Countdowns

Yes - just 2 days until I head to Tenerife - and 2 weeks until my knee op. Just 9 weeks until the rest of the Stewart clan arrive in Scotland.

I think I'm organised for my holiday - although there's always something you forget to do - or take.

Jo and I have only had very mild reactions to our flu jabs last week - hardly noticeable, in fact. One thing that I do have now though, is a bit of tinnitus - and that can be annoying at times. Wonder if the flu jab brought that on?

I had a really nice afternoon's golf at Scotscraig (Tayport) yesterday, playing for our Seniors. Fortunately, it was a flat course - I'd wanted to walk it and although I struggled a bit on the second nine, I got there in the end. I'm supposed to playing in a Texas Scramble at Banchory in the morning but the forecast isn't very good.

Anyway, I was talking to Raymond Orr (Jo's friend Myra's husband) at Scotscraig yesterday. He had a knee replacement a couple of years ago. He told my my recovery would take much longer than I expected. Now, I was thinking 5-6 months, but he was complaining because he tried to play golf after 3 weeks and struggled!

It's definitely getting darker earlier in the evening - and staying darker later in the morning. Still, that does mean I've seen some spectacular sunrises when driving in to work this week. I tried to photograph one as I was driving past Garlogie, but it didn't come out too well, I'm afraid:

Been thinking about our holidays next year. We've now got 2 BA Companion Vouchers to use by 2015, so I thought I'd search their web site and see what free flights might be available. Nothing to the West Coast of USA in July or August, but if we want to go to LA at the end of May and not come back for at least 5 weeks, then there are flights available. Perhaps 5 weeks is stretching it a bit whilst I'm still working. There was also a 4 week option to Vancouver - now that's somewhere we've never been. Dilemma. I'd got round to thinking that driving up the coastal road (Big Sur) to San Francisco might be quite cool, but now I don't know what to do.

As Del Shannon once sang, Keep Searching (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJvoDJCW0A).

I got 2 comments back from my latest episode of Renshaw's Chronicles (http://renshawschronicles.blogspot.co.uk/). The first was "it's just facts and figures" and the second was "absolutely my favourite blog". The comments came from Jo and Gary - I'll let you guess which one was which.

Despite our initial fears, Jo and I finally did watch all 6 episodes of BBC 2's "Peaky Blinders", including the finale last night and it turned out to be not as bad as we initially feared. I doubt if the same is going to be true of Sky Atlantic's "The Tunnel", the first episode of which we also watched. I had understood it was based on "The Bridge", the Danish TV production shown several months ago on BBC Four, but it seems to be an almost direct copy - all they seem to have changed so far is the location - instead of the bridge between Copenhagen and Sweden, it's the Chunnel between France and England. The actors are almost replicas of the Danish original. Surely they have to change it a bit? If not, they're going to lose at least 2 viewers.

That's all for now, folks.

Weekend news

Jo and I walked along to the Doctor's on Saturday morning and had our flu jabs. In the waiting room there they now have a test your own blood pressure sleeve, so we both used it. Here's my results:

We had coffee and brunch at Tease afterwards. Scrambled egg roll for me and sausage sandwich for Jo. The owners wondered if that was the first time ever that our son had made breakfast for us?

Gary came over with Luca after football practice and all four of us then headed down to Airdrie for Jordon's 18th. There was a large gathering of the clans - the Stewarts and Campbells of course, but also the Barrs - Nancy, Sheila and Lesley. Aunt Nancy is still looking good and is as sharp as a tack:

It was a lovely afternoon but we had to get back at a decent hour to get Luca to bed. Gary drove home, which allowed me to have 40 winks. Luca and Jo yapped away in the back seats until we were almost home, when Luca finally fell asleep, leaving Gary with little option but to stay with us overnight, rather than have Luca undergo a further car journey to Inverurie just after waking up.

Luca will be back this evening - it's the school holidays and he's staying with us until Wednesday, when Carole will pick him up and the two of them will head south to Lincoln to see her Mum for a few days.

I didn't golf this morning - still sore after squash on Thursday. I had golfed on Friday afternoon at Aboyne, but I had to take a buggy - I couldn't have walked the course.

We had one of our Headbangs on Friday evening - details on Music blog. Good fun.

That's about it for now. Need to get organised this week for our trip to Tenerife next Sunday. I'm off to Fraserburgh in the morning, but I think that'll be the only time this week, so I should have time to get everything together OK. Need to think about our USA holiday next year as well - the timeshare options we have are not quite as flexible as we first thought, and we've left it a little late, so I hope we can get something suitable. It's easier for us if we just go to Marriott resorts, but they're not all in convenient places for some of the things we'd like to do. Needs some thought.