Tadam! Da Vinci Code Surfaces!

One of the things I did on my London tour was to leave a few books here and there. These are the "Chance" or "Community Chest" squares of my Monopoly game.

One of the places was outside the Temple Church, and nine months later, I got a journal entry!

Little thumb of mystery.

I mentioned that DS had given me his little Samsung MP3 player, taking back the blue football he knew and loved? Well, he did, and after re-recording the first CDs from a Michael Connelly thriller audiobook, I transferred them across and went for my run.

Bliss! No stopping to change cassettes, no batteries running flat, no tape problems, no lump of a cassette player jouncing up and down in the small of my back. Just chapter after chapter by one of my favorite crime mystery writers.

I can fit three CDs on and have a bit of room left over, and as I only used up one CD this morning, that gives me quite a bit of spare capacity.

Mind you, the flip side is that I can't just take a pocketful of cassettes and feed them in, I've first got to rip the CDs and transfer them to the device, renaming the files so that they appear in order. This merely transfers the fiddly business from out on the road to at home, but then again, I spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer, so it's one more computer thing to do.

The ACT library system has been getting books on CD, and I've had to let them be, a pity because they tend to bve the more recent books. Not that I don't have a CD player or three, it's just that listening to them at home means I cant do anything else much, maybe hit the exercise bike, because if I listen to a book while I'm at the computer, I can't do anything else. Not like listening to the radio where I can tune in or out - a book I have to be constantly tuned in.

The kids complained that their bathroom had no hot water and this morning we discovered why - the hot water system has sprung a leak and water has been pouring out into under the house. Lots of stuff - mainly the old cardboard boxes I store under there for shipping out bulky eBay sales - soaked and water a few centimetres deep in places. Normally this is bone dry. Lucky we have a smaller HWS we use for our bathroom, but still, it's more trouble and expense to get a replacement for the big one. Gak.

I also discovered that the dishwasher runs off the HWS, so I had to swap over the inlet hose, a matter of pulling out the various bits and pieces we store under the sink - I discovered a bottle of scotch stored beside the oven cleaner and dishwashing tablets, the result of some special duty-free deal from Kerri's travels hidden away because nobody in the house drinks scotch, "Well it's not going to go off, is it>" she asked me, "after all it's Scotch!" - and rooted around with wrench and multigrips until one hose was on the other tap, and the corresponding plug was changed over.

What else? Well, I listened to JimOn's New Years Day show. He'd pre-recorded it before Christmas, we'd had a Chit-chat session during the recording, and another one during the broadcast, during which JimOn himself had more participation than he usually gets when he's busy behind the microphone. Genevieeve had the folk show after, and when she played an Australian bagpiper doing a rock tune, YokoSpungeon declared that "this is the lift music in Hell's elevator" and signed off for the night. I love her turn of phrase! Genevieeve must have been somewhat miffed by this because she reckoned Yoko was heading down on that particular elevator.

Oh yes. A card from danadoodle! I think I got the lion's share of the Skyring family cards this year.

I appreciate them, but please, no more - I'm not into Christmas cards, and while you might get the odd random packet of Tim-Tams from me, that's on a random basis. Besides, sending out packets of airmail Tim-Tams at Christmas to everyone I cared about would probably bankrupt me!