What's making you happy today?

[infinite monkey]

Him is....ess eee is!

[glatt]

Good boy, Jack!

[limey]

Nice chat with Sundae on the phone this evening.


Sent by thought transference

[DanaC]

Second day off in a row!

I was supposed to attend a work programme session this afternoon. But I have the lurgi - it descended on me yesterday. Now - this does not mean I am too ill to attend the appointment - but it does mean i sound uber croaky - and I do feel quite ropey. So I phoned and asked if it was possible to rearrange. I told said was going to cause problems then I'd come in today - but that I felt I would get much more from the coaching session if I wasn't slightly out of it and hopped up on lemsip - and didn't particularly want to pass this to everybody else. All of which is quite true.

What i didn't say was that since it is thick snow outside and still falling, i also really didn't fancy arsing about on buses.

So - she is reappointing *smiles* and I get the day off. hurrah.

Yesterday was my first day off since Boxing Day, and my first day off without the thesis hanging over me since early '14, lol.

At some point I need to deal with all the stuff I've not been dealing with until thesis completion. So - basically the various debts and people who are threatening to take me to court/cut off services etc for non-payment. But not today - in fact not til either Friday, if I can find the motivation, or Monday, whether I feel like it or not.

[Griff]

Enjoy the down day.

[xoxoxoBruce]

And you'll milk this for all it's worth, won't you.

[DanaC]

It has been glorious. I must say

Also - it's really nice to see the snow and not feel panicked. For the last week there's been odd bits of snowfall, sticking a bitthen washing away, and predictions of heavy snow on the way. And each time it snowed I'd be praying we didn't get snowed in and the trains cancelled for Monday when I had to go hand in.

Now I'm looking at the whiteout outside my window and I don't care! Snow us in, see if i care :P

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's nice to not have pressure. Here they say snow tonight and maybe twice more before next week. I've got nowhere I have to be and it'll keep the whippersnappers off the lawn... except the ones that don't drive well.

[orthodoc]

The power just came back on.

Now I don't have to carry my elderly father on my back through the snowdrifts, to some warm haven. After working 12 hours because the resident forgot she was being paid to come in at 4:00. So, that qualifies for happyness. Now I can throw one last log on the fire and go to bed.

[limey]

Hope the resident doesn't get paid for the hours she didn't do.

[Sundae]

Alice fell down a rabbithole. Poor cow. She found oddities, dreams & delirium thanks to a mathematician's fevered brain.

I fell into the Cellar. My own poorly wired brain provided me with far stranger creatures than mice in pools of tears, Red Queens or walrus. But more than that, far more than that, the Cellar has given me an array of practical goods. Food. Transport. Internet access. Housing help. Holidays.

Some of this is down to the fact that this is an American board (so I said before and still believe) and y'all look out for your own, and those lucky enough to be adopted.

And definitely and very much recently down my fellow Brit-Dwellers who are my family in every way.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Sundae

Alice fell down a rabbithole. Poor cow. She found oddities, dreams & delirium....

...and absolutely no sign of the Health and Safety Executive.

[glatt]

"and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make''

You credit the Cellar, but you should credit yourself, Sundae. You're worth it.

[chrisinhouston]

I just sold something on Ebay for $2000!

For some time now I've been wanting to upgrade some of my camera gear and have been leaning towards a Sony a7R, a fantastic mirrorless camera with 36MP sensor and a host of other features. But my wife and I have an agreement that my addiction to camera gear should be a cost neutral as possible. I can get a used one in LN condition for around $1400 and I would probably get a few other things like the Canon lens adapter and the battery grip. Maybe eventually some Sony/Zeiss lenses.

So I made a difficult decision to sell an old family heirloom. My grandfather went out to China and I inherited many of the beautiful things he and my grandmother (she was born in China) had. One of them was a Mandarin robe worn by a civil servant, the robe is called a Pufu. The robe is polished black silk and has a rank badge on the front and back, the 5th level Silver Pheasant. You see these badges all the time on Ebay, some are real antiques and usually showing their age and others are complete knock offs from China claiming to be genuine. Sometimes you see real court style robes but I've only once seen a Pufu like mine.

So I put it up for auction on Wednesday night with a starting bid of $100 and a "buy it now" price of $2000. I set a reserve of $1200 hoping that if it got bit up to there it might reach $1500 or so by the end. So yesterday an Ebay user contacts me saying they will pay $1500 if I am interested. I responded in a nice way that I already set a "buy it now" price and he was welcome to bid on it anytime if that was too high. With in 20 minutes I got an email from Paypal saying I had just received $2000 a guy in Los Angeles with a confirmed Paypal account. He had a 100% + feedback score of 58 which isn't a lot but good enough and no negatives.

So today I packed it up carefully and sent it off. I hope my grandfather won't be saddened by my selling it. I had no way to display it and it has been stored in an old Chinese camphor wood chest to keep it safe for all these years since he got it in 1905.

Here are 2 pictures of it:

[glatt]

Wow!

I'd heard that rich people in China were buying back all their national treasures from Americans.

There is an auction house by my office that I visit to inspect the stuff each Monday before the Tuesday auction. They always have the Asian stuff on display right by the front door.