It's also really great when the woman working directly next to you comes back and starts eating and all you can hear is her mouth noises.

Who doesn't love open plan offices?!

It's so cool being in an open plan office when almost no one is here but the one other guy who *is* here is on hold for something and therefore has his phone on speaker for everyone to enjoy the terrible music.

what the dickens do you mean it's only tuesday

There's a Spanish football game on the TV here and instead of walking on the pitch with children, the players walked on the pitch with *puppies*.

Football ⚽ was suddenly my favourite sport until the puppies went away and I stopped watching.

If I have to sit here doing nothing then I may as well learn something for my future career* with The Magic Circle.

*only half joking

In case you were under the impression that I was a normal person... here's what I brought on holiday with me.

I have 3 new pairs of leggings. The softest leggings ever made in the UNIVERSE.

Here is pair #1 for your viewing pleasure. I chopped my feet off* because some of you don't like feet pics, or you're just too cheap to pay for them.

*chopped off with my photo framing skills. Not lopped off with a sword

Edit: most important part that I can't believe I forgot to mention... They have pockets!

And it's still not Friday? Why does time work like this?

Moooondaaaaay
Tuuueessdaaay
Weeedneeeesday
Thuuuurssssday
Frdy
Saaaaaturrrrdaaaaay

Any top tips for someone who has an afternoon in London to herself* and nothing to do?
#London

*Next week, not immediately

It's Always Sunny has been going since 2005?!

Yesterday I was woken by the sound of footsteps in my back garden. They were small and shuffley and quick, and quite frankly rather noisy.

I slept with the window open so I looked down into my garden and saw two juvenile foxes having a wonderful time together. It had been raining so they were sliding across the patio. They chased each other round and round. Occasionally one would sploot on the ground for a bit and then start rolling around.

I watched them for about an hour in the early morning before I had to get up for my morning shift. There's wildlife right outside my window now and I love it.
🐾

Well, fuck, that was miserable. But then when it's got the whole Romeo and Juliet thing going on, the ending was inevitable.

Still. I can now say I've seen another classic!

Currently watching West Side Story for the first time ever.

This is not what I was expecting but it's great.

Remember, this Teams meeting is more afraid of you than you are of it.

#3GoodThings

- Another day, another lengthy and deep conversation with colleagues.

- Ticked off lots of organising jobs around the house.

- Messages from close friends making me smile.

Done a bit of research.

Serotonin in the brain directly regulates mood and appetite. It makes you feel full and reduces desire for foods you usually can't wait to eat.

So. I think that's it. My brain is just high on serotonin in a way it hasn't been for years.

It's been about a week and I've had a complete loss of appetite.

As someone with a bowel disease, I can assure you this comes with no other symptoms whatsoever. No pain or blood or anything. That's all healthy and normal.

But I know that loss of appetite can come with stress so maybe it's that, but good stress? Eustress? Because I've been so overly excited and happy. Could that be a thing?
#food #eating

Those following our journey south in our sailboat, Scarlet, from the Uk to Portugal know that we've been at it a few years. 2 years ago we left Gosport and eventually reached Quiberon in Brittany before we were stopped by our starter motor catching fire(!). We did engine repairs and maintenance there and overwintered for a year until last summer when a somewhat delayed start due to ADHD diagnosis getting in the way saw us reach Bilbao, where we spent last winter.

This year, when the weather allowed, we started moving again. We have now reached Muros in Galicia.

We knew this section, getting round the Galician rias, was going to be a race against time. It's an indented coastline with no safe shallows with treacherous rocks everywhere. If you stick to deep water you avoid it.

But every summer some of the population of Iberian orcas that spend winter and spring around the Strait of Gibraltar migrate north to Biscay to follow bluefin Tuna. And the only way to reliably avoid them is to stay in water of less than 20m depth. This is impossible in Galicia.

Our time has run out. Orcas have now been spotted north of Lisboa. They have arrived. We are still 3 rias from the Portuguese border.

So now we may be stuck, or at least have to watch VERY carefully for a window to JUST BLOODY RUN.

I'm part of the "orcas.pt" fleet, which is a group of mostly hobbyist sailors banding together to share information and advice about the orca situation. The "official" recommendations are terrible to the point that experts mostly prefer to work with our group, and as a result we get pretty good intel on where they are (some of them have GPS trackers I believe, but that exact info is only shared with the group admin because we don't want people looking for these animals).

Here's the rub. Orcas swim (when they aren't chasing something) at up to 50km per day. We have a pretty good read on where the danger areas are. Last sighting, draw a 50km circle for each 24 hours. Are you in it? Be afraid.

Almost no attacks have ever happened west of the 10th line of longitude, but we can't reasonably go out there in Scarlet. She is a 9 metre marina hopper absolutely not equipped for deep ocean sailing. Some people do cross the Atlantic in boats like that but they're nutters.

Also she is a deep fin keel with a single spade rudder; it will take very little orca action to pull our rudder clean off at which point there is a hole below the waterline that the rudder stock exited through and ... well, the boat sinks.

Unfortunately smaller sailboats with spade rudders which are most at risk from sinking on the first hit are amongst their favourite playthings. Contrary to the popular "orcas are going after the billionaires" narrative, the boats they trend to take are likely worth less than your car if you have a half decently paying job. Big motor yachts tend to steer by thrust vectoring and don't do "floating thing go spinny when I smack the shit out of its tail fin". They can also quite possibly outrun them which we absolutely cannot.

And then you abandon to liferaft after, assuming they haven't taken out your electrics (the batteries are back there), doing the whole mayday mayday mayday please send a fucking helicopter, I think these marine sheep spawn are going to eat me, HELP! thing (we have a handheld radio as well and iPhones can send distress signals even without cell coverage).

So anyway there you are in your liferaft, watching a load of your stuff go to the seabed, all three of you (probably. We usually have 3), throwing up (because throwing up in a liferaft is what you do. They are profoundly unpleasant spaces to spend any time), which surrounded by playful teenage delinquent 6 tonne murderfish who you have heard are VERY picky eaters and will only eat bluefin tuna and maybe octopus and definitely not human, honest, but which aren't above violently tossing floating shit around into the air for the lulz to see if it makes more fun vomiting and screaming noises, hoping that you don't drift into the rocks on what is literally called the "Coast of Death" when you translate the name into English.

So we're gonna like, properly pay attention to the "orca forecast", as it were.

And if we aren't absolutely certain it's safe to run for Vigo as fast as we fucking can, we may be stuck in Muros until autumn.

Let's see. Worst case we get the boat hauled out onto the hard and re-antifoul her (disgustingly messy but strangely pleasurable job).

if the worst does happen, assuming your boat is still floating and controllable after the first hit, apparently the thing to do is disengage autopilot, start the engine if not already running, apply FULL throttle, and motor directly away from the pod (preferably towards shallow water) as fast as possible. They can swim faster than the boat can go, but remember, they're juveniles doing it for a laugh, and apparently if they wander off from the pod by more than about 300 metres their mothers yell at them to come back.

"Aw mum! I was sinking the thing!"

"You can sink the thing after you've eaten your dinner, now come HERE"

"Dinner is tuna again. It's always tuna. I'm BOOOOORED. Can I have beef?"

"What the fuck is beef?"

I'm in Portugal, a country built for this heat, and I can tell you that 39°C here is infinitely more bearable than that sweaty ball sack 39°C we had in the UK a couple of weeks ago.

Temperature outside: 39°C
Temperature inside: 83°C

Probably. Because my insides are being warmed by this lovely cup of tea.