The Lion and The Eagle

The Royal Mint recently produced a coin to commemorate the bond between Britain and America:

You'd think this would be right up my alley.  A nice little memento to represent my own union (or, maybe more accurately, my own dichotomy!) between the two nations.  But there is one little issue making me reluctant to purchase it.  And that is... the design is pretty horrible.  I mean come on, is that the best image of a lion and a eagle that they could come up with?  It just looks basic and stupid.  So, nope... that's a hard pass.    

Welfare Check

We've had some serious rain recently.  So much so, that yesterday evening I got a welfare check from work.  Snohomish County - where I live - reported flooding in multiple locations, roads closed and water rescues.  However, I think this was mainly in the east of the county in the foothills of the mountains - which is a long way from where I live.  Nonetheless, I got a text message, an e-mail and a phone call from work to check in - basically I needed to reply to let them know whether I was affected by the flooding or not.  Which I wasn't, but good to know that they cared.  I don't remember ever getting one of these notifications before due to rain.  I think I've had one before when we had some particularly snowy and icy weather, but that's been it.  We're expecting another round of heavy rainfall on Saturday.  Yikes.  At least with this atmospheric river originating from the subtropics, it has felt much warmer.

TV Theme Tunes #58

"Ooh Betty!"  Fun fact, this is never actually said in the show.  Still, this is one of my all time favo(u)rites as a kid.  Maybe as an adult as well, though I haven't seen it for years.  Classic theme - though this particular version seems to have an entire non-whistling section that I don't recognize.  Another fun fact - the opening melody of the theme spells out the name of the show in Morse code.  Ronnie Hazlehurst was a genius.

Chromebook

It looks like I have to get a new Chromebook next year.  A message has popped up on it saying that I will no longer get automatic software or security updates from June 2024.  Apparently Chromebooks only receive 10 years of updates - but it feels like I haven't had this Chromebook for 10 years.  Whatever.  It's not a big deal - part of the reason for getting a Chromebook is that it is so much cheaper than a Windows laptop.  And I was thinking about getting a new one anyway.  But still, I don't particularly like having a set expiration date forced on me.  And a quick search on my Amazon order history does indeed reveal that I got this Chromebook in 2019.  So it seems even more outrageous that I will stop getting automatic updates after less than 5 years.  Big tech sucks.    

Sporcle

I've been doing a lot of music-related quizzes on Sporcle recently.  I've discovered a couple of things.  Despite owning and having watched loads of films, I am utterly useless at identifying movies from their theme.  I am even worse at knowing song titles.  And all the music from the 2010's onwards is absolute trash (but I didn't need an online quiz to know that last one). 

Fishing

This is what I encountered earlier this week on a frigid lunchtime walk around Lake Union:

Wind

After a week of high pressure and some cold, dry weather - we are about to be slammed by some intense fronts.  We are under a wind advisory tonight with gusts up to 50 mph expected.  Not so much worried about losing power - if that happens, it will hopefully be when I'm asleep - as I am about some of my outdoor Christmas lights coming down.  And with excessive rainfall, we are also under a flood watch.  That doesn't normally impact me directly, apart from some local street flooding.  But wet and windy weather is not exactly good motivation for getting out for some exercise.