Costa del Deeside!

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Hard to believe it's only March - weather like this is scarce enough in mid-summer, let alone this early. For the 3rd day in a row, Aberdeenshire set new Scottish temperature records for March, with our local weather station at Aboyne being the spot where it was recorded yesterday and Monday. Today's looking good as well - perhaps a bit more hazy. Change is coming at the weekend - they're talking about snow on the hills!

Today is the day that the Everest surveyor arrives to do the detailed measurements for our new kitchen - Jo's worried in case she's overlooked anything.

Today is also the start of our midweek golf competition. I'm hoping it'll be light until almost 8pm tonight so we can get round 18 holes OK. Daytime extends by 20 minutes or so per week from here on in so it'll soon get easier.

I'm struggling to finish one of my holiday books - can't find the reading time now that we're back home and I'm working again. When we were in Port Elliott with Chris' Mum and Dad, we went to their local book store, and I ended up buying 3 crime fictions - knowing Jo would read them too - one Swedish, one Norwegian and one Japanese - all in the same vein.

Whilst on holiday, I read The Art of Fielding (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-Fielding-Chad-Harbach/dp/0007374445) and also Patti Smith's semi-autobiographical novel about her early years and, in particular, her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe), who's now been dead over 20 years. I left both books with Kelly and Chris - but they might be in the skip by now!

Oh - and I finally got my Archos fixed yesterday, so I can now start getting the recorded programmes off our Sky box. I've got my new i-Phone 4 as well - it's definitely got a longer battery life than the previous version I had on holiday, but still nowhere near as long as the Blackberry. There's some nice features on the 4, but I still hate the i-Tunes software!