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Precipitation and the art of teleportation

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I’m feeling pretty virtuous. Bank Holiday Monday, and I took down the Christmas decorations, performed an exercise video, filled the green bin with bits of unwanted garden, read and made notes (or actively read if you prefer) chapter two of Book 1 – Global Warming, and set up my precipitation gauges.

I changed my mind about the type of receptacle. I went for a couple of jam jars, but used the ex-Evian funnel in one of them. And, just to overcomplicate things, I’m going to set up two more in week two. With wax in the bottom, because I’m worried that the non-flat-bottoms will distort my results.

Yes, it’s probably not that important, but if I’m going to do the thing, I may as well do it properly. Anyway – I’ll post pictures in the next few days, and you can marvel at the positioning and sophisitication of my scientific techniques. And the messiness of my front garden. I’m hoping that my neighbours won’t have pee’d in it (more on that later).

Let’s all hope for some precipitation people. Ideally, that precipitation will come in the form of snow, but anything will do. I suspect I will rapidly lose interest if I keep going out into the cold to measure nothing.

So, a good and productive day, all in all. The book is a little slow to get going, to be honest. Every now and then there’s a box explaining what a pie chart is (for example). I’m a bit of a maths spaz, but even I’m okay with pie charts. They’re starting with basics, and so far I’m not feeling at all taxed.

Still, I’m studying again, and that makes me happy. Plus, the zombies haven’t arrived yet. This can only be A Good Thing. Particularly as we haven’t finalised the Zombie Plan yet…

Joe invited our neighbours around for mulled wine last night too. The mulled wine was yum; the neighbours entertaining, with their stories of flat-faced pigs and gigantic four-foot rabbits. Seriously, this thing’s a monster. I’ve only seen a photo, but that’s quite close enough.

He has a jet engine, which he’s promised to get going in the garden this summer. When we have a barbecue. Ha ha, I said. But no! He really does have a jet engine. Apparently it caused a bit of a ruction between him and another neighbour (not the one who likes to get naked and run around the front courtyard).

I reckon we should have a go at attaching it to a bicycle – it’ll sort out that big hill going into Radford Semele when we go to the pub. It’s a very big hill.

We chattered about this and that, and discovered that they like talking to strange people, which is grand – I also like talking to strange people, but I’m a little shy, so it’s nice to have someone to take the lead. We’ve vaguely planned a canoe trip around Anglesey. I think. I was talking about a couple of days with a tent on the Wye, but somehow we got onto sea kayaking and trips around entire islands. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I’ll give almost anything a go.

So, gossip was gossiped, threats to pee in my experiment were declared, plans were made, and we were informed that we could, in fact, attend the residents’ association meetings. Which seem to be an excuse to drink wine and gossip. It’ll be a method of getting to know the neighbours better anyway, and that must be at least partly a good thing, right?

And so to bed. Which brings me on to the teleportation aspect of this entry. We had dispatched our smaller cat, Whiskey, to the living room just before retiring. Noodle was fast asleep on the sofa. (Noodle is our cow-print cat.) Lying in bed, having a read, trying to put off the horrible return to work after ten days off – and Whiskey appeared – just appeared – on the bed next to me.

I can only conclude that she has learned to teleport. She was very smug about it too. I’m intrigued as to what else she may be up to…

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