In good news, Chris is making progress with his twitter post scheduler for me, so I should soon take far less time to schedule the twitter posts. The best option I’ve found so far takes at least 90 seconds to reload between each tweet – when it doesn’t spaz out and go blank and require me to relogin and start from scratch, which is a good 4 minute delay. This stretches out the job rather unnecessarily. And yes, this does mean the other options I’ve found were actually worse; topping that list is TweetDeck, Twitter’s own app. Thankfully, I have a Chris who’ll write me something that works properly, paring this job down for me immensley. I’m also developing a better system myself – good ol Excel to the rescue.

There’s an archery course starting next month in town, which I’m giving serious thought to taking up. It’s not that dear, and I’ve always wanted to take up archery. No idea where I’d have to go to continue playing with a bow and arrow – probably somewhere I’d have to drive to. Really need to focus on getting that UK car sorted out.

We had sunshine yesterday – all day! I made the most of it, enjoying my walk down to the post office to mail a package, to the store to pick up bread, and back home again – about four miles in all. That’s more than I’ve done in awhile; the dreary days of winter turn me into such a hermit. Happily, I’ve noticed it doesn’t go full dark now til about 4:30, instead of about 3:45, as it was doing. Hooray, longer days are a-coming!

We got some daylight-spectrum light bulbs recently to try to improve the light in our home. They go in any lamp with a screw or bayonet cap just like ordinary light bulbs, but the light is supposed to be much more close to the sun’s rays. Apparently sunlight is blue, because these bulbs are blue – and it does, in fact, match the daylight that comes through the window those precious few hours a day. It also gives much better color accuracy than our old lights, which are quite yellow: with the yellow lights, I can’t actually tell apart the gold and silver coins of the realm, should I need to do any change-wrangling at night. With the blue daylight ones, I can. So, win. But the blue trips me out in the floorlamp, so the one behind my computer stays a daylight bulb, and for now we switch the light bulb in the floorlamp between the blue one during the day (when it really works as an extra window, giving us that extra daylight) and a yellow one at night.

I’ve finally just about devised an Excel workbook that works for me for a budget. I’ve been trying for years, and finally the one I used in 2013 worked. I’ve improved it a bit, linking things up and so forth, but I think it finally works. At last! I looked back through old ones for some reason recently, and I was horrified by the first few stabs. It’s crossed my mind to make a blank version (of the good one, obviously) to post online in case it’s helpful for others, but it’s so personalized to what your exact bills are, I’m not sure that’ll work. A sample might be easier to do. Hm.

Tomorrow’s WI Day for me: a meeting in the morning and a meeting in the evening. We have seven WIs in Glossopdale, and five have their meetings today, tomorrow, or the next day. I’ll never understand why they didn’t spread them out more. Ho hum. Anyway, my usual day is generally shifted later than most peoples’, so a meeting that starts at 9:30am means a rather early morning for me. I am looking forward to seeing my friends, and also to this speaker. Faye Hartley is going to tell us about the old Finlay McKinlay’s, the old chemist shop (pharmacy) in the centre of town. I’ve heard so many little dribs and drabs about that place over the years; it’ll be nice to have one coherent talk. The speaker at the evening meeting will be sharing his experiences of being a mystery shopper; I missed the meeting when he spoke to my other WI, but heard rave reviews of his talk, so I look forward to that, as well.

I’ve recently dropped from being a member at three WIs to two. I found my attendance was very spotty at all of them, and realized it was that I was, essentially, doing the same thing over and over again. The format’s the same at all of these: a speaker for about 40% of the meeting, business for about 40% of the meeting, and informal chatting (and tea, you mustn’t forget the tea!) for about 20% of the meeting. The business is largely the same from one local WI to another – though when we have discussions, such as for the resolutions in May, it’s interesting to hear the different focuses the different groups take. The speakers make the rounds, so I have heard several speakers twice and some three times (and skipped some meetings just to not hear that speaker a third time). Because my attendance was spotty at the monthly meetings, it was spotty on group outings (since you sign up for those at the monthly meetings). The outings are where you really bond and spend time with the fellow members – where you make and maintain friendships. Since making and keeping friends is my primary reason for joining, I decided I needed to have less spotty attendance – and the only way I see myself actually doing that is to have less feeling of doing the same thing over and over!

Thursday night will be my book club meeting. I finished the book ages ago; I hope I can remember it well enough to discuss it properly! It was An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge. It was just okay; I wouldn’t recommend bothering with it. We’ve been struggling a bit lately to think of books to read; this one came out of my Book Lover’s Companion: What to Read Next. If you have any suggestions, please do tell me!

Anyhoo, off to bed for me!