Three birthdays

I have failed to mention two birthdays already, and today is the third: Mr A's. We may celebrate with a spot of supper in the pub, but I'm rather hoping he will feel like going out cycling tonight. There is a cycling club in Coventry which meets on a Wednesday evening, and Mr A had quite a good time the first time he joined in. He is getting no exercise in his normal daily routine, and on many days he hardly leaves the house, and we are both starting to feel that it's important for him to a) do something not at a desk with a computer, and b) talk to someone other than me once in a while.

The other two birthdays were mine and this blog's, both of which I pretty much ignored. There is so much to do - I have many tasks still outstanding, but I am close to perfecting the art of procrastinating. One of the more difficult jobs is the choice of telephone and/or broadband, but there's also the renewal of RAC membership, sorting out my phone (it died while on holiday), changing electricity and gas suppliers, and oh yes, I'm back at work, in the lab at Warwick.

While I was away for the best part of a month, camping, working in Nottingham and on holiday in Israel, H repeated some of my experiments, and then came down with swine flu. She's back so I'm back, but just for a couple more weeks. I've learned a whole lot about how to do lab-based research, enough to decide whether it's something I might like to do, but I think I've got the hang of it now. I'll try to make sure I finish the set of experiments so that a conclusion is clear, but I'm ready to stop now.

Other than that, the bowlers are back for their English Women's National Championship on the bowling greens up the road, and it hasn't stopped pouring with rain the whole time. At times, the players appear to be quite wet - the spectators have umbrellas. I'm on cat feeding and plant watering duty for neighbours who are away on holiday, but I haven't yet needed to do any watering. Our bath has sprung a leak, finally precipitating a decision to renovate the bathroom. Mr A has effected a temporary repair with gaffer tape - I have praised gaffer tape earlier in this blog, when we were snowboarding in France. There's almost nothing that won't benefit from the application of gaffer tape.