A pleasant day

We've had a relaxed day in the boat, apart from walking into the village in the morning to post those calendars which needed to be so despatched. The printing session yesterday had taken quite a while, the printer becoming more and more cantankerous as time went on. Basically, it's getting old, the same as the rest of us, and really doesn't like doing long runs at best quality setting and on stock that's at the upper limit of what it will take.

By the finish, I was having to print each sheet as a separate job, otherwise the thing just sat there sulking. I replaced both ink cartridges, but once those are mostly used, I reckon we'll be looking for a new printer. I'm planning to stick with HP again; ironically, most of the all-in-one beasts are over-specified these days, with WiFi capability and all odd stuff like being able to email the job to it.

As long as it prints, scans and copies OK, I'll be happy; the USB connection runs neatly along the back of the desk from the Mac Mini box on one pedestal to the printer on the other, and Sheila usually connects to it via the WiFi network and the Mini. I guess the only advantage would be that my machine wouldn't need to be on when she wanted to print, as long as the WiFi modem was running.

Having posted our stuff and done a bit of shopping at the Co-op, we ambled back to a nice warm boat. Shopping at the Co-op is enlivened by the character behind the till, who seems to have modelled himself on Roy Hudd playing a manic shopkeeper, a sort of inverse version of Arkwright. No complaints; he noticed that the cherry tomatoes we were buying were on their death date and gave them to us half price.

I'm currently editing my ebook, going through it on the Kindle to spot typos and infelicitous phrasing, before writing the final chapter and then bullying it into a decent format. At the moment, the chapter numbers insist on appearing on the page before, at the end of the previous chapter, for example.

We're off out tonight, dining with Stephen and Jayne on Dolce Far Niente. I've just heard from Peter Mason at Braidbar that he  may be coming to see us tomorrow. He's got a replacement cupboard door to fit to Dolce, and wants to have a discussion with me about the best solution to our battery bank dilemma.

As I believe I've already said, topping them up is very difficult, so the choice is either a set of deep discharge cells from Pb Batteries, complete with auto top up system, or going over to sealed units.