Hi-tone

Apparently, I am mighty. This is good to know.

I have a contract that my agent sent me electronically, with a request to print out, sign and return. No problem, quoth I.

Instructed the printer to do this thing, but the printer said no, shan't, I wants more ink, I haz none.

Okey-doke. I have toner cartridges by the score. (Well, not quite - but I have spares for all the colours that I never use. And, blessedly, spare black as well.) (Every now and then I think "what I should do, I should print stuff out in whatever-shade-of-splurge-it-is that would use equal quantities of all the colours that are not black; it'd be dark enough to use, and save replacing the black again." But of course I don't know what colour I would need to ask my printer for...?)

So. It's a familiar routine: press the right buttons in the right order, open the printer, unlock the cartridge, slide--

Old cartridge won't slide out.

I heave and twist and manipulate. Old cartridge still won't slide out.

Start everything again. Still won't shift.

Weep. Struggle.

Go to internets.

Internets say, "take drum out of printer-top, close front door, turn cartridges by hand until black is at top, remove..."

So I do that, and, y'know? It works. So actually the internet is mighty, but I do kinda feel like I have committed Engineering today. Got my hands dirty. (In a very literal sense, that last. Toner, toner everywhere...)

In other news, Amazon is advising me - on the basis of my previous choices - that I might care to buy a copy of Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox. Seriously, UK folks - it's 20% off at the moment, £7.95. If you want to take advantage, here's a link.

This number of things? Make a post.

Today is apparently a day for getting stuff done, without any of it being particularly effortful or demanding.

This morning, as already stated, I did pre-caffeinated engineering: which may have involved swearing at one of the cats (I'll leave you to guess which; you can have three guesses, 'k?), but was quite staggeringly successful, once all cats had been removed from the inner workings of the object.

Then I posted off the contracts to my agent and the old toner cartridge to the recycling depot, went into town and was writerly for a while, working on the opening pages of the new Chaz Brenchley novel, currently known as House of Doors; and tracking down a book that I really really need to read (Sisters in Arms by Nicola Tyrer, about the Queen Alexandra nurses in WW2: of course the Lit & Phil has a copy!).

Home via shopping for office supplies (and my only failure of the day: for no, I cannot mend my reading-glasses with a paperclip and superglue. Someone more adept than me, perhaps; me, not), and I have barely lunched before there is an unexpected van outside, and that is the plumbers! Returned, all unlooked-for! And this may be an example of the law of diminishing returns, but they were in and out in two minutes, and fixed my leaking pipe, and I do not at this time believe that they left another gushing failure behind them. We parted with cheerful and (in my case, at least) thoroughly genuine wishes never to see each other again, and I hope that that is that.

This afternoon I have done admin-stuff and shopped for dinner and had a minor epiphany, because I do not after all need to throw away the over-salty lime pickle. Instead, I am making a mutton dhansakh: for I find it hard to imagine a mutton-and-lentil recipe that would not be improved by (a) limes and (b) salt. I shall not salt the dish, and I shall add a spoonful or two of the pickle and see how we go. I can keep the stuff for years, and distribute it spoonful by spoonful through dishes that will benefit. Yay.

Also, I came home from town with a great many chicken carcases from one of my favourite butchers, and I am now making chicken stock, flavoured with lovage (largely because I have run out of parsley, and I have a lot of lovage). Tomorrow I am thinking of a chicken-and-sorrel soup for lunch, for I have quite a lot of English sorrel also. (Tomorrow I am also thinking of sneaking out to find a pub for the afternoon to watch England v Bangladesh, but that would be naughty...)

And now, while I cook curry and stock simultaneously, I think I might sit in my comfy chair and read my important-research book, for that is work beyond question, and just as much useful as anything else that I've been doing today.

Oh, and I have a question for the engine-smart amongst you, but I shall post that separately in case nobody's actually got this far down a rambly kind of post.

AKICOLJ/DW - motor-buffs, attend!

Okay, you car-fanciers: one of you at least is sure to know this, and you know just how grateful I will be.

When did people start to adapt existing cars and other vehicles for the disabled? Specifically, was it already established in WW2 that one could make adaptations for people with only one hand, eg - and would there have been factories and/or individual garages doing that, or would it have been down to the individual engineer working in a private capacity, or...?

Alternatively...

...Aaaand then of course there's the total unexpected sabotage of the practical end of one's practical day: as for example when a teenager knocks all unexpectedly on one's door, and comes in to commit social life.

As it happens, I have known this particular teenager since he was a bump, and I was absurdly pleased when he invited me to his 18th; and now he's rehearsing (Uncle Max in The Sound of Music, as it happens) in the area and dropped by on the off-chance, so of course I fetched him in and introduced him to the evils of gin and tonic (as opposed to gin-and-lemonade, which the foolish boy was drinking at his party).

*is a corrupter of youth* (except that actually of course we corrupted each other, because he dragged me away from virtuous research; and we got to talk about history and fiction and literature and such, and it was all good actually, despite being utterly corruptive)