Gardening is definitely tiring

So, today I’ve been a busy little bee. In fact, this whole weekend has been nicely busy although I’ve not had a chance to go and see anyone (which is a shame). Yesterday was spent on the Dead Bug Jumping podcast (not out until the 24th, but you could all subscribe… although, actually, there’s been way more access on the site than previously). I’ve still not managed to cure the hum from the record deck but I’m about 90% certain that I need to change the cable in the tonearm, which is hassle, but I think would markedly improve the situation, because I suspect from its behaviour that it’s broken or not connecting well. The problem with this concept is that I then need some kind of connector to connect to the little connectors that sit on the back end of the cartridge and I’m not quite sure what they are, or should be. At the moment they’re made from bent-brass connectors which once connected the original cartridge.

Anyhow. At some point I need to accost the lovely John and see if he’s got a dead mouse I can cannibalise for cable, because apparently mouse cable is pretty similar in weight to audio cable. Then I need to dismantle the tone-arm, and fit it.

So that’s in the future, and will hopefully cure the hum and the tendency of the deck to suddenly drop from normal audio levels to something very, very quiet. Doing the podcast took up pretty much all of yesterday. Today, in contrast, was a much more active day. Keeping to the 20 minutes a day cleaning (‘cept it’s 40 minutes-only-on-days-off and I’d ended up not doing it yesterday, because yesterday I woke up at 4:30 am for no readily apparent reason, and couldn’t get back to sleep) today I dusted and swept the lounge. Between Kathryn and I our house is creeping towards the level of cleanliness and tidyness we want. It’s not like it’s ever been horrendous (except at moments of extreme decorating action), but with both of us working shifts it’s been hard for us to hit a point where cleaning was as frequent. What tended to happen was it would get overly dusty, then we’d have a frantic cleaning frenzy, and then it would deteriorate slowly again.

This new process does seem to be making it move towards a higher level of cleanliness with less dust around. Indeed, it’s possible we’ll soon actually be cleaning before things are noticably dusty, which is nice.

The other thing I did today was spend an inordinate amount of time in the garden shredding things. I actually went out there to finish digging up the shrub* which has been sat in what is intended to be the pea bed. This actually went surprisingly well, and I took the opportunity to pull up more of the sycamore trees (I’m told that’s what they are). There were a lot of them. Somewhere in the region of 20 of the sodding things. I also chopped the last chunks off the bushes that now lie where we’re planning to have some sort of raised alpine garden type affair / rock garden. It was going to be a pond, but for the sake of cost, time and sanity (and because we’re not going to live here forever) it’s now going to be a rockery**.

I then took this pile of stuff down to the other pile of stuff and combined them (although the roots have been kept separate, as I imagine our garden shredder will not be terribly fond of stones). I pulled the shredder from the garage, the ear defenders from the house, and spent a merry hour shredding stuff. It is immensely tedious, it’s too noisy to really listen to anything on headphones, although I might give it ago. And being as it’s just a little electric shredder with very blunt blades*** I suspect it’s going to take quite a while to shred it’s way through the rest of the pile. I did about &fract14; of the pile today which it has made into quite a nice mulchy type substance. That hour or so has taken at least one load of car-to-tip-chunks of wood and made them into something useful though, which is quite pleasing in and of itself. However the battle with the bush and the shredder has left me fairly tired this evening…

Thankfully I’ve spent a little of today reading some of Gail Carriger’s Soulless. The first three books of the, I believe, four part series were in the Amnesty store (although they were only 50p less than they would have cost in The Works, new, but appeared to be new). Having read the back and a little of the writing I thought they sounded like an entertaining romp, so bought the set there and then. I’ve now got to the Epilogue of the first one, and if they maintain this standard will happily read the rest. It isn’t, as it says on the front, wit that recalls Austen and P.G. Wodehouse (I feel that’s overstating it), but they are good, and very funny. So err, that’s a recommendation. I’ve got such a massive pile of books to read though… Ready Player One was a gift from friends, which I’ve been wanting to read for ages, but which has got waylaid by not being next to the bed at the opportune moment. Now I’m tempted to read all three of the Alexia Tarabotti novels in a row, since I’ve got them, and I’m in to one of them now.

Other entertainments at the moment are Elementary which has been uniformly excellent, Heading Out which I think is terribly underrated. But then I think Sue Perkins rocks. I’ve also, obviously, been watching Doctor Who, which has left me a little underwhelmed this season, so far. Cold War was definitely stronger than the second episode (“Rings of Akhaten”), but didn’t amaze me. Rings of Akhaten had more plot holes than I care to mention, which was disappointing because I quite liked the concept of story, and I think Clara is an excellent companion, and Matt Smith is doing his usual loveable Doctor Who. Meh. Hopefully it’ll pick up. Maybe they used all their best ideas on the 50th Anniversary Episode (which better be good, god damn it). I’ve also listened to an awful lot of Sallie Ford and The Sound Outside, which I heartily recommend.

In other news, my quest for an iTunes replacement lead me to Media Monkey which looks ideal, except that it’s not available on Mac. *sad face*.

* Contrary to popular opinion, we do not require ‘a shrubbery’. Not even ‘a nice one’.
** Again, just to be clear, not a shrubbery.
*** I’ve just discovered you can buy new blades for it for 20 quid. It’s probably worth it, considering the quantity of stuff left to shred.