This afternoon I took the opportunity to put work on hold briefly while I went outside and mowed the lawn.  It has needed doing for a while now, and I’ve been putting it off, but today I figured I ought to take advantage of the sunshine and get out there while I can.  Looking at the forecast, the weekend isn’t going to be too promising.  The lawn actually needs treating at some point, as one half of it looks to be more moss than grass.  We’ve got some moss-killer, it’s just a case of spraying it on and letting it do its job.  I didn’t get round to that today, but I did cut the grass and do the edges, so the garden is looking nice now.  I also noticed that the peas in our vegetable patch are beginning to grow too!  We’ve got carrots and parsnips in there too, but I only planted them last week so it’s no surprise they’re not topside yet.

This weekend is going to be pretty busy too.  Saturday I’m off to a friend’s stag do, which promises to be lots of fun, if somewhat energetic… I’m not giving any details, just in case the person in question doesn’t know about it all yet.  In fact, part 2 of the stag do is on the Sunday, so it’ll be a hefty weekend of fun and frolics, and a fair amount of driving too.

Also on Sunday I’m skipping church.  Doesn’t happen often, but occasionally I take a day off to go to a Mini event, pretty much all of which tend to be on Sundays.  This weekend it’s the Manningtree High School Vehicle Show, and Colchester Mini Club will have a stand there with several of our Minis on display, mine included.  Which means at some point I really ought to clean the car.  I’ve also got a couple of electrical items to install eventually, now that I’ve got all the required bits and pieces for it: I’ve got a rear brake light to go in the back window, some LED side repeaters, a cigarette lighter socket, and all the necessary wires and connectors for installing it.  All good fun.  But since I’m going to be out all Saturday I’m not sure I’ll have time to install them before the show.  Never mind.  It’s not a particularly big show, and apparently it’s going to rain anyway.  Ah well, there’s always next time.

On the computer front, I’m now testing out Firefox 3 beta 5.  It’s not quite finished yet, and isn’t even a Release Candidate, but it’s interesting seeing where they’re going with it and what improvements they’ve made.  For a start, it’s much quicker than FF2 was on the Mac, and significantly faster than previous betas too, which is good.  Speed and responsiveness was one of the main reasons I stopped using Firefox on the Mac in the first place and switched to Camino.  There are still some bugs to iron out before it goes live (I’ve seen some problems handling frames), but the big thing I don’t like at the moment is that it won’t work with UNO.  For those of you who don’t know, UNO is a cool little extra that straps itself (harmlessly) into Mac OS X Tiger and allows you to unify the messy interface, getting rid of the brushed metal windows and allowing me to make everything look consistent.  Unfortunately, FF3 seems to break UNO – it’s not dangerous or particularly problematic, just an annoying visual thing.  Basically, UNO is supposed to unify – join together – the top part of the window and the menu bar underneath.  As standard FF3 does this anyway, which is nice, but as soon as UNO is working, regardless of whether it’s actually supposed to be doing anything with Firefox, that unity is lost.  Curious.  Without UNO, FF3 displays unified, but nothing else does.  With UNO, everything displays unified except FF3.  Grrr.  As I say, not a huge problem, just a niggling frustration, but one I’m hoping will be sorted by the time FF3 is released properly.

Finally, on to this blog.  Astute blog readers will notice that I’ve changed the theme back to the way it was last week.  Sorry.  It just got to the stage where I was annoyed by enough of the new design to warrant just reverting back to the previous design.  I’m working on ideas for a refreshed theme, which I’ll be designing myself (rather than picking an off-the-shelf theme), and you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve found a way of testing themes without the general public seeing them, which should allow me to develop it and test it before actually letting it loose on you lot and letting you pick holes in it.  So, again, apologies for messing you around with visual styles, but hopefully the end result will be better.

Right, after all that, I need another cup of tea.  And maybe I’ll see if I can persuade the gerbils out – Ellie’s much better at it than I am, but she’s at work and the girls need the exercise.  Time to show the little furballs who’s boss…

When I got home I took the bike for a ride, something I’ve not done in years.  My leg muscles complained almost instantly, but thankfully I managed to ignore them long enough to get a good long ride out of them.  At first I just cycled round the block, getting used to the bike and working up some confidence.  Then I started exploring some random roads in Wivenhoe that I hadn’t been down before, found a few footpaths I never knew existed, and generally enjoyed being back on a bike again.  Then I ended up taking the bike off-road for a bit, and found some fields that I didn’t know were there.  It was hard going, and I found a fair bit of mud, but I guess if nothing else it was good for the bike to know what it was in for!  After about half an hour of cycling I came back home again, thoroughly worn out but satisfied that I had had some exercise and shown the bike who was boss.

After lunch I set about taking my old bike apart, taking off the bits I wanted to keep and putting some of them on the new bike – the bike chain, bottle holder and lights went straight on, and I’ve taken the bar extensions off the old bike to maybe put on the new bike at a later date.  The old bike looks thoroughly sorry for itself now, propped up against the garden wall with a flat rear tyre and several bits now missing.  The paint that was originally red has faded in places, so it’s looking somewhat pink now.  It’ll probably still be good enough to donate to Re~Cycle, but I won’t be able to deliver it until Tuesday.

So, new bike.  Good stuff.  Hopefully now I’ll be able to get myself into a good routine and lose some unnecessary flab.   Unfortunately I’m still a little saddle-sore from yesterday’s outing, but I’m sure that’ll pass eventually…