Sunday 24th March, 2013            1630

We got yesterday’s rain today. The ride in was damp this morning and it (typically) only stopped about half an hour after I got back. Better than half a fathom of snow in the UK I suppose!

I was down for 4 classes today but the owner came to me mid-morning and said the final class in the afternoon “might” have to be cancelled. I never gave him a chance, immediately I said “great!” Considering I finished the morning at 1150 and the solitary afternoon one didn’t start until 1450 I hadn’t been looking forward to nearly three hours kicking my heels, not to mention that Pepsi would have been indoors for eight hours or so. I have to say she is now really good at hanging on but considering she has taken to waking me at six each morning to go out I didn’t want to push it. Lunch followed by shopping and then homeward laden with the makings of a chilli for Wednesday plus dog biscuits and flour (I had to buy a 2.5kg plastic bag as a 5kg cloth bag would have got wet).

I have been out for an hour or so but am now home for the duration. This morning I found Lottie’s bloodstained gauze pad on my pillow after my shower so just now I cut the remains of her body stocking off. She doesn’t seem to be worrying the wound, it is healing nicely and anyway she had bitten most of it off anyway.

While I was at the campus shops I witnessed what must be one of the worst ever examples of fashion crime. There was a girl who was no oil painting to start with wearing short black boots, brown jeans, blue jean jacket and a tangerine fedora. Quite aside from her lack of any colour sense I only realised the hat was a fedora after she passed by - the dimples were at the back and she was wearing it back to front! I wonder if her friends will tell her.

Due to the aforementioned community service, tomorrow holds no terrors. I have confirmed I just have one class after lunch, Tuesday off and a ten o’clock finish on Friday. That’s the sort of unexpected good news I like. I have “spoken” to Kiki and Qing, the former is not sure when exactly she will pop back for a visit but a week Monday or Tuesday should see me with Qing’s company again - I had better use some of my new-found time off to get my house in order!

Tuesday 27th      1000

Well I don’t know where yesterday went! At some point over the weekend, I forgot to mention, I did my laundry. In itself it is not worth comment but this time the machine threw up an alarm. On checking I saw there was very little water in it, so made sure the water was still running in the flat. it was and I thought either the filler tap was broken (unlikely because it is permanently on and I never touch it) or the filler hose was blocked. I disconnected it from the machine but struggled to get it off the tap itself. The threaded cap which screws onto the tap was so brittle it shattered and as a result I now need a new connector. Rather than making arrangements for a maintenance visit and probably having to stay in for hours waiting I am trying to be able to leave the hose and couplings with the supervisor so the chap can come and fix it any time he likes. Not easy seeing as Cinny will need to co-ordinate with both of them. Anyway, the point of my mentioning this is because I found the tap had good water pressure and deduced either the pipe had a blockage or the machine did. To test the hose was a simple matter of blowing down it as hard as I could. Thankfully I don’t have as much breath as I did thirty years ago, for having done something quite common in children’s cartoons by forgetting where the other end was pointing, I ended up soaking my front as I expelled all the remaining water. The problem turned out to be a bunged up filter in the machine itself. Hopefully the next time I want to do my washing I won’t have to pour buckets of water into it!

We are having another western Wednesday this week, a chilli, but at present I am struggling to get a “date” as my first choices have evening lessons. At lunchtime I will go to the shops and lie in wait, hopefully I will be able to  spot and snare one of my students who is otherwise free. On Friday I hope to cook pizza for Yvonne and Coco and use Kevin’s room to eat in while he is downtown. Yvonne has never tasted pizza and sadly she and Coco are the ones who have night classes so for the rest of this term at least, I won‘t be able to invite either of them. It will be cheap after a fashion because I already have all the ingredients in stock bar a pineapple and this Friday I finish at ten. All I need to do is take baby puss to have the stitches out and I will have all afternoon to prepare dinner.

Pepsi still looks a trifle motheaten but at least now the “green shoots of recovery” are sprouting up. She is also starting to get a little braver (at home anyway) as she now barks when anyone other than me approaches the door. I say a little braver because as soon as she has barked she then as always dives under my desk for shelter. Outside she is still a quivering jelly except during the night outing before bedtime when there is nobody about, then she has a good old sniff everywhere. Her “safe zone” appears to be confined to the area adjacent to our block but only one side of it. The other day I tried to coax her - off the lead - to actually circumnavigate the block but she panicked at the edge of her territory a legged it back upstairs!
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Enough waffling for now, I am going to enjoy a leisurely day and hope everyone else enjoys theirs.