KJ Charles fans

I had a whole weekend at home - for the first time in 4 weeks! Remind me never to organise/volunteer for things that mean I have to work 3 Saturday's on the trot because that is exhausting. On the plus side I have a chunk of flexi leave to take.

So quick summary:


HOME: deep cleaned kitchen and sorted out a bunch for a recycling and tip run today. Next week it's deep cleaning the bathroom, and chipping away at the chaos and decluttering/#orjenising in the bedroom and living room. I have detailed bullet point lists and daily/weekly targets!

HEALTH still a bit FUBAR'd but improving. Finally took myself off to Toni and Guy's on Friday where a very firm hairdresser chopped off a significant amount of my hair. It had almost reached my waist and had way too many split ends. I got a free treatment (whatever product they used smelled awesome and made my hair super silky) and I now have a really simple cut - still long enough that I can put it up when gardening /at the gym, but short enough to wash and go and no danger of overnight knots. Today I got my piercings back - found a great piercer locally and I was just going to get single studs in each ear but happily we discovered 5 of my old piercings were still open! She popped new studs in those - because I have no idea where my old studs are - only the tons of dangley earrings on the board in my bedroom. She redid the middle piercing on my left ear and now I have all the shiny jewellery back. Once the current ones have settled down I'm going back to get my helix piercing redone - might get one each side.

LIFE ADMIN: still planning to move from Gmail once I've decluttered it. Applied for a postal vote as I'll be working local election day (7 May) as a poll clerk in Richmond so won't be around to vote locally. Have to make time to complete training for that and it will be a long day (5am to midnight including travel to/from) polling station.

DIGITAL DECLUTTER: have kept email at mail at 11,000 but not managed to reduce it; staying on top of transferring To Keep items from tablet to dropbox, my phone images storage is a mess.

GARDENING/ALLOTMENTING: nope - too cold and/or wet and lacked motivation.

COOKING/EATING: reboarded the takeaway train over the last week - there just seemed to be no time at all, long work days!

READING/LISTENING: LOL. Thank you Rachel Reid - read Game Changers, Heated Rivalry, Tough Guy, Common Goal, Role Model and The Long Game and now re-reading Heated Rivalry matching book chapters to rewatch episodes. What do you mean obsessed?

WATCHING: Heated Rivalry - 4th rewatch. Everything else is having to fit around that!

CREATING/LEARNING: several, projects on the go/nearing completion - spring wreath, Halloween blanket, granny square blanket, hexicardi, granny square bags x 2. Might get one or two done by the end of the month.

CATS: all good.

VOLUNTEERING: one new task to complete as of meeting last week.

SOCIALISING: a 3 hour call with gingerpig consisting of two hours of Heated Rivalry squee and one of catching up. A formal "WiLlYoUCoMeToMyCotTageThisEAsTer" invitation extended to ravurian - because, thanks to Show, I'm never going to be able to invite anyone to the cottage unless I adopt concussed-and-ever-so-slightly-high Shane's rhythm of speech.

WORK: much improvement - BRAG quarterly meeting went well, the Seed Swap was a success, the three consecutive Saturday's of work are over until 28 March which is my next weekend day of work. I've started the current round of inspections which is generating a ton of admin (which is this coming week's issue), I need to carve out some time to dealing with financial year end (how is it almost the end of March?!!!) and reprofile the capital budget.

It's going to be a long work week - think I'm going to work from home tomorrow as I should be able to plough through a chunk of admin uninterrupted. Tuesday through Friday lunchtime will be office days and site visits. Then I've got 30 bags of compost to shift from a site wide delivery down to my plot on Friday afternoon - say a prayer for my knees and back! Keeping my fingers crossed for sunshine and blue skies next week.

LOL I am all up in everything HR so much so that it's not even funny. :o)

So the last time I posted I was 5 days in, had watched it once, bought the books and was just about to start a second rewatch - that was last Saturday.

I read all 6 books in 2.5 days, completed a second rewatch, randomly watched eps 3-6 across 4 nights (because why not?) and then decided it would be fun to match reading the relevant chapters of HR and then watch the relevant episodes. I got as far as ep 3 and then got distracted by more cast interviews and HR insta and threads.

Yeserday I disappeared down the YouTube rabbit hole of fan vids - so now I have 193 open tabs across 2 browser windows, there's music playing, I have no idea where it's coming from and I'm in the middle of curating playlists on my YouTube. I need to remember how to DL from YouTube because I want a good chunk of those vids accessible to me at all times and never worry about them being pulled.

I may be curating playlists on Spotify for my gym workouts because HR bvidders use great music for their vids. And...um...I have a bunch of meta posts bookmarked to go back and read properly after the current rewatch.

Still noticing new things - all the subtle little whispered remarks that weren't obvious on first or second viewing. I need to see the whole series on a screen bigger than my tablet.

I'm catching up on the cast interviews which I'm finding delightful and astonishing. I mean the 3 minute social media sound bites, wild humour and meeting fans where they live was an absolute gift - but the long form interviews with their openness, vulnerability and in depth discussions are just blowing my mind.

Still steering clear of fanfic - because there are only 24 hours in a day - and I'm not sure I have time for an "Inception" level fandom event in my life - though I suspect I'm fighting a failed rearguard action there. Inception inhabited my brain for 2.5 years and with S2 of Heated Rivalry not airing until '27 and (please god) a potential further season - it's quite possible I'll be fully consumed by this until 2028.

Around all of that it's been super busy at work and I've been making a bunch of appointments/ running errands which come under the heading of "Get Your Shit Together" but for the first time in months I feel like I'm fully firing on all cylinders.

Not sure how much of that is down to the Little Canadian Hockey Romance That Could or whether it's due to the fact that we've had more than a few days of sunshine, warmth and blue skies (and not the dreary grey, wet and miserable days we've had since before Christmas) - whatever! I'm running with it.