In any case, I spent the day tidying the flat somewhat so that we wouldn't come home to encrusted plates*, dashing into town to return a shower head**, and packing. I find packing moderately stressful, and to-do lists help a lot with that, so I added tasks to Workflowy and then ticked them off as I got them done. This didn't entirely help though, and I was left with my standard worry that I'd forgotten something vital as I left the flat. Nothing obvious has occurred to me so far though!
I made it to Edinburgh in plenty of time, particularly as my flight was delayed by twenty minutes - worrying when I'm headed for a connecting flight. There being not much I could do about that I picked up my traditional airplane reading***, let my parents know, and waited.
Happily, I arrived in Manchester to discover my onewards flight was delayed. Unhappily, by two hours. Thankfully, I always take my laptop in my rucksack, rather than sticking in the suitcase, and so I can pay £5 for two hours of wifi and let you all know what I'm doing. I hope you're all grateful.
The laptop****, by the way, is working out very nicely. It's near silent, the keyboard is comfortable, and it runs all of the things I want on a laptop. I've installed an IDE onto it, in the hope that I might get the chance over Christmas to spend some time working on version two of the feedposter. Fingers crossed that I don't have to spend _all_ of my time playing fetch with the dogs or board games with the family!
*A task I was moderately successful at, managing to clear all of the kitchen surfaces of cutlery, crockery and miscellaneous cooking utensils. Sadly, as I was congratulating myself and reaching for the phone to call a taxi, I found a hidden stack of plates. I did quickly make sure there was nothing moist hidden in them, so that I'm only having to deal with spot-welded rice rather than foot-high mushrooms.
**The shower-head came off in my hand a few days ago, leading to a fountain of water up into the air and loud protestations from Julie, who was brushing her teeth at the sink at the time. I got a new hose and head in John Lewis using some of the vouchers we got as a wedding gift, but discovered that it was just the hose we needed, so had to return the now extraneous head. On the plus side, I'd never changed a shower hose before, so I feel altogether more manly than I did last week.
***Edge magazine, pretty much the only computer games journalism I'm willing to pay money for. I can always tell when I'm flying more than I'd like if the issue in the airport shops is the same one I've already read. Mind you, I don't actually enjoy flying, so pretty much any flying is more than I'd like. Roll on Travel By Wire!
****Some people have questioned why a laptop, and a few people asked why one so large (It's a 15" screen) - and the answer is two-fold:
1)I've used netbooks, and I find that the amount of browsing space you get is teeny once you have a row of tabs (or, in my case, three rows), and a toolbar or two.
2)A keyboard. Because I want to be able to write posts like this (or code), and the thought of writing something this long on a touch-screen fills me with dread.
3)A proper sized keyboard that doesn't force my hands together.
3A) Julie and I can easily watch TV on it together in bed. We _can_ do that on a smaller screen, but it's much more comfortable with a 15" one.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
