Last sunday was pretty crap - (this weekend, too, but in a different way): rain, rain, rain, drizzle, rain. No flying and suicidal weather - so I did a little bit of shopping. Bought some shoes cheaply at a sports gear sale (and seasoned them with slime already) and afterwards I just had to drive to the local Hofer^WAldi. On the way there I almost spun my car (wet road, rear drive, too heavy on the accelerator pedal) and I was in a mood about as gloomy as the weather in the picture.

The sortiment is not exactly huge; lots of the European Hofer goodies I missed but it felt fun to walk through the hallowed halls of cheap consumables ;-)

In an episode of absolute sillyness I just had to buy two tins of Baked Beans. Why? dunno, I never liked beans especially; but the cans sported this nice warning for dummies. The stuff tasted about as bad as I remembered, but it brought up childhood memories: One of my sisters and I had a phase when we spent lots of pocket money on cheap bad food. Not that our parents didn't feed us, but I think they were a little on the puritanic side at that time. We made up for that; but it's no surprise that we were both a bit undertall.

This is the second weekend without flying; I've got this very bad itch already. Last Saturday some of us parawaited half a day - except Mr. "I always carry a spare thermal in my pocket" Richard, who launched into nothing but got up and did at least 5km or so. The rest of us wasn't pushy enough for the lousy conditions...

Monday I helped Robert fix his fence. It was slightly raining, I was halfway sick and forgot to bring tools - so I had to drive around twice. Anitta made lentils with dumplings; a very welcome non-Oz change in food!

The rest of the week was pretty average; work as usual, weather not too nice and cold, me sniffling a lot. But at least some things worked out fine: my car is mostly healthy again, after the second warranty exchange of a front shock absorber in 12 months; it's time, oh so very much time to replace this car with something nicer. My new old phone, a Siemens S55 started working also, after disassembly and dusting off the lousy keyboard module. Today I almost laundered the thing: changed linens, put 2/3 of the stuff in the washing machine - only to realize an hour later that the phone had been on the bed somewhere. Couldn't find it, finally rang it and found the bleeping thing buried in a blanket cover in the laundry basket. Pfew!

Wednesday was spent in part debugging the Debian upgrades that had gone wrong, and fixing our XML infrastructure to comply to the more strict standards some newer Perl modules made us adhere to. Thursday was as sucky as any Thursday, with work until dark; being my birthday didn't make it any better and I went to bed early and slept a lot. Some pictures of the current selection of plants around the house:

Saturday was blown out with 30kts on the hill, but Martin's birthday party at their place in Beechmont was a lot of fun. Today it drizzled and howled, alternately; another day without flying. I'll book my flights to Austria tomorrow: getting the glider over there without paying gazillions in excess baggage penalties will be tricky. Some subterfuge may be required, as the bandi^Wairlines in question seem to offer concessions only for golf bags, not any other sporting equipment. We'll see; I'm tempted to go to the next pawn shop, buy the cheapest club that I can find and present a flying golf bag.