Well, the biggest event for me this week has been starting a new job. I took a bit of time off after leaving my previous job in mid-October, so it’s been a bit of a shock to the system. A shock that went well though. The first week was completely remote, and the company on a whole is hybrid working, but very chill about it. The office is in Bloomsbury, somewhere I’ve not worked before.

I do really enjoy the getting stuck in, seeing how things have been set up and thinking of improvement that can be made, learning new ways of doing things I’ve done before, and just generally making people’s experience with IT the best it can be (as corny as that is).

Not having a lot of energy to do much else was helped along with the weather that wasn’t conducive to doing more than being cosy indoors. What a grim month January can be. I miss the sub-zero temperatures and snow we had in that handful of days back in December. I’d take colder weather any day over rain, wind, and dark clouds lingering all day.

Seeing as this country is so dark in the winter, you’d think that cars would all have had some sort of automatic running lights, but that’s not the case. Daytime running lights started being a requirement in all cars in Canada back in the 1990s, so I’ve been spoilt. So many drivers in the UK driving grey/silver cars in the light that is grey with absolutely no lights on. It really gets my goat. Guessing the mindset is ‘I can see ok, I don’t need headlights on’, and that they never learned that headlights are for other people to be able to see you. /rant

This week Liz and I blast through the first season of Our Flag Means Death. We had been meaning to watch it for a while and it just kept falling off the radar. We’re both so glad that we did, it’s incredibly charming. No spoilers, but it’s a fictionalised version of the relationship between the infamous Blackbeard and the lesser-known, ‘Gentleman pirate’, Stede Bonnet. It’s gotten some flack for not being as funny as some critics think it ought to be, but I got the feeling it’s not mean to be wall to wall laughs. If you’re in the UK it’s currently available on BBC iPlayer.

Yesterday was my first time working away in the kitchen for a while. I tried a new recipe from the Pinch of Nom series of cook books; Bolognese Risotto.

Having never actually cooked risotto rice before, it felt like it was taking aaaages and that I must have mucked it up. But instead it turned out really well and we have ample left overs for a couple of days. A friend introduced me to the books recently and everything I’ve tried from print and the website has been banging.

We didn’t get out to so much birding this week. However, a lot of birds have come to us. There has been much activity at the feeder in the garden including some long-tailed tits, which we don’t see very often. A group of redwings have also been visiting the trees along the back of our street. Last year we saw one redwing this time of year, the other day I counted about seven!

Finally, for gaming it’s the same as last week. I finished the main story in Lego Marvel Super Heroes and have also dipped into NBA2K23 and Stardew Valley. Around Christmas I picked up Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe and played through the first story. I should pick that back up again. On paper it sounds like a hot mess of a game, puzzles with a side of beat ’em up and role playing, but it works!