about something

Doubtless due in part to yesterday evening's extra pre-sleeptime sleep, the boy was up nice and early this morning. Nicky was wanting to pop to one of those second-hand baby-thing sale things so I relieved her at about seven so that she'd have a bit more sleep before driving anywhere. I was planning on using the time to establish and eradicate the cause of the remaining scuffing/rubbing of the back wheel of sparebike; it's definitely either the brake blocks or mudguard stays but appears to be one of these things which is only apparent under load and on the road. An adjustment to the stays on Friday evening has reduced it but it still kept reappearing, as it did again when I eventually got outside to pop and return/swap the garden gate lock (after a key had snapped on the third use). The problem now appears to be a slight waggling of the wheel about the axle following some settling-in since it was installed, causing intermittent scuffing against something, though the wheel itself has rounded off slightly after the first round of post-build truing meaning that the brakes were able to be adjusted again (with a lot less wheel-waggle room) after replacing the lever and tranverse cable at some point recently (though precisely when it not known due to tiredness). Another adjustment outside the shop got me home almost noiselessly before the rest of the afternoon's daylight was occupied with reinstalling the lock, wrangling the boy for a bit when he returned then popping back out on the relatively noiseless normalbike to see what the frost was like and buy some vital foods. When I returned I was pleased to see that the two footprint-shaped thawed bits of pavement outside the house (created when I brought the boy out to the car after Nicky had defrosted it) were still there after nine hours.

Now that both sets of family mostly don't bother with presents any more I haven't been paying much attention to calendars or last guaranteed first class posting dates and was therefore disappointed to realise that the distant-sounding 19th was going to be tomorrow, requiring cards and things to be printed before there could be any sleep (and instead of there being any hub-tightening). Fortunately the printer (dormant for several months) was still working, though only so far as things whose colour balance does not particularly matter are concerned.