We're All Fine -

 - With Euphrosyne!
Yet again one of those words that pop up in my cranium for no good reason, although unusually this time I had an inkling of what "Euphrosyne" was.  No, it's no a river in Asia Minor, nor yet a species of spider-eating wasp, nor indeed a second-rate 140-gun man-o-war in the Royal Navy circa 1758.

What it's not

     The charming young lady Euphrosyne was one of the three Graces, being minor goddesses in the pantheon of Greek gods, and she is peculiarly apt as a title since she was the living embodiment of cheerfulness and good humour.  Which is BOOJUM! to a tee*.
     Speaking of which -

More Haul
As you may have observed from various subtle hints dropped around here,  it was my birthday yesterday, and I am now officially 137.  The good people at work had actually gotten together some funds and purchased some books for me - who would have guessed!  Art?

     They chose well, I don't have either of those military history books, though I do have another one by the author of the D-Day tome, which happened to be on the bookshelf next to me and is thus in shot.  I have never tackled a book of crosswords before, so this will be something of a test for me, as the solutions are bound to be in the back and NO CONRAD DO NOT CHEAT BY LOOKING.
     This is not all.  O no.  There were presents at home, too, waiting for when I got in.  Art?

They know me so well

     Abby, when handing me my bit of kit at work, declared that I was "a hard person to buy presents for", to which my semi-joking response was "Not at all - socks and underpants <the bucket of gin being left unmentioned - the dreadful truth courtesy Mister Hand>" and here we see the truth of said statement - underpants.  We can also see a tee with a shark upon it - O frabjous day! - and another one with Perfidious Albion's principal Giant Flying Mallet upon it.  Might not wear that one to work, my Teuton colleagues may not like it quite as much as I.
     There was also the following.  Art!

     A cool Doctor Who mug, which ironically changes design when you fill it with hot liquids, and a caddy full of a loose-leaf tea that's not identified.  It's a really nice, light fruity loose-leaf blend, and that caddy is also badly needed at work, since I am continually spilling Assam out of the packet and onto my bottom drawer.  Serendipitous, one might say.
     There were a couple of other items, too: a packet each of Kangaroo and Ostrich Burgers, so I know what's for lunch today.
     Oops, I beg your pardon, I forgot to provide an illo of Ol' Euf.  Art?

The Grace in question

     It was harder than you'd think to find a picture where she's not gloriously sharing her naked beauty with the world, for we are still SFW here.
     I hadn't forgotten the motley, either - it had a rough night so we're letting it sleep in and have some chicken soup on the go for later.

An Embarrassment Of Riches
This might be a bit of a reach.  Well, sue me if it is, you're not paying to read this scrivel, are you?
     Okay, Conrad was idly chatting with Marta, one of my Polish colleagues, in the office on Saturday, when I spotted a pencil sketch of a rabbit at the nearby desk of Melinda, her colleague.  I admired it briefly, as it was an excellent sketch, to which Marta replied that it wasn't Melinda's work - they had possessed another artist on their team, who had now left.  "Ah - an embarrassment of riches" I declaimed, and then had to explain it, as this particular bit of British idiom was new to her.

Back when the Dutch made all the running

     This embarrassment came into play later, when I was trying to get my First Bus app to work, which it stubbornly refused to do.  No wifi, no network, sorry cannot connnect, ensure you have a signal - all these kinds of messages were coming up.
     "WORK DAMN YOU!" I said in my head, for frightening your work colleagues is not the way to go.
        
     There had been trouble at the bus stop in the morning, when the FB app was convinced we were in Yeovil - a town over two hundred miles away from Manchester, on the south coast in fact.
     Oh look, another First Bus app - which also didn't work, coming up with a message about networks and not being able to connect.
     DAMN YOU, NETWORKS!  DAMN YOU TO HADES AND BELOW!
     Back to the first First app.  It would not work.  It refused.  And continued to believe that we were in sunny south coast Yeovil.
     DAMN YOU, FIRST BUS APP!  The weather here is less bright and dry than it is in Yeovil.  Don't rub it in.
     Conrad refused to bother looking at that other, second, First app because he had focussed all his attention and ire on the first First app and was going to make it work.  Though there was a distinct possibility the phone would be going through a window before that happened**.
     Even back at ground level, the app wouldn't work, yet surely we were back within wifi range by now?  Eventually I gave in and purchased a day saver, with very bad grace.

Grace Slick.  A very, very bad grace indeed.

     Of course you will have worked it out by now.  The first First app had expired earlier in the week, hence that machine hallucination about Yeovil, and it was the second one I needed to use.  I tried that one this morning - instantly successful.
     Bah!

Finally -
Rosie and Phil will be home from the Cotton Clouds Festival at Saddleworth by now.  Their luck did not span any of Friday, which was relentlessly wet - good job Toddbrook Reservoir had been lowered - so I hope they managed to put their tent up faster than normal (an hour).  They did have sun on Saturday, which was tempered by the very high winds serving to scud the clouds along.  Saddleworth being high moorland I bet they got every mile per hour going.

The definition of bleak

     Time for a Kangaroo burger!


*  Not counting the zombies or atom bombs.
**  This would be bad.  Seventeenth floor.