{"id":1787,"date":"2010-03-06T09:05:04","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T09:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/?p=1787"},"modified":"2010-03-06T09:05:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-06T09:05:04","slug":"boiler-resurrected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/?p=1787","title":{"rendered":"Boiler: resurrected?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=Indent>Well, it appears that the evil spirit lurking in our boiler has been dispelled: the latest in the long string of boiler repair people showed up yesterday, at 5 minutes &#8217;til 5 p.m., restored power to the boiler &#8230; and it started.  Won&#8217;t quit, won&#8217;t fail, no matter what T. tried.  He mumbled something about there maybe being an electrical fault somewhere, and promised to come back next week to replace something or other, and that&#8217;s that.  After going without central heat for 2 months, bathing at the gym &#8230; here we are, with heat and the ability to shower.  Of course, it&#8217;s not nearly as cold as it&#8217;s been, but there&#8217;s still snow on the hills &#8217;round Glasgow.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/wishiwerebaking\/4404696238\/\" title=\"View from Skypark 119\" target=_blank><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4022\/4404696238_b784ac7155.jpg\" title=\"View from Skypark 119\" alt=\"View from Skypark 119\" width=\"500\" height=\"70\" hspace=10 align=left \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=Indent>We hardly know what to do with ourselves.  Honestly, we each got in the shower this morning and &#8230; were confused.  We could luxuriate in the never-ending hot water, and not have to keep pressing the button to make the water come out!  <small>(The gym&#8217;s showers, while providing endless hot water, are of the type to turn off after 30 seconds, unless you keep pressing the button.  Doing this while shampooing, with your elbow, leads to a bit of an intricate dance, as the pipes &#8211; both hot and cold &#8211; are right beneath your elbow!)<\/small>  We got over the awkwardness quite soon, but still: this is our first shower in this flat since <b>December 4th<\/b>!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/wishiwerebaking\/4403965665\/\" title=\"View from Skypark 124\" target=_blank><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4031\/4403965665_f66c5ff1c5.jpg\" title=\"View from Skypark 124\" alt=\"View from Skypark 124\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" hspace=10 align=right \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=Indent>Just as T. was writing that D. was to do no more cakes (except for that Stag Night cake, in July), D. was being talked into doing <i>yet another cake with toys on top<\/i>.  This one&#8217;s for the birthday of one of his coworkers&#8217; mum.  She&#8217;s turning 70.  And she loves lawn bowling.  So: the cake requested is a lemon cake, square, shaped like a bowling green, and to have figures on it &#8230; lawn bowling.  His coworker is going to go to the same toy store from which we got the pirate toys, and is so excited it&#8217;s not even funny.  This excitement is the fun part about baking, really: that people love these creations, and they&#8217;re really so easy to make &#8230; well, that&#8217;s why he agrees to do them.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/wishiwerebaking\/4404019611\/\" title=\"View from Skypark 131\" target=_blank><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4031\/4404019611_81e0029055.jpg\" title=\"View from Skypark 131\" alt=\"View from Skypark 131\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" hspace=10 align=left \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=Indent>D. has finished a draft chapter of his PhD thesis and has until May to revise that chapter.  That takes things up to about 30,000 words so far.  He&#8217;s still trying to get people to take <a href=\"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/limesurvey\/index.php?sid=47694\" target=_blank>his survey<\/a>, in particular he&#8217;s looking for Canadians (only 10 have participated), people in the British Isles <i>other than<\/i> those in Scotland <small>(although they&#8217;re welcome, too, it&#8217;s just that he&#8217;s got more Scots than English, which is sort of unbalanced as there are like 20 times more English, not to mention the Welsh or the Irish!)<\/small>, and people in the US <i>other than Californians<\/i> <small>(Again: they&#8217;ve had a stronger voice than any other state.)<\/small>.  So, please consider taking the survey: <a href=\"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/limesurvey\/index.php?sid=47694\" target=_blank>https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/limesurvey\/index.php?sid=47694<\/a> !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it appears that the evil spirit lurking in our boiler has been dispelled: the latest in the long string of boiler repair people showed up yesterday, at 5 minutes &#8217;til 5 p.m., restored power to the boiler &#8230; and it started. Won&#8217;t quit, won&#8217;t fail, no matter what T. tried. He mumbled something about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glasgow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}