june

As I mentioned yesterday, we didn’t manage to do many of the things we’d expected to do last month. And, unlike last June when I went to Greece, I’m not expecting to do any long distance travelling.

Continuing recovery

I start this month still in my recovery period; today, I have an X-ray booked to see how my fractures are healing. My sick note for work has another week to run, and in some respects, me blogging again is part of me seeing if I’m able to start working from home again next week. I suspect it’ll be a few more weeks before I can go back into the office, not least because I’m not able to drive at the moment, or carry a backpack on the train.

International visitor

Christine has extended family in the USA, and we’re expecting to host one of her relatives later this month. The plan is for them to stay in our spare room, and, up until I injured myself, we had been making good progress at turning our spare room from a dumping ground for our junk, into a usable bedroom. To the extent that we’d taken two car loads of stuff to the local recycling centre, and another two car loads were donated to a local charity. I’m hoping we’ve done enough to make it usable, but it’s not quite where we had hoped it would be.

Their visit is mostly to sort out some family property and inheritance issues, so nothing too exciting.

New mouse

The multi-device mouse I bought in September 2022 is starting to become faulty – not all of my left clicks are registering any more, which is as frustrating as you would expect it to be.

Considering that previous two mice that I had (both Tecknet mice from Amazon) each lasted about a year, I’m somewhat pleased that this has managed almost four years, although I’m sure I’ve had Logitech mice that have lasted far longer in the past. So, I’ll be spending this week looking for a suitable replacement – ideally, it’ll be another multi-device mouse.

Car insurance renewal

June is also our car insurance renewal month. Well, our policy would actually start in July, but quotes tend to be cheapest around 21-26 days before renewal. Once we have our renewal quote from our current provider, I’ll be spending time perusing the various price comparison web sites to see if we can get it cheaper. I’ve written in more detail about saving money before, and my record is saving £300 by haggling with my existing provider.

A quick glance at one price comparison site is showing prices around £100 more expensive than last year’s premium, but I’ll see if those prices come down nearer the time.

I haven’t done one of these ‘looking at the month ahead’ posts in a while (March being the last one). It’s usually a sign that I feel the need to write something and I’m running out of ideas. And that’s sort of the case here; I normally write blog posts in bulk at the weekend, and next weekend I’m unlikely to have time.

This month will see both Christine and I travel away for work. Christine’s off to London for a conference; meanwhile, I get to go somewhat further afield. It’ll be the first time I’ve travelled for work where I’ve needed to stay overnight since a trip to Canterbury in 2019, and the first time I’ve travelled abroad for work since my Middle East trip in 2015. Indeed, it’ll also be the first time in a decade that I’ve been on an aeroplane. I’ll write more about it nearer the time.

The weather seems to have become more unsettled than it has been of late, although I’m hoping we’ll get the chance to have some nice days out as a family as well. We’ll see what happens.

There’ll also be one or two more posts in our journey towards an electric car to come this month. I don’t think we’ll end up actually buying an electric car this month, but I’m planning a couple of posts about it pre-purchase.