If we were having a catch up on my life lately, this is what I’d tell you I’ve been up to…

House viewings

There are some interesting houses for sale in Nottingham, including Lord Byron’s childhood home complete with caves (yes house prices here are cheaper than most of the rest of the country, don’t come at me). From time to time we decide there’s a house we could see ourselves living in and go to view it. A few days ago we actually viewed two completely different properties – one very modern 12 year old house, and one very traditional 128 year old house.

I actually feel kind of bad because what I assumed was awful mural wallpaper from the photos online is actually a hand painted wall by an artist who presumably lived in the house at some point 😳

The modern house was nice but beyond ceiling price for the road (imo) and a bit too far out for this city girl. The Victorian house was also nice but the road traffic is really loud and also they couldn’t show us two of the rooms because there was a lodger. And I’m not about to make a six figure purchase without seeing all the rooms. Plus we had a nightmare a few years back trying to lease an office space that had a resident there who wouldn’t leave, so I wasn’t about to start opening another can of those worms.

The difficulty is that we don’t actually need to move, and we have our house mostly how we like it now, so when I’m seeing how overlooked most houses are and how we would have to repeat a whole bunch of stuff to get the same standard of living (like adding air con), it makes me feel like I can’t be bothered with the whole thing 😂 I’m at the stage of my life where if it’s not a “hell yeah,” it’s a no.
 

Dates

This past week was actually more casual than usual work-wise; summer is quieter in both businesses and I’m not planning to travel anywhere until school holiday prices come down (because why pay triple for everything and battle crowds and queues if you don’t have to).

So I had a couple of nice meals out with Joe (despite the fact they randomly added pesto to my scrambled eggs…?! Unpopular opinion, but I hate pesto, a lot. It makes everything taste like forest floor).

We’re also at a weird stage of having money but no time, so we can’t really go and see a film at the cinema, but what we can do is walk past and on a random whim buy overpriced pic ‘n’ mix to eat in front of Netflix at home 😂 It’s not my favourite date – I prefer to go to a gaming arcade – but it’s a good avoid-the-summer-holidays-people activity. (Yes, I am pretty anti-social given the choice since I’m usually surrounded by people 24/7…!).
 

Made my Facebook Stories public

Facebook turned my profile into a professional creator profile this week (god knows why as I don’t have an influencer amount of followers), and while I was cleaning it up a bit I decided to make my Stories public.

This is actually a pretty big deal to me because I stopped making my Stories public ages ago, and locked my Instagram down pretty heavily (although my Insta is set to automatically accept anyone I follow who then follows me back, which is a really nice feature that I didn’t realise they’d rolled out. Although possibly looks a bit keen to people who don’t know that’s a thing).

I don’t know if I’ll stick to my Facebook Stories being public, but we’ll see how it goes.
 

Highlight of the week

After a whole bunch of different things happening, I decided what I actually needed was cats again. Because cats make everything better. It’s also kitten season and all the local rescues are rammed, so we arranged a call with one.

To be honest it’s still incredibly difficult for me to talk about anything cat-related, at all, but I’d rather be anxious with cats than anxious without them I think.

The main problem is that they’ve now sent us photos of a million cats and I want them all, especially the naughty ones (how can anyone say no to a kitten called Colin Feral…?!)

Sooo…watch this space.
 

Ending the GoodReads saga

GoodReads…that was a whole saga. If you forget what email address is associated with your account, you’re locked out for all eternity and nothing on earth will get you back in, including their support. It’s probably more locked down than the Pentagon when it comes to security. And since apparently I was logging in via Facebook and they took that option away, it’s totally screwed me over. I can view my account but not log in to it. So I’ve had to switch to a new account and start all over again.

I was considering just giving up on it altogether, but it really helps me to track what I’m reading when I always have multiple things on the go in multiple places (physical books, Everand, Spotify, Google Play) and forget about them. And all the alternatives I looked at didn’t have a way for me to embed them on a website. So I’ve switched out the widget in the sidebar and my plan is to keep it up to date now, even though it’s so annoying having to start again from scratch.
 

Gaming

This week was just board gaming. I played Cafe Baras (a card game where you serve capybaras in a cafe) and Sky Team (a 2 player co-op where you play as pilot and co-pilot trying to land a plane at various airports under different conditions) with Joe. We had friends over for a BBQ over the weekend, and played Flash Point Legacy (fire fighting), Yggdrasil (Norse gods), and Cthulhu Death May Die.
 

Business

As always, the week was very varied: I designed some scratchcards, published a bunch of new pages (including What the heck does that mean…, Green Hosting and Digital Resources), wrote a new blog post because Lyrical Host is turning eight (!) very soon, and wrote some book club posts for a theme we’re doing in our Facebook group this month.

Honestly it was just so great to be creating and writing again. And being able to hit publish on a bunch of different things that have been sitting on my to do list for ages (in some cases seven years) is one of the best feelings. Every time I put words out into the world I find it such a cathartic experience.

And I also had time for a little trolling, because one of the team was dragged to a Mariah Carey concert against their will. So of course we had a team project to make an “I Love Mariah” hat and a “Wish I was at Dua Lipa” bag.

So, what’s new with you lately?