Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 9 January 2022

Diane: Stay safe and stay warm.

Hot. 40 C & humid. Too hot to respond to posts. Covid numbers increasing across Aussieland (except WA which has closed borders). Idiots on Gold Coast (QLD) are having covid parties as they think that catching it will give them immunity.

Men have two faults – everything they say and everything they do.

The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me. (Howard Nemerov)

My wife says I have two faults. I don’t listen and something else. (t shirt message)

Such a contrast to read of your hot temps, AQ, and poor Diane there on another continent, feeling frozen. I hope you can both cope with the extremes, and it's short lived.

I slept through most of the football game which was on TV last night, (my OHs team so "must have" viewing) and yet still slept solidly when I went to bed. I seem to have a huge capacity for sleep nowadays. Hoping to get on with boring h.work today to catch up.

LINDA - I wish I knew your secret. I wake after 2-3 hours sleep, can't get back to sleep despite camomile tea, prowling, reading. . . and then between 4-5 am, I drop off for another 2 hours or so. Too often I snooze in evening, particularly on the rare occasion when I watch TV (mostly repeats of repeats during summer).

I managed to clear half a drawer of extinct paper this arvo until interrupted by Friend phoning. Lovely to talk to a human other than OH & checkout girls.

Back to sunshine today after Monday turned dull. Nothing happening here - except for the shredding and flinging which seems to be affecting all our households. Slowly getting through answering christmas communications too - can't do much as concentration levels are poor right now.

Got a lot done this morning, & was pleased with myself. However, after my OH appeared at lunchtime, things went downhill: not his fault!!

We received a lot of post - most of it was junk, but three letters all carried bad news of one kind or another. One of these was a bank statement from my late brothers bank here in the UK. Now, as anyone knows, when you are deceased your assets including the bank accounts are all frozen. So if I'm still receiving his statements (he died in November) then no one has told the bank. Sigh.........

I will need to communicate with his daughters to ask if they even knew that he had this & other assets in the UK. So it looks as if my brothers muddled way of life will continue to cause problems to others even though he has gone. I despair.

I hope that you aren't left to sort it all out, LINDY but it seems as if you've been doing it anyway, one way or another, if he was content for you to receive his bank statements all these years. Strange...
A quiet day here, unless you count the noise outside - pavement dug up since last Friday for fibre optic broadband. I think that they may have finished although the orange barriers are still there.
Best not to talk about sleep, it's been particularly elusive for several nights.
Thinking about LYNETTE.

Morning all:  For some odd reason I've been sleeping very well lately.  I do wake up after about three hours but I trundle around the house for a few minutes then get back in bed and read for a bit before falling asleep again.  Re reading, I just finished Jaqueline Winspear's (Maisie Dobbs author) loosely constructed autobiography (This Time Next Year We'll be Laughing), which made me feel nostalgic for growing up in England.  I also just finished Countdown to Bin Laden by Chris Wallace (about all the planning for the raid on the Abbottabad house where he was hiding out) and now I'm on Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon valley Startup by John Carreyrou, a best seller here, about Elizabeth Holmes's company Theranos.  She was just found guilty of massive fraud after years of lying about her company's 'revolutionary' blood testing equipment (which never really existed).  Amazing what a combination of delusion, hubris and greed can do.....

Lindybird:  I'm betting your nieces have no idea about the UK bank account.  Good luck sorting that out.  We got a letter from the State of California advising my husband that he had $1,800 sitting unclaimed in some account.  He was sure it was a scam but I checked the website (which turned out to be legit) and he had indeed forgotten all about the account.  Which makes you wonder.....

AQ:  I hate high temps  - they wear you out, especially with humidity.  Do hope you get some relief soon....   CNN had an article this morning about people trying to get infected with Omicron.  No shortage of idiots in the world.

OG: Hope your decreased concentration doesn't result in your flinging the wrong thing.

Hope Lynette isn't getting too overwhelmed by practicalities on top of everything else....

Take care all.

Aussies are said to be panic buying again. Not just toilet paper & RATs but mince, chicken, fruit & veg. Must be the 2 major chains, C & WW, as there were no empty shelves at my SA-based supermarket this morn.

Hot and humid. And noisy. This week, Next Doors are having some sort of treatment to their new terrazzo drive & paths. Last week it was noisy repairs to the fence – again.