Aaaarrrggghhh it's THAT time of year

Yes it's that December time of year again where we mostly all turn into headless chickens.  As most of you will know my Dad sadly passed away in September so it's going to be strange without him in the midst of things.  Mr M and I have decided to have the family dinner here this year and decided to go with Duck for the mains.  I'm quite excited about it, although we have had people round for meals this will be the first family Christmas Dinner here.  Most of the menu has been planned.  Prawn and Smoked Salmon something starter (how's that for descriptive?!), Soup, Duck and trimmings, Christmas pudding or cheesecake (not decided what cheesecake to make yet), lots of wine or substitute and then relax and maybe a film and a snooze (has to be done).

My birthday is the next day and as usual I'm planning to do something for it in January.  Half Most of the time I say I'll arrange to go out for drinks in January and invite folk it never happens.  Mr M and I are bad for not arranging to do celebratory things for ourselves.  Mostly it's because of our health issues.  This year we SHALL go for a meal in January to the new restaurant Da Steakhoose in Lerwick (although they are pretty fully booked so we better get booking shortly to get fitted in).  The last time we did anything Birthday or Anniversary wise for the pair of us it was Mr M's Birthday 2 years ago (gulp!).

We've just had an overhaul of the heating and hot water systems here.  It's not been straightforward.  The guys that have been contracted to do the work have been great but The Powers That Be - different story.  A lot of it is communication related or rather the lack there of.  There has been a lot of toing and froing with different things.  We used to have a communal boiler house which serviced 11 houses and we paid the council for our electric and heating.  This has been changed to individual megaflow boilers and Quantum Storage heating for Kitchen and Sitting Room and panel heaters for Bathroom and bedrooms.  We were originally supposed to get supplied by Scottish Hydro but in the middle of things this got changed to EDF.  Things are up and running now but we still don't know when the electric will be changing over to EDF or what tariff we will be on.  Both Mr M and I are going to go with Scottish Hydro when we get the chance.  We may pay a bit more but at least we'll be able to get information about when the power is going to come back on during power cuts and if something goes wrong it's Scottish Hydro that has the manpower up here.  We shall see what happens but I'm not holding my breath waiting for info.  On the plus side it's been great having hot water in the house, no more waiting around 10 minutes for lukewarm water from the taps or having to boil the kettle so we can have hot water to wash dishes or hands.


Gardening has been put on hold but got the Garlic and bulbs on the go for the Spring.  Health wise I've not been able to do much but it really is in need of a good tidy.

I've also been toying with the idea of making a YouTube Vlogging channel and keep swaying between Yay and Nay.  It won't be the most exciting channel (there will be no skydiving or water skiing I'm afraid) but mostly a sort of video journal of what it is like living in Shetland with Chronic Health Issues.  As I say I'm not sure but let me know what your thoughts are.  There won't be fancy camera equipment just the cameras that we already have and no idea how to edit or what program to use but I can learn those things.


Anyway enough of the essay, signing off for just now.

M