumbling soles. Not been working long enough for it to happen to chainsaw boots, but I've lost a few pairs of walking boots that way. Definitely something I'm aware of when purchasing chainsaw boots now.

Bruce Jenner? I wonder how long before he gets rounded up and... reassigned...

Sloppy is right! He's got a weird habit of spazzing out a bit when he's up on stage. I think he clocked it himself at the time, though. The second one was a lot more crisp. In case anyone missed the first one. Edit: would someone please put a sticker on Gareth's chart for sharing his fun history fact. Ta.

I was out. Considered using fresh statlers, but you'd need a crust of bread to muppet up with.

Gnocchi with roquefort, cream, broccoli stalk, apple, and celery leaf.

Wotcha team. Both feet firmly on the ground today, pottering around someone's garden trimming the bushes. A welcome rest day, to be honest.

Like I say, I don't know enough about it to make any kind of meaningful comment. But that probably puts me in the same boat as 99% of the people who bought into it...

Do please keep us updated. I don't know enough about it, never have. But most people seem to be describing it... unsympathetically. Pump and dump, rug pull, scam, Hawk Tuah, etc.

I work mostly on my own, but I've been subbing 2 days a week for someone a few months now. The fumes of other people's saws, after breathing nothing but Aspen for a while... it's a shock.

Gosh! Very thorough. "The collection now has 4568 cataloged items (not counting duplicates) including 3205 unique ascenders, descenders and related devices; 676 different carabiners; 223 distinct pitons, bashies, and heads; 389 varied nuts, cams, and hooks; and 75 disparate hammers, ice axes, crampons, and related tools. Thanks to many contributors, it continues to grow at an accelerating pace. Go to the Recent Updates page to see what's new, and the Construction Plans page to see what's coming. The Collection at a Glance Area shows my equipment display at the 2023 NSS Convention, where I displayed 3702 items. This was a huge effort, dwarfing the previous display at the 2009 International Congress of Speleology/NSS Convention held in Kerrville, Texas, USA, where I displayed 1299 unique items. It took me 22 months to prepare displays for 2023. I promised myself never to do this again, as the equivalent task now would be much larger."

Use Aspen fuel (or similar). It removes the problem you are worried about entirely. Alternatively, wait there for a few minutes for someone to come along and tell you that Aspen is overrated and expensive, and you should just do it the cheaper, old-fashioned way.

That's quite the ride.

How many Starship launches have they done now? Quick google: Since April 2023, the SpaceX Starship has been launched 7 times, with 4 successes and 3 failures. Still in the early stages, a little rapid unplanned disassembly is to be expected. Hopefully they got some good data and can learn from it. I'm so conflicted! I hate to see anything that would puff up Musk's ego, but I so desperately want to see Starship succeed!