Really Okay, Actually

• I just spent an hour searching for my grandad’s lost hearing aid, and then found it - hooray!
• Still feeling the after effects of the cold energy-wise and have been attempting to rest as much as possible. Often when I get (accutely) sick I actually, counter-intuitively get a little energy boost, but that hasn’t happened this time round and the extent to which I’m struggling is quite scary - I really hope I’m not headed for a relapse.
• That said, I did, perhaps unwisely, manage to make it up a hill yesterday. It’s a gentle one and I was so desperate for some views and a change of scene and I figured I was going to feel exhausted anyway so why not give myself the mental boost of being on top of one of my favourite hills. Peg and I were alone up there and she lept around having the time of her life and it definitely fed my soul, even if I couldn’t get out of bed and continuously wanted to vomit this morning.
• Speaking of hills there was a huge hill fire here on Tuesday night which has been the talk of the town. It seems like it must have been set deliberately and it tore straight up two separate hills. What gives? Thankfully no one was hurt.
• I’m waiting to find out whether or not I got a promotion at work and struggling to think about much else. Despite that I had a reasonably good week work-wise - I chaired a meeting which sometimes feels a bit redundant but I think it went well, and I lined up a piece of work which will be architectually quite different to anything I’ve done before which is a fun challenge. I also helped my line report with a piece of work she’s doing and it’s always good to be able to materially improve code whilst supporting someone else to develop.
• We started watching Welcome to Wrexham and I’m loving it in spite of myself - they’re only just down the road from us and I love Rob McElhenney’s mission of providing for the community. I’m also desperate to know more about what goes on behind the scenes - I couldn’t believe that Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds had never even met before they bought the club! WTF?! How did this all happen?
• We also started watching Extraordinary, a comedy set in a world where everyone gets a super power when they turn 18, which is pretty fun. The main actor, Máiréad Tyers, is very good - she plays the role of a woman who can’t discover what her super power is (if she has one).
• I listened to Really Good, Actually and it was fine. I read The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion which was good but pretty devastating and had I known that her daughter gets incredibly sick as a result of pneumonia, I wouldn’t have chosen to read it at a time when my best friend has pneumonia. I then read The Women of Troy by Pat Barker, which was a little harrowing also, but great - I discovered Pat Barker with The Silence of the Girls (prequel to Women of Troy) and loved her, going on to read her First World War Regeneration trilogy, as well as picking up some other of her backlist to get through. This week I also picked up Ducks from the library - it’s a graphic novel by Katie Beaton which people have been raving about, and about halfway in I’m hooked. I started listening to Persuasion by Jane Austen - it’s the last of her novels that I don’t know having listened to most of them at least once, as I find them very calming and comforting in times of stress.