Archive for August 2012

P&G: Proud to be sexist?

Posted by on August 4th 2012 in A bit of a rant
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About a week ago I watched Jacques Rogge make his speech at the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In that speech he said:

"For the first time in Olympic history all the participating teams will have female athletes. This is a major boost for gender equality."

Sadly, that spirit of gender equality doesn't seem to extend to all of the official sponsors. One of them disregards Dads, and even seems proud of having done so:

 

Still, it's not as if this sort of officially-approved sexism is rife in our land of equality, is it?

My legs are grey, my ears are gnarled, my eyes are old and bent.

Posted by on August 3rd 2012 in Astrostuff, Health, or lack thereof, In the garden, On the box, Video (YouTube, Vimeo etc.), Weather
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Apologies for the lack of regular posts. I fear that I'm becoming a virtual hiker...

 

Outdoorsy stuff

For me it's all on hold after the latest consultation. The expert reckons that I might have to wait another six months for my insides to heal fully, only then will they consider a further procedure to remove the tags and piles that were caused by the original op. Any exertion aggravates said tags, leading to inflammation, infection and blockage, this means that I only get limited exercise which in turn has led to significant muscle-loss and a reduction of core body strength. I'm now so unfit that wielding the vacuum-cleaner for only 10 minutes on Wednesday resulted in me straining my back and now I'm confined to quarters and popping the Ibuprofens. Looks like our week in Skye later this month will be a sightseeing tour rather than an opportunity to assault some classic ridges and peaks.

 

Olympics

Well, I have plenty of time to watch the events on the box as I'm pretty much a captive audience. Anna's down The Smoke right now on a school-trip, she was in the basketball arena this evening watching Team GB v France and Team USA v The Czech Republic, where the Beeb's camera caught her and her friends doing their bit of a magnificent Mexican Wave. After overnighting at Eton College she'll be spending the morning in Greenwich Park watching the equestrian events.

 

Astronomy

I have plenty of time for this too, but the weather's been naff at night. On the odd occasions when it's been cloudless the jetstream has been playing havoc with the seeing - the last time I imaged the Moon it looked like someone was pouring water over it:

 

 

 

Hailstorm damage

The Loss Adjuster's been around and we have agreed terms. We've already been paid out for damage to the outbuildings, primarily because I'd done the pricing-up myself, but we're still waiting for builders to provide quotes for the repairs to the house roof and the windows. There's so much property damage around here that we're on a long waiting-list for repair-work, we're looking at mid- to late-September at the earliest.

 

Ah well, never mind, things could be worse.
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