Pupdate

The New Year had barely begun and we had a cold snap and some snow.

Milo’s back in remission thankfully, though there have been a few hiccups with his treatment this time around. Some of that’s expected (low neutrophils), but the vets struggling to get canulas in due to vein scarring is new and unwelcome :(

Mixer repair

We’ve had a Kitchenaid mixer for many years, and it gets fairly regular use for making dough and cakes, and sometimes mincing meat.

The dough mix on New Year’s Eve sadly broke it, and subsequent use for making a Tiramisu led to noises that didn’t chime with any sense of mechanical sympathy.

I followed ‘Mr Mixer’s’ How to Completely Rebuild Your Tilt Head Mixer and found a cog with teeth stripped off (and a bent pin):

It took a few days to get spares (because of New Year). I was able to get the (genuine) cog and new grease from Amazon (affiliate links), but had to use another place (and expedited shipping) for the M4x17 dowel pin.

Putting it back together was pretty straightforward (with guidance from ‘Mr Mixer’), though all that grease makes for a messy job:

I wish I’d taken a before picture for comparison. The severed cog teeth were embedded in the revolting old grease. But it was so awful that I was told not to.

Having (unnecessarily) taken the motor control apart I needed to recalibrate that; but it’s been running smoothly since :)

Skiing

A week in Les Arcs was a lot of fun. Enough to deserve its own post.

Burns supper

This was my third time at a Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) Burns Night, but things were a little different this time around. Firstly a new venue, at The Crypt of St Etheldreda’s, which is near the London tasting room. This provided a LOT more space than the basement of The Bleeding Heart, and I’m guessing they had twice as many folk attending. There was also live music and singing, which added to the fun, but did make conversation a little difficult as we had the table nearest to the stage.

I was very lucky to win a bottle in the raffle, a lovely 19yo Highland Park:

I’m looking forward to trying it, hopefully with some of the friends who joined me that evening; and especially after reading the review from Two Whisky Bros.

Solar Diary

I described last January as ‘dim and grim’ and this one wasn’t much different :/