Reading the manual; storms ahead

Boring bit:
It's getting a bit protracted this manual reading business. I always do read the manual if the thing it belongs to is new to me. However, yesterday I bought "home networking for dummies".
And obviously I'm not a dummy, since I barely understand a word of it. No that's not right. I understand nearly all the words (and true to the implied promise in the title, it's written in words of very few syllables with very simple diagrams)***. It's just the words are arranged in an order which defeats my desire to gain sense out of them.
A little knowledge may or may not be dangerous but it certainly leads to confusion!
So I got half way through the book before I realised that the nice man* hadn't even started on wireless networking (which I'm fairly sure I want to do). Suddenly he began to say one or two things I recognised, sort of. At which point I realised I was too knackered to understand anything any more and went to bed.

Today it was wild and stormy:
(view of wildly storm blown tree from the window next to my computer)


And I was greeted by Barney saying "Oh no nonono! it's too windy" [to go to work]. Rather cheerfully. He's settled down with stamps in the office and later, as if to show how right he was, a large chunk of the pebble dashing blew off the wall upstairs.
Amazingly, although our house is now falling down, the power remains on. I expect it's waiting till dinner time to plunge us into darkness and cookerlessness. And of course, computerlessness.

Yesterday I went to Reading (pausing to run manically backwards and forwards around a flooded bit, annoying a number of motorists and getting wet feet. Very good fun this bit)and had my free sewing machine lesson. Just as well I had a go with it beforehand as otherwise we wouldn't have had much to talk about that isn't already in the manual. Still the nice girl cleared up some minor puzzlements and I've ordered a "roll seam foot" which is going to do wonderful things with thin silky stuff for me...when I've mastered the trick of it. I could see there was a trick as the girl had to have several attempt at it herself.

Later today I went into town via a 5 mile detour to see if there were still floods pouring off the fields. there weren't but I found this rainswept view through the car windscreen very satisfying.
Otherwise, Fran's here for some of the weekend (which is lovely) and I also bought a trackerball thingie for the lap top. However storms and Barney being at home meant I couldn't easily practice trackerballing in bed...he really wouldn't understand.****

*I've just realised that she's actually a nice lady. How prejudiced am I! Still she writes exactly like a man would on this subject**
**Well I suppose all the dummy books I've read might have been written by women.
***I thought there were going to be simple diagrams and there are. At least three. (this is not nearly enough for the kind of dummy I am. I need simple diagrams to illustrate every point.)
****Actually he might understand only too well and start saying things like "blogging in bed again? Huh! Alright for some" Which I wouldn't like to encourage.