Thursday

It was supposed to shower today but there was no sign of rain ... and hopefully there will be no sign of rain tomorrow either because S is planning to do the laundry so we can take part of it to Sydney with us on Saturday.
While the mowing remains undone (again), I did manage to find time to get up to the shed this afternoon when I arrived home to see if the ride-on mower would start following its flat battery and recharge. The good news is that it did ... the bad news is that at this rate, I'm not going to get a chance to do it until next Wednesday afternoon. (Is someone still doing "long" range weather forecasting?) But at least its not peak growing season otherwise we wouldn't be able to see the stables by now!
No walk up to the road this afternoon but I still managed to clock almost 10,000 steps in the GCC. Sigh ... to think with that walk it would have been almost 12,000 - but as always it's the time - and that sometimes it's just easier to choose coffee at Zarraffas rather than coming home while it's still daylight (and, of course, the days are getting shorter in the run-up to 21 June as well).
The mist in the valleys in the morning is breathtaking! Some days only the tops of the trees are visible (a bit like the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco in the summer) in the pre-dawn light. It makes it a little difficult to see the bicyclists out and about on their training "runs" at that time of day so you have to keep your wits about you. And there's the joggers - luckily most of them wear reflective vests so it's easy to spot them but it's not a drive you want to do on cruise control.
S has hit the "three-month-wall" at work and at this stage she is seriously talking about looking for other employment opportunities - ones that probably don't involve charities and telemarketing. Both she and M have done very well there since they started ... from what they tell me it seems like an exercise in rejection and pretence - people pretend they don't speak English, or that they are just running out the door, or that they've just put their significant other in an ambulance (although that one might have been true - but really, would you be answering the phone at that point?). It's hard not to take a "no" personally and given they make upwards of 250 calls in their 5-hour (including 15-minute break) session, they're usually receiving more than 225 no's in one form or another - answerphone; no answer; hang-ups; abuse; or, yes, we'd love to help (by buying tickets to the charity) but times are tough and we can't at the moment ... maybe next time. But, as S says, and she was saying this the very first week they started doing the job, what she has learnt is that there are people out there who can say "no" nicely .. and perhaps people need to know that it's okay to say "no". I think there's a lesson in there for all of us.
The other thing I learnt today - and Pearl and the other animals will get the benefit of this (thanks M) is that if you are going to praise or chastise furry people, it needs to happen within one and a half seconds of the "event". Hmmmm ... wonder if that's the same for human people as well?