I must go down to the seas again ...

I had today perfectly planned - leisurely brekkie, tutor from 9 til 12, pick up supplies at the supermarket, wander round the waterfront for a few hours, cook and eat a prawn curry, finish watching My Fair Lady.  Then I got up.  Shortly before 7 - all the time in the world for a leisurely breakfast on the deck, watching the sun come up.  Which it didn't.  No sweat - plenty of time before the tutoring session which I fired up at 8:45.  Despite my having only one tutoring group in my laptop, it gave me a choice of half a dozen, all with more or less identical names.  So grab one at random and make a note of its password.  Then email the password to the kids I'm tutoring.  And wait.  Makes a change to be ready before they are. 9:15 - no sign of them but a message from their Mom - "Tutoring today?"  "Er, yup."  "Bugger - can we start at 10?" "No problem - I'll take a walk." So we started at 10, accompanied by big brother's sitar lesso...

 Superbowl Day! YAWWWNNNNNNNN! Did you know that there are 51 players in an American football team?  We used to be happy if we got 13 to turn out for a rugby game (yes, there were supposedly 15 players on a team back then plus, something I've never experienced, a reserve or two).  Super Bowl XXL kicked off at 6:30 pm, I think and so the only possible thing to do was to go out to dinner where there would be no television - more on that in a second. The day dawned beautifully clear unlike yesterday's fog so I resisted the temptation to go for a pee and then hit the sack again and got my arse into gear.  #1 target was to get my daily 5000 steps under my belt somewhere other than the beach so it's off to Brookgreen Gardens - https://www.brookgreen.org/ .  A lot of the old slave-time equipment is still there, a lot isn't.  So I walked around for nearly 4 hours enjoying the sights and trying not to think how little fun those who'd built the place probably ha...

 A busy week done It ain't all play here.  I'm in the throes of finishing out my contract with Rocket Software at the end of March.  This leaves me in the multiply cleft stick of saying "Sod it", getting in as many hours (and dollars) as possible before the end of March and trying hard not to drop the next guy in the cart.  I mustn't give away too many trade secrets but, at the moment, I have but one outstanding problem which I plan to work on with my replacement chap to introduce him to the fun and games of looking after the chunk of software I work on. So most of last week was done doing boring stuff like shopping and doing software stuff.  Today is thickly foggy which didn't stop me going for a wander northwards up the beach.  Here's how the beach looks from my balcony.  Stunning, huh? It being Saturday today I managed to get stuck in the traffic of people moving in - I've never experienced that in winter but it wasn't as bad as it is in mid-Jul...

 I have gone down to the seas again As has become fairly traditional, I have wandered off to the coast again, leaving Susan to handle tax returns for her clients without worrying what wreckage I have wrought upon the house (or myself - I'm under a strict "no ladder / chainsaw" rule, imposed by me, when she's not home.  She rescued me from an unscheduled sky dive last year).  My destination again is Surfside Beach - half a day's drive from home in a south easterly direction.  I usually get here in January and even got snowed upon last year.  The air is definitely warmer in Feb than in Jan though the sea isn't (or maybe my loss of 7kg of fat has messed up my insulation). I stopped by at the grocery store on the way in last night for a quick shop with a bonus senior moment thrown in for good measure.  I'd chucked a gallon of proper milk (not Lewis Road Creamery, just silver top) in the bottom of my shopping cart yesterday and forgot to take it out when I chec...