A bed of roses

The perfect birthday tea, as far as our son is concerned :D

When I woke up this morning, the world had turned white! We had actual snow and not just a light dusting. The good news is that when I had to pop out to the shop, I wore my chelsea boot wellies that not only keep my feet warm and dry but also don't slip. The bad news is that every tree I went under decided to drop a load of wet snow on my face :O So rude! Also, our tiny pond #itsapondnotapuddle has frozen again. Pretty sure that's the damselflies done for :(

I also dropped in to the doctor's surgery to order some sharps. On the way, I walked past the house I grew up in on Falkner Square, in the middle of which is a little park. When the Square was built, only residents would have had a key to open the gates. I was surprised to see how many sets of footprints there were in the snow - lots of people had walked through on the way from one place to another. I only know this because of the snow but I like to think they always pass through there. This makes me happy - that people are making use of such a tiny piece of green (white!) space in the middle of the city.

I took some photos of the sun catching the tops of some of the trees, and the trees and bushes with their snowy robes. A couple and their baby were walking past and offered to take a picture of me in the park but I declined. Nothing more awkward than posing for strangers.

After that it was back home to do some washing and bake my signature chocolate orange marble cake. I also managed some work :D And made some tough decisions...

Before SharePoint we used shared drives. In an effort to free up some storage space, we are in the process of purging the latter. Well, we've done some purging of SP sites, too, but SP remains a Thing. One of the drives I 'own' contains process maps made using a tool called Triaster - very expensive and underused, so we stopped paying the subscription. Going by the dates on the documents, it was more than 10 years ago. I really liked the company (also called Triaster) and their process, but we just never got any value out of it. Anyway, we had a huge number of process maps that are wildly out of date, haven't been looked at in over a decade, and nobody else has even mentioned them, let alone wanted to look at them. I kept the template and user guide, took a deep breath... and decided to let the rest go. We put so much work into creating them but they're no use to anyone, now.

I also watched the second episode of Dave playing FFVII. When he was doing the 'dress Cloud/Dave up in drag' section, he failed at the squats challenge, so didn't get the best wig, and Robenhagen let him skip the bit in the Honey Bee Inn. I was quite relieved - it's quite uncomfortable to watch that, now.

And that's all for today.

Sunday night I watched a documentary about Jesus' female disciples. Some stuff was definitely not new - I mean, if you still think Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, you really haven't been paying attention. I also knew there were female bishops in the early church. But there were some new, and interesting, things.

• 'Magdala' ('Tower' in Aramaic) might have been a nickname, indicating a strong, imposing woman
• if Joanna had left her very cosy life as wife of Herod's steward to join Jesus and his rag tag band, it would have been a HUGE scandal
• when Jesus sent out the Twelve, he sent them 'two by two' - the same phrase as used for the animals in Noah's ark, suggesting not six pairs of men but twelve male/female pairs
• Salome had a chapel dedicated to her and seems to have been associated with healing
• when Constantine adopted Christianity, he chose the male-dominated version favoured by the military, presumably to make them more willing to enforce it

So, there you are - 1500 years of oppression and denial is all due to one man.

I am having a go at bullet journaling but a non-paper version. Instead, I'm using OneNote on my work computer. It's not so much for the 'keeping track of what I'm supposed to be doing' because I already use my Outlook calendar for that. I've moved away from Trello, which I've pretty much stopped using, to a simple tick list for my 'to do' list. Although Trello is useful for adding little notes... But I'm trying to have as few applications open as possible.

I can see the advantages of having everything in a single notebook but I am also trying to reduce my use of paper to as near zero as possible. And I am far more likely to remember to pick up my Surface! I read an article about the value of handwriting the other day and I can see it's important to learn to write by hand - but I can do that in OneNote, too. And I can just wipe out mistakes!

So far, it hasn't changed my life, but it's early days. My main motivation isn't organising my time - I do that pretty well, already - it's setting work goals. What is it that I'm trying to achieve, not just for the organisation but for me? I shall keep you updated!

I am still sinking a LOT of time into NNK2 - 50 hours, so far! I'm not trying for all the trophies in this playthrough but I still think they are all very doable. The current plan is to finish the game and then mop up any that are left. I'm not sure how much I'll want to play the whole thing again, though.

I decided that my next game would be Horizon: Zero Dawn, which would also be my birthday present. I managed to pick up a hard copy for £27 - brand new, complete edition! It is now sitting on my shelf, waiting for my birthday to arrive. I will finish the main story in NNK2 well before then - probably even all the trophies. But I didn't finish Poirot, so there's that.

OK, time to get on with the day. Bye, DW!