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I went for my first Spidey-walk around my new neighbourhood.
Several pretty nice encounters with locals. A group outside the local club wanted photos (although only one of them actually stood next to me to be photographed!), a couple wanted pictures to show a young relative who, apparently, would be astounded that they'd met the real Spidey. A family with two young boys was just getting into their car after after presumably visiting relatives and the family seemed to like seeing me, although the boys themselves seemed not bold enough to interact. A guy told me he'd just "walked out" of work (not sure if he'd quit or just left for the day) after his manager had sworn at him and said just seeing me lifted his mood and made his day.
And all this just from my first 30 minute, 1½ mile walk. Gotta spend a bit more time out in suit in this area! 🙂
(Below, eight selfies of me as classic Spider-Man with my web backpack, one indoors before I went out, the others taken on a path beside a green part way along my route.)
When I got home today, after a couple of days at the old house, I parked the bike on the driveway and a couple of small fluffy persons came to say hello. Or, more precisely, one of them came to say hello, while the other one nearly did but then hid under a bush for ages, coming out only very briefly to tell the other one off and then go and hide again. I do like how they don't care that I'm in a full set of leathers, gloves, boots, with a blank black visor and no face, they just care if they get pettings. I do hope someday someone happens to walk past while this is happening and gets a surreptitious photo of a scary biker being affectionate to cats.
Also, I was busy yesterday and made four whole loaves of bread. Then I eated some.
The deed was do'ed (last Thursday).
Now my mum seems to not recognise me more often than previously (although that might just be progression of her dementia), and my sister's dog, Comet, who was fine the first time he met me after the dehairification, growled at me this evening when he saw me in bike gear and bare-headed. Took him a while to grudgingly accept me again.
On the whole, I think I like it though. 🤷♂️
@Ghost The new house has very non-smart meters, presumably unchanged since the place was built in 1989. They are "digital" only in the sense that they have digits displayed on the front…
I found images of, I think, the same models of meter. If not they are *very* close.
Hmm, I think the risk from remote-off is probably negligible (unless someone was motivated enough to hack the things and turn it off maliciously, but that also seems very unlikely, unless they did so in bulk, indiscriminately). I'd guess the benefit of a slightly under-reading meter is probably offset by the benefit of being able to see your usage in real time, have time-of-day-variable tariffs, and things like that.
This just smells so scammy. But they have the planned activation date and the second half of the postcode correct, and the phone number matches one on openreach's web site, so… presumably it's genuine?
I think it's a "proceed with extreme caution" situation.
I have a bunch of favourites and I don't know that I can choose! Some are more comfortable than others, but all of them make me feel better about how I appear to everyone around me, even if they don't help me feel better physically! They even help when I'm alone, because I like to look like I want to look even if there's no one to see.
(8 pictures attached, in case your fedi node doesn't show them all.)
I went for a run earlier this week and actually paused long enough to take some photos. These are the local tower cranes being used to build some new tower blocks (in an area where there are no tall buildings, so they'll stick out like a sore thumb, but anyway). When I see them at night, I mentally refer to them as the eyes of Sauron, because of the red lights on the top.
I took these pics because the light was pretty good. First pic I tried to get all the cranes in the frame and yeah, that worked, but it looks bland. Second pic doesn't really show the cranes properly, but the dramatic lighting works!
Staying over at my sister's again, and I noticed this "wall of dog" hanging up. It's all pics of her last-but-one dog, Keira — a sort of shrine to her. And I notice there's one fake dog in there! 😉
So wow, yes, Keira met Kelsey when she was a puppy. She then lived to nearly ten years old, then they got another German Shepherd who is now eight. So that picture (centre left) shows Kelsey something like 18 years ago…! Time flies…
Oh geez, I am a dummy. I took a whole bunch of photos this morning before changing into more usable clothes for daytime, uploaded them, but completely forgot to actually make a post including them. Go me.
So, good spider-morning all!
(Sorry about the alt-texts. Also, there are 8 pictures, for those whose platforms only show them the first few.)
In the end, as I didn't have anywhere private to change, I just took my mask/hood/faceshell/lenses off in the car, tucked the hood in, and drove home in headless Spidey mode.
I stopped off to buy lunch at a Sainsbury's Local/petrol station, where several people commented (favourably) on the suit. Rather than eat while taking up one of their limited parking spaces I moved on to a free local council car park. As I was eating, a car parked beside mine and a dad got out with a small child and I heard "yes look, it's Spider-Man! And he's eating… a…sandwich…" I waved and said hi and "if you give me a minute I'll put my mask on" and they seemed to like it. 😁👍 (I should have prompted them to get a pic as I'm sure they're kicking themselves now for not having done so.)
I stopped off briefly a couple more times on the way home. Saw people looking a few times, think there were one or two more nice comments!
I'm still not in love with going headless, but I had to to drive safely, and people did respond positively even so. Also now my parents, sisters, nibblings, and a couple who my sisters know who happened to be there, have all seen me in headless Spidey mode and acceptance rate is 100% so far. Wheeee.
So, ended up staying in suit from just before I checked out (about 1.30pm) until getting ready for bed time (near midnight). Admittedly with bare face a lot of that time, but still, attached shoes and gloves, plus my feet were still damp the whole day from when I was carrying my stuff to the car while it was trying to rain and the ground was wet.
Aaaand checked out of ConFuzzled 2024. Sad face.
I'm most probably going to hang around for most of the day until Dead Dog, then drive home late this evening. If you want to meet I'm at the back of the bar area at the moment, might be more in the foyer at times. Being a Spidey, I am fairly recognisable! 😉
Okay, well it looks like I've actually managed to do at least *something*!
(If you can't see all 10 attached pictures, try opening it on the original instance.)
Without, in particular, a head, I'm unlikely to show this off in public at ConFuzzled, but I'll certainly bring it, so maybe in private? Hopefully after this burst of progress after literal years of having the zip half-sewn in, I'll make the time to do the head/tail/feet within the next few months and maybe bring it to a Londonfurs meet sometime. That would be good.
Personally, I feel the only acceptable artificial noise for a car to produce is this:
JETSONS_SPACE_CAPSULE_LAND_AND_STOP_01.ogg
Darn.
I just spent a while catching up with my timeline (went from about 1.5 days behind to only about 4 hours behind) and just caught up with the part where people were talking about the aurora.
Ooh, I thought, I'm only a few hours behind, I could go and look. But no. It's nearly 5am and there's enough daylight that I couldn't see a faint aurora even if it's still happening (which I've no idea whether it is or not). Oh well.
Phew, that's been needing to be done for quite a while. Bike chain maintenance done for now. Cleaned, adjusted, lubed. Now all I need to do is ride it. (Tomorrow, hopefully!)
The chain was quite loose, needed 3½ flats on the adjuster nuts. I haven't done that in years. I've been riding it so little the last few years though, I've not really needed to do the chain before the annual service takes care of it anyway. 🤷♂️
