Following on from last week's vole, now we have a mouse!  Possibly this is more a sign of the beginning of spring than it is a sign of the cats still loving me...!  :)

In big news, the thing we've been awaiting for some time now -- the contractors finally came and put the trunking for the fibre up our road!  They've been working on the island for something like six months now and I kept wondering when they would end up here...  Next step is for them to run the cable through the trunking and then connect it up to our house so fingers crossed in a few months time we should have a fibre connection which will make writing this blog easier as our currently upload speed is only around 1mbps!

Never mind elf on a shelf -- here's Cookie in a nook-ie...  :)  (Is that a word?  :) )

And chocolate seems to be the baking theme of the week...  Chocolate muffins (which slightly exploded because I overfilled -- because my eggs are too large!)...

...and chocolate hazelnut tart -- which also makes good use of all the eggs we are getting now.  We're nearly getting enough to start putting eggs for sale in the honesty box again!

And I've had another couple of swims so up to 12 for the year now!

Firstly I want to say thank you to whichever of the cats left me this vole in the porch the other day.  It's been quite some time since they've brought me a present -- it's good to know that they haven't forgotten to show me how much they love me!  :)

More things that I do on a regular basis:  

Homemade curry powder -- ground by hand with my mortar & pestle -- and an essential ingredient in...

...our daily lunchtime soup...  Made with dried pink flamingo peas and lots of veggies, we have this for lunch every day with fried eggs on toast (not pictured).

Bit of a random thing happened yesterday when I was feeding the sheep:  I am used to our regular peedie plane overhead twice a day, but I was startled by this plane flying much lower than the peedie plane does - and what a strange route it's taken around the islands...  

Spotted this bit of insanity in a charity shop in Kirkwall -- somehow this item, allegedly designed to make the job of picking up dog poop easier, seems to be far more complicated than simply putting your hand inside a bag and grabbing it...  Capitalism for the useless objects win....

Spring continues to show signs that it's on its way -- the crocuses are up!

And there have been several more swims -- this morning was number 11, so I am well ahead of target for the year already!  Let's hope this means that this summer will be more swimmable than last year...

In other news, ReFlex Orkney have been out and done a comprehensive energy use survey on the house, complete with thermal imaging, so I now have a lovely 23 page report full of charts & tables to digest to help us figure out what the next steps are in making our home more energy efficient.  Watch this space...