Déjà vu

It's Sunday night and Jo and I are sitting here in the back room , variously knitting, blogging, reading the Sunday Times and watching the last episode of Dark Heart on catch-up. Who says we can't multi-task? The second bottle of wine is now open and that helps of course.

Nothing too exceptional took place last week. Tuesday was Luca day of course, but this time we went to Rae Circle as Gary was down in London. It was the day after Carole's 50th as well.

The final fitting of the doors on our hut/summerhouse was postponed again by a couple of days, but hopefully it's all done now. We have to watch out for a bit of rising damp. The last 4-5 days have been the wettest and gloomiest for a while, but we can't really complain - it's been a good year for weather generally.

Ross and I drove back down to Edinburgh on a miserable Thursday to pick up the last of his stuff from his flat. We left at 8 am and were back here at 2 pm, after a spot of brunch and some humping and loading. Adaptive cruise control certainly makes driving a bit easier. Ross is now fully ensconsed back in Banchory - and looking for work.

Friday night was our 3rd Headbang this year - good fun. The team photo is on Facebook so I won't repeat it here.

A bit of cabin fever has been setting in so I'm hoping to get out on my bike again tomorrow - need to get some exercise.

Our first Xmas gift arrived last week - from Oregon, of course - and , guess what? - it's alcohol - an advent "calendar" of 24 bottles of wine - not full-sized ones thankfully! I guess there's no chance of any dry days in December then?

One month from today - the hype has already started and it's impossible to escape. If I have to think about my Christmas list, then I know I need a new electric shaver and some recent CD's that may be of interest are those from Paul Weller and Elvis Costello - maybe even Paul McCartney at a push. As far as books are concerned, I can't think of any offhand. I guess the e-bike is more of a 70th birthday thing, but that's not going to stop me from looking just now.

Now that Ross is here, a few changes have been made - especially electronically and IT-wise. We now have access to his Netflix account on all platforms throughout the house. Jo's been an addict for a while, but I've now latched on to Narcos, a series about the Mexican drug barons - pretty addictive it is too.

To close, another holiday tale. Yet another airline schedule change - all sorted now, but there's always a cost to bear. Makes you wonder about booking well in advance. We now leave Adelaide and arrive in LA a day later, but, thankfully, Scott and Lucy are coming to pick us up and drive us out to Palm Desert, taking some of the pain out of our journey.