In keeping with the Musk Activity Report, allow me to list the five things I did last week — almost all of which, I’ll agree, I do every week. Bearing in mind that I’m actually retired and not therefore required to do anything, here they are:
1) Prepared and posted about 30-odd articles for this here blog. Some require little preparation — such as the Caption Competitions, Sunday’s Classic Beauty and Random Totty categories, of which I typically do a month’s worth in advance. Others such as the Comment Of The Day also require little preparation other than formatting, but I typically do those as I stumble on them. The heavy hitters (e.g. Gratuitous Gun Pics, political analysis and social commentary) take a lot longer because in many cases they concern subjects with which I’m not familiar and require that I delve into the topic at some depth. Reports on daily news take very little time, but commentary thereon does involve at least a little contemplation if not ancillary research, as does the weekly News Roundup. As I’m committed to publishing at least four posts per weekday and one each for Saturday and Sunday, you can see how this all adds up, timewise. And I count this as only one thing I did last week, and pretty much every week. No doubt some Gummint bureaucrat would spin those out into at least a dozen things — such is the nature of make-work Gummint activity — but for me, it’s one.
2) Reading and answering mail. I get upwards of two dozen emails a day from Readers. Some require a response, some are FYI. Whatever, thank you for all of them — regular correspondents know who you are — and I value every single email. (I don’t get much if any hate mail, but that’s fine. If I wanted that kind of thing, I’d get a Twitter/X account.)
3) Grocery shopping. Because New Wife works a day job (more on this below), it falls on me to keep the household running, and typically this involves about three separate trips per week (because I prefer to eat fresh foods rather than canned or frozen). Once again, this I count as one thing not three.
4) Meal preparation. There are two such activities. Firstly, each night I prepare a “brown-bag” lunch for New Wife’s consumption the following day. It involves a fresh garden salad, some kind of meat and a dessert (pitted cherries and full-milk yogurt). Secondly, because she works five days a week, I see no reason why she should come home exhausted and then have to prepare us a meal; so at least three nights a week, I prepare dinner for us both. Friday nights we’ll either share a frozen pizza or whatever. We don’t do takeout unless we’re desperate. Weekend meals are an ad hoc kind of thing — cheese or chicken toasties — unless we decide to treat ourselves to a roast, beef or lamb) which I typically do while she does household stuff like laundry. (In passing, I keep the apartment tidy, bed made and the kitchen spotless because I loathe the alternative with a passion).
5) Range trip. I view this as part of my civic duty. Choice of guns depends on my mood or “rotation” (“damn, I haven’t shot Gun X for a while, it’s time”). 5a) Maintenance. I also clean and oil my guns once a week — not just those I fired at the range, but also one or two others on a rotation basis. (I’m not compulsive about this because I don’t have to be. While I have the cleaning kit out, in other words…)
Those are the five things I do every week, which I consider cumulatively as my “job”. I didn’t include the voluminous reading (paper and Internet), because that’s recreation. Ditto the many WhatsApp messages to friends and family.
6) Ad hoc jobs. Last week, I also fixed the headliner on the Tiguan — after only 135,000 miles, the glue weakened and the liner started flopping down, don’t get me started on quality control nowadays. I also re-glued the gearstick shroud in New Wife’s Sputum (which had worked loose after only 26,000 miles because Fiat), and took it in for an oil change.
In government-worker terms, that list would probably exhaust most of them and require some time off.
On the other hand, I can’t get fired.
