Week 42/2025: A week off
Week of 13 October 2025
I had this week off work. Hurrah!
It was the week after school holidays.
It’s weird. Now I don’t have a school-age child living at home, I have no idea when school holidays is and the only way I notice is there is less traffic trying to run me over when go out for coffee in the morning, and the morning buses run on time.
This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.
A week off
It was a week off to do nothing much.
I sat around home, did some uni work, caught up on a few things, did some more uni work.
Kramstable wanted to pass on his awesome loft bed to another young person, and we organised that to happen a couple of weeks ago. That prompted us to reshuffle the house a bit, which has been happening now that the bed has gone. It’s involved shifting furniture between rooms, including moving a very large dresser from downstairs, which was . . . fun.
Bookcases
The reshuffle also involved new bookcases!
They came this week, so as well as sorting the other bookcases that got relocated, I was able to get several piles of books off the ‘floor bookcase’ and onto actual shelves so I can see them.
This is great!
Because I was a bit hesitant to commit books to shelves and wasn’t making much progress, I had to remind myself that none of this is a forever decision and if I don’t like it, I can always change it.
Bookcases! Yay!
That is all.
Dragons
I also decided to relocate my dragon egg, which I got from ceramic artist Kim way back in 2011.
This is the start. I wanted to build it a little nest out of the rocks in the garden. I’m not happy with it so I’m going to keep moving things around and maybe even see if I can entice some moss to grow on some of the rocks.
Habit tracker
- Go outside first thing (7 days): 6/7
- 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 4/7
- Hip exercises (5 days): 5/5
- Walk (7 days): 7/7
- Carry a notebook with me when I walk (7 days): 5/7
- Thinking time (4 days): 5/4
- Mid-day journalling (7 days): 3/7
- Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
- 9.30 shutdown & dim lights (6 days): 1/6
- Evening routine (6 days): 2/6
Summary of the week
What did I learn this week?
I learned that Plain Language = Plain English, and using it can benefit everyone. Just because someone is highly literate doesn’t mean they want to read complicated and complex instructions when there are simpler alternatives. It’s another example of the curb cut effect. If you get it right for people who don’t read as well, you get it right for everyone else.
I didn’t know until this week that there’s an international Standard for Plain Language (ISO 24495-1:2023 Plain language), which aims to ensure content is:
- Relevant—readers get what they need.
- Findable—readers can easily find what they need.
- Understandable—readers can easily understand what they find.
- Usable—readers can easily use the information.
Completely unrelated, I also learned that there is a non-dairy milk product called tiger nut milk. I overheard someone asking the barista in the coffee shop about “tiger milk” and I was intrigued so I had to find out what it was.
It’s made from tiger nuts, which are a root vegetable, not a nut, traditionally grown in West Africa, Spain and parts of Asia.
Finally, if you keep a tote bag in your backpack for when you do shopping on the way home, and you take that bag out and give it to someone who needs a bag, and you then go to a whole food store to get a bag of some small grains, let’s say pearl barley, and you put the paper bag in your backpack and not in the shopping bag you don’t have in your backpack any more, the paper bag will tear and you will get grains all through your backpack.
True story.
What did I notice this week?
A plover at Lower Sandy Bay that didn’t care how close I got to it.
An orange car driving past on the highway with the licence plate CLCKWRK.
I figured out what the blue thing on the footpath in Collins Street I was complaining about last week is!
If you look across the road the blue part marks where the road crosses over the rivulet, and on the side I was on, that blue part marks where the rivulet emerges from under the road.
That must be it!
What’s making me think?
This post that someone shared on social media:
“GenAI truly was the worst technology to come along at this moment. An energy and water guzzler when we most urgently need to take climate action. A disinformation machine as our journalism fails. A bias machine as fascism takes root. A job killer in a cost of living crisis.”
In response to:
“The ‘cognitive decline and brain damage from repeat covid infections’ and ‘easy to use robot that makes slop and melts your critical thinking skills’ is a hell of a combo in a post-fact media ecosystem”.
A ‘post-fact media ecosystem’. I’m not sure how to deal with that.
What was the best thing this week?
I talked to Kramstable.
I have bookcases.
I tidied my study and my desk, and the room is a lot nicer to be in now. My study floor is clear again. Mostly.
What am I reading this week?
- Grendel by John Gardner
What am I watching this week?
- Resident Alien
- Doctor Who ‘Mawdryn Undead’
What am I listening to this week?
- The Eye Begins to See and Songs from the Great Pause by Daniel J Townsend
- The Mighty Several by Paul Heaton
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