Bathroom

I am currently meant to be making sure I don't get stressed; this is not working.

The first reason is very simple - my daughter gets married in less than 2 months. Now this, in itself, isn't stressing me at all but it is the female half of the house and this does seem to have a knock on effect.

The second reason is that with the house rapidly turning into a pressure cooker it seemed the obvious time to have the boiler changed and the bathroom re-fitted. The bathroom currently looks like this:



They tell us the work will only take 2 weeks but given that this is the end of week 1 I'm beginning to worry. The real problem is that I have to be around while the work is going on so I can't go out or go back to bed if I need more sleep.

With any (a lot?) of luck in a weeks time I will be posting a picture of our lovely new bathroom but until then...

Picture Of Happiness 2

I should know things never work out as you expect. I fitted the machine heads and new strings to the ukulele and finally managed to tune it. It was only then that I discovered that fretting is out, particularly the first fret, so it isn't playable anyway :(

Time Warp?

I just received an e-mail from Amazon to tell me that an order had been shipped. Nothing odd in that except IT ARRIVED YESTERDAY.

Picture Of Happiness

This is a picture of happiness:



It may not look like it to you but it is to me.

Some years ago a was given a ukulele for Fathers Day but have hardly been able to play it for one simple reason - it was nearly impossible to tune. It has straight pegs for tuners and the smallest possible about of angular motion seems to be enough to change the pitch by a semitone (slight exaggeration but you get the idea.) Mid December I ordered a set of machine heads on-line and they never turned up. The seller eventually agreed to refund the money as he wouldn't send another set in case there was a problem getting post to me - odd since they had posted things to me before.

Eventually I found another supplier and this morning the machine heads, a new set of strings and 2 felt ukulele plectra (the ci=orrect plural of plectrum) arrived in the post :)

Now, at last, I may finally get round to playing the ukulele.

Certainty and Doubt

I recently came across the following quotations which reflect how I approach both my faith and anything 'scientific'.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubt he shall end with certainties.
Francis Bacon (Not the painter but the one killed by a frozen chicken)

The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on teh capacity for doubt.
Wendy Kaminer

Composers!

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

Frank Zappa
(Found in Advanced Banter - The QI Book of Quotations)