I just saw that Tim Curry died.

Hi Cal! Nice to see you again!

It was pretty hard on me... I had a massive respect for Dolly Parton and liked her songs. When I saw she had passed aged 80, I got this awkward feeling, knowing full well that Tim Curry was 80 and that his mother lived to 80, of which he made a point in his memoir. (which, for the newest members, is one of my biggest heroes)
In addition I have a problem with dry eyes right now.

On Tuesday, I paid the rent, and discovered the amount in my bank account was less than I had expected. Upon checking, I found I had earned around 2000 in my first month, but only a little over 1000 in July and less than 1000 EUR in August -way below minimum wage with my 36 hour work week. I asked my team managers about it and they told me to take it up with the recruiter, and explained how to get my working hour list.

So Wednesday didn't look fun, after a hard day's work having to do the dry work of checking out my salary.

And then I got the news. Although not entirely unexpected given his frail appearance, I spent the night heartbroken and fighting tears. While doing math. Luckily I do Excel now.

I found I was missing the wages for 3 weeks. In addition I did not get the holidays Assumption and the bridge day after, and the day of leave when we went to meet Polydigm, paid out. I contacted my recruiter about this.

Thursday morning I tell my team manager about my findings, and that I told him. Thursday evening I had mail that the three missing weeks was a human error, for which he apologised, and that the other two were due to technical limitations so I can expect payment shortly.

So, one problem solved! And, since I'm now in problem solving mood, I'm flying to LA tonight to resuscitate the maestro.

It's the last Sunday of August, meaning I got to see the Brabantsedag again! It was a very beautiful parade! I'm knackered but full of wonder.

Did you mean Los Angeles or something else

Yeah that was my idea of a "joke" - as I had managed to solve 2/3 of the issues I was having (dry eyes and missing salary) I joked I'd go to Los Angeles (where Tim Curry lived) to resurrect him.

Couldn't go unfortunately, Brabantsedag called .

But I miss Tim, been looking back and noticed how much Tim-related art I made in the 2008-2013 era, the Flakes comic for instance has a flake that's based on him.

Been unable to log in for 10 days, how is everyone?

I had a bit of a rollercoaster, but job is going well. Yesterday I had a surprise concert of a Beach Boys tribute band (Beach Boys Best), a colleague had tickets left and I bought them on a whim. They were on a talent show (which they won shared 1st place) and I thought they sounded pretty amazing, good harmony.
https://youtu.be/4PTtz9xJR0A
https://youtu.be/wkY7eukGxic
https://youtu.be/DX42Ww8SfDk

This week I was trained on a new skill at work, Public Space. This involves permits, parking, and basically people nagging at anything in the public space they don't like. It's been hilarious - I received calls about a man who complained about the text on the shirts the safety guards in the town are wearing now, a call from the music hall I'd just visited last week because "a confused shirtless man had walked into their premises and was hanging from the cables", among others.

Unfortunately, Dad also called me, because his bicycle tyre had exploded. He was taken home by the bookshop owner near where his tyre burst, and yesterday I had to go home after work, at full speed, to pick up the keys, pick up the bicycle and take it to the repair shop. It's an electric bicycle, which is much heavier than a regular one, and cycling with 2 bicycles is difficult and dangerous. And heavy on the shoulders. It went OK, but the repair (new inner and outer tyres front and back) set me back a bit, plus the way back didn't go as well, the bicycle started wobbling out of control and I dropped it.


So I started looking into something I always wanted to look into more, as in Busby Berkeley choreographies. As I used to iron professionally, I can't say that I fantasised about the people wearing the clothes I was ironing, but The Girl At The Ironing Board did sing to my heart. I needed this

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/sep/17/human-harps-mas...

I'm 68 today played golf and shot 6 over par 77 which is amazing for my age, Kat is making Taco Tuesday happen and we go to an Indian Casino (Hard Rock) Friday to see the band America and we got a room which was a little pricy but Kat said lets splurge

Yay! Someone!

I had massive login issues for 10 days, they may have only recently been resolved with the massive update that's going on. Not sure if anyone else is affected?

Still fighting the blues a bit - had it rough today when a client called crying, his cat had jumped out off his window (3rd floor) and had heard a dead cat had been collected from a road nearby. He described her as "grey with a pink collar" and described how he hand-reared her, how she followed him everywhere and how her birthday was a few days ago and he put a party hat on her head. As he was sobbing, he begged me to find out if the cat found was his.

I found the report - and the photos, which only sort of had the backside and tail of the cat intact, the rest was a horrible gory mess in which no pink collar could be seen. We are not allowed to share these photos with him and I couldn't - but there was a bit of a communication gap as he could only describe his cat as grey, when I was looking at a tabby European shorthair. He didn't know the word "tabby", so I attempted to describe "brownish grey with black stripes". Was heart-broken after this call and spent a minute looking at kitty pictures to scramble myself together.

On a brighter note, did something impulsive again - bought a cinema ticket and went to see Whisper of the Heart (1995), a Studio Ghibli production. With the combination of the scatterbrained cycling song translating lead that runs behind a cat into a lovely antique emporium and starts writing maniacally - I found more than one parallel between her and my life.

Weirdly I can only view the site and log in from a private window. As long as it works!

It seems to be working fine for me...

That's great! I'm still having these issues. In part possibly because I turned DuckDuckGo after Edge decided to throw away my favourites.

Been going back to Duckman. They're still brilliant!

Will be visiting BF again this weekend, going to the tea garden where we will be enjoying a witch themed high tea, and of course a visit to the seals. Looking forward to it!

Back from BF's!

The witch themed high tea was funny if a bit much, we had dresscode (black) and were given witch hats to wear, they had but a gorgeous cauuldron on the table and served witch tea and numerous witchy dishes. By accident, in his reservation BF had neglected to mention dietary requirements - for me that's no fish due to thorough hatred, for BF that's garlic. The savoury round gave us a salmon sandwich and a garlic cheese (witch cheese) sandwich. Whoops!

BF ate the fishy ones for me and I let him have half of a witch cheese sandwich so he'd dare kiss me afterwards.

After the high tea we went to visit our sealy friends again. There were only 7 of them, being all cute.