Distractions

Another of those days where I'm left without a clue what to post about.  I'm sure that, yesterday, I had a vague idea as to what I was going to say today, but I've had a lot of distractions since then.  I'll doubtless remember at some point and it will become a future post.  But for now, I'm contemplating the fact that my back aches - I've had a niggling back injury for a couple of weeks now, the result of farting around up a ladder trying to replace a strip light - and my neck also now aches, not in sympathy with my back, but thanks to having slept awkwardly.  Which is another thing, my sleep patterns of late have been more disturbed than usual - I finally managed to piece together eight hours of sleep overnight for the first time in what seems like weeks.  But like I said, I've had a lot of distractions lately.  I've had a lot of problems with the domains I have registered, for instance, with DNS settings mysteriously changing and the email forwarding on one domain suddenly not working, resulting in me not getting email from my bank, amongst other organisations I used it with.  As the current registrar was clearly not interested in resolving the issues, (they'd already had my money for renewing the domains), I decided to test the water in terms of transferring the domains to a new registrar by moving the email-related one first.  Due largely to my own incompetence, this turned out to be a more protracted and frustrating operation than I had hoped for.  Still, it's sorted now and the email address is fully functional again.

With that up and running at a new registrar, I'll maybe start contemplating moving my other domain there, the one that I use for The Sleaze and therefore can't really afford to have any glitches with.  Still, I at least had a more positive distraction from posting here today, as it was this month's local Toy and Model Train Fair, where I picked up my usual amount of tatty model railway equipment and books at minimal cost.  This time around I walked out the proud owner of a couple of those Ferry Van models Lima used to sell back in the eighties.  They are very basic and HO rather than 00 scale, but these are at least fitted with Tri-ang style couplings and will be useful for 'bulking out' freight trains, (using cheaper, less detailed wagons between the newer, better detailed wagons is a good way of creating long goods trains at low cost - you only tend to notice the wagons at the front and back of the train, so that's why you marshal the higher quality stock front and back of the train, with the tattier stuff in-between).  Another major distraction throughout the winter have been the intermittent appearances in my living room of a mouse.  I say a mouse, but I'm pretty sure that there have been at least two mice at different times - in the earlier appearances it looked black, more recently, it has been brown.  

Anyway, I've contemplated various anti-mouse measures, but I don't actually want to hurt it/them.  I almost bought a humane mouse trap, but their appearances declined, lulling me into a false sense of security.  Then the brown one started appearing again.  At which point I contemplated borrowing a local cat and getting it to walk around the living room - the scent of a predator is sometimes enough to deter mice.  Then I remembered that the last time I did that, many, many years ago, the cat in question decided that this was an open invitation for him to come into my house whenever he pleased - I frequently found myself ambushed at the front door as I came home from work.  While I was actually quite fond of that particular cat, it isn't an experience I want to repeat.  But the problem seems to have gone way for now, with no mouse sightings for over a week.  Which might mean that my chasing the brown furred bugger with an air freshener aerosol the last couple of times he appeared has scared him enough to cease and desist.  Or, it could mean that he's simply gotten smarter and now makes out sure that I'm not in the living room when he appears.  Either way, for now, at least, it's saving me the expense of buying that mousetrap.