Angelic Paranoia

I survived my first month at my new job. For the first week survival was definitely the best word as I was so tired, including on the Saturday. And I managed to have something go wrong every week for the first few weeks, including a plumbing non-emergency (I've had it happen before) and my laptop charger being temperamental about whether it would charge or not (a new one fixed that problem).

Currently I have an hour for lunch and everyone has their lunch at different times at their desks, so I've been getting a lot of reading done. My commute is all through villages and country roads, so I've seen plenty of cyclists, an average of a tractor a week, a horse (being ridden down the road), a turkey (standing at the side of the road watching the cars go past) and a pheasant (eating something by the side of road, not bothered by the cars going past extremely close - as per usual with pheasants). Also fields with horses, sheep and a lot of water. And it when it rains a lot (like it did last week) some of the roads turn into lakes. But it's better than my previous commute on a dual carriageway, some of which is at 10mph due to multiple roadworks lasting months/years.

I've finally had some time to write. The unsent-letters-exchange sign ups started around the same time as I started my new job. I signed up knowing I had a free long weekend this weekend and I could write it then. I spent the intervening time thinking about it, and now it's mostly written. I'm considering whether some of it should be in person rather than epistolary, so it's going to sit for a bit while I think about that. The deadline is at Passover, so I have plenty of time.

And in the meantime I'll also be writing unconventionalcourtship. I have a summary and a plan, so hopefully that won't take too long to write. Especially as my weekends get busy in May. The summary I have ends: find out the true meaning of trust and betrayal which is just crying out for a Blake's 7-style ending. I haven't 100% made up my mind which way it will go yet.

I've also been watching a load of Lego Masters. I was trying to keep an eye on E4 on Sunday afternoons to see when Lego Masters Australia was back and it turned out I'd missed New Zealand series 1 and USA series 3 (New Zealand series 2 is currently on and I will binge that once it's finished). The NZ version is really small. They only had six teams (to Australia's eight) and half the prize money. But since all the episodes are 44 minutes (Australia's are variable - sometimes can be an hour and a half) it actually works ok. I really enjoyed it. USA is tough to get through the first half of the series because they only have 42 minutes and twelve teams. It's just too many teams and not enough time to get to know anyone or really remember what's going on. Once they're down to six teams it's much better. There's a lot of things in there that show there's clearly a lot of money in it, but that's not a good thing. I much prefer the Australia version.