Had a bonus half day yesterday, to take number two son off grandparents' hands as he has a streaming cold. I didn't want him sneezing over Pauline, she does not want a cold.
I'm sure loads of people look after their kids when they're working from home but to do it for any amount of time would really impact on what I was getting done.
Was Jim's birthday yesterday too, Clare took him over a present we all chipped in for and I actually chose... a chromebook, a new laptop that hopefully can't get slowed down with dodgy installs and virusses. I didn't make it clear to Clare that it was a special kind of laptop, so they struggled to install some software on it, but I hope it'll do the job for them. It's got to be better and faster than their nearly-ten-year-old machine. I can't even take their old machine off them and put linux on it, I tried but it's too old to boot off a usb. I might be able to do it if I burn it onto a disk, haven't tried that yet. I have to go to their house at some point to set up their printer on it, hope that goes smoothly...
So despite having the afternoon off I still didn't even see Dim on his birthday, only Clare and Number one son did.
We went to B&Q when Clare came in to look at christmas trees. Good news the beloved wife will finally relent and get an artificial tree. Not this year of course, we have one more year of dragging the mess in and out of the house, but next year I am allowed to buy a reusable tree. Just as long as it is a very expensive one.
Maybe next year I'll get round to joining the decorations up to music. Thought about it last year, didn't get around to it again, and I don't have the spare money to invest in new kit right now. I have got our outside lights on a timer. When I get the other lights out of the loft they will be too, then maybe I'll get another thing this year...
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Wed + dad to two, I'm a full-stack web engineer, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.