Can you believe that it will be October next week? The months are flying by and are filled with good things.
- The Sydney Marathon Weekend straddling August and September.
- Seeing The Impressionists at the NGV
- Harvesting a bowl of snow peas a couple of times a week. They taste so much better fresh off the plant. Even the ones that have developed further than you would get at the supermarket are tender and sweet. I can’t really claim too much credit for this bountiful harvest. I planted the seeds before we left for the UK in April and have done nothing to that bed since then.
- The wildflower walk at Yakulit William Reserve.
- Getting our garden tidied up. Next: plant the veggie beds for summer.
- The girls looked after a couple of my plants while we were away in Noosa, and one came back with only two sickly leaves on it. S insisted that it came to their place already infested with some kind of bug. I thought I’d be replacing it, but it has started to sprout new leaves. S insists it is recovering because of the detergent she sprayed on it before returning it to our place.
- I’ve been watching Anne with an E (recommended by Kae) and it is absolutely delightful. The cinematography is stunning.
- With all our travel, I hadn’t had a veggie box since before we went to the UK in April. I love getting a surprise as I open the box and then working out what I’m going to do with everything.
- After my disastrous foray into playing keys at church I’ve played twice this month and it’s been much better. We also have a lead guitarist now, although he only played one of the times I did.
- I picked up a couple of puzzles from two Op Shops this month—luckily because we are almost finished the 4000-piece one we are doing.
- I got my annual skin check done, and it was all clear. The one spot that I was concerned about is fine.
- We’ve been looking after some plants for a friend who is between houses, and a couple of them are the most stunning orchids. They are a happy addition to our garden and I’m going to get full enjoyment of them while they are here.
- I have a weekend away planned with my sisters, so we met at a wine bar to supposedly plan. It was a good excuse to spend four hours catching up over some bottles of wine and a charcuterie board—but we did plan what we needed to as well.
- OK, this is not necessarily a good thing, but a suggestion to try if you get fobbed off onto a customer “service” chatbot and you want to speak to a human. Go on a rant. Since you’re contacting customer service, it’s very likely that you have something relevant to rant about, so go to town. I did this on Wednesday, and the immediate response was: “switching you over to a customer service representative” HAHA. If you give it a try, let me know. The human was helpful, and I think we have resolved the issue (although I think the email they sent may have gone into my dad’s spam folder so I need him to check that, but I’ll have to walk him through it, which will be a whole other lot of fun)
- I don’t normally listen to music when I run, but I’ve resorted to doing that sometimes lately, so I’ve made a playlist that is long enough to get me well and truly through a half-marathon. It does actually help, but only on faster runs, otherwise I find myself running too fast.
- We went out for dinner three times with the kids this month. For G’s belated birthday celebration, we went to a new wine bar which has just opened up near us. It has a full menu, though, and the food is great. There is also a fancier restaurant that G and I will try at some stage. Then last weekend we went out for S’s birthday to the Albert Park Hotel which is good Chinese food. Finally last night we went out to a local restaurant because we were all around and why not?
- It is a public holiday today, so we are down for the weekend to my parents’ place at Point Lonsdale. We haven’t been down here for ages. All the kids are here too, including E’s fiance.
- I enjoyed Cal Newports podcast “Is it time to finally leave social media”. I found his analysis of the increasing harms and the effort required to avoid those harms pretty insightful and not a framing I’d heard before. I left social media earlier this year (deleted my Instagram and deactivated my Facebook account), although I never found it to be too distracting, I just didn’t want my attention being monetized by such awful people. Unfortunately, since then, I am somewhat out of the loop with what people have been up to, so I understand people remaining on it to stay up to date with the comings and goings of people they know in real life but don’t see every day/week or even month. I won’t be going back though.
- I go to a 4:1 personal training class on Wednesdays, and this week I had the class to myself, so it was 1:1 with the instructor for the price of a small group. It was a bit of a bummer that it coincided with my recovery week so I wasn’t lifting heavy but next week it is still school holidays so there might still be a few people away.
- A good sourdough loaf from Ned’s.
- Breakfast this morning with a couple of friends from the running group before we left to come to the beach.
- Our daughter has taught Riley to brace to go around corners in the car, so driving down we just had to say “Riley, brace” before a stop or sudden turn, and he would make sure he braced himself so he didn’t fall over. What a clever dog!
What are your recent good things? Do you have a good way to get what you need when dealing with Chatbots?
Comments
10 responses to “List #34:Good Things Friday September 2025”
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CHATBOTS
That is all.
So many good things, Melissa! I’m glad your skin check went well. That’s always a relief when we get the clean bill of health.
I watched a few episodes of Anne With An E years ago when it was first on CBC, and I did not like it. It veered too far off from the books, and that is a huge peeve of mine and the reason why I almost never watch screen adaptations. It’s a thing of mine that I can’t appreciate it as a separate art, I get really tangled up in “ways it is not the same as the book.” There are only a few adaptations that I like and they are super close to the book (a few Jane Austen and two Little Women adaptations).
I am still on social media, I like my IG and FB as a way to keep in contact with people, and also – with my novel coming out – for promotion. But I don’t spend a whole lot of time on them, like maybe 15 minutes a day total. I am more annoyed by all the advertising and “suggested pages” and it makes me check updates only briefly.
It has been so long since I read the books that it has been easy for me to enjoy it as a stand-alone, although there have been a number of times when I’ve thought that I’m pretty sure that was not in the books (just from a feel of the storyline, not from memory).
The ads and suggested pages drove me bonkers too! That’s why I always used the following tab on Instagram, but Facebook still had ads on their friends feed. I never spent much time, I probably logged in once a week, but they truly are awful.
Everything fresh from a garden tastes better. I rely on my neighbours to share some of their produce. And this year they planted a new variety of cucumber and it is literally the crispest, sweetest cucumber variety I have ever had. SO GOOD.
I also didn’t love Anne with an E (for the same reasons noted above; it was also far too “dark” for me), but it seems like a beloved show!
I haven’t had Facebook for almost 20 years and I’ve never had an Instagram account, and I’m very glad! That said, I have definitely missed out on lots of things because of being “offline” in that context.
Facebook used to be good before they bought in the algorithm. I’m planning on planting cucumbers this summer, hopefully they are as good as your neighbours!
So many good things, Melissa!
I don’t usually run with music either, but your half-marathon playlist idea sounds like a smart way to keep the pace up on faster runs. I might have to try that.
I’ve never had IG or FB – Strava and the blog keep me plenty occupied. My main reason is TIME – I want to be in control of how I spend my time and these apps can be real time-suckers. Which makes me think I should finally cut back on my evening TV time, that’s the one habit I know I could lose (I’ve just started “House of Guinness” on Netflix…)
And the chatbot trick! Brilliant! I’m definitely going to give that a go next time I get stuck with one of those “helpful” bots.
MY husband and I enjoy watching TV in the evening and we could probably cut down, but often we are both really tired and want to flop.
My good thing this week is that we survived last weekend – the busiest weekend in ages and that’s saying something. Everything got done, but phew. This weekend we had almost nothing planned which was a great chance to get things done. I changed sheets and scrubbed our master shower. I’m envious that you ate out with your kids three times this month. Ann with an E sounds great – I think I saw it years ago. I wonder if the little girls would enjoy it. I know Kay read the book this last year. Coach and I got to meet friends for dinner Saturday night and that was so much fun. We haven’t seen them in forever.
Although it seems kind of boring, getting things done is a huge win. We had a big go at the garden the previous weekend, and it makes me happy to have done it. Yay for catching up with friends, it can be hard to get the time to do that.
Those peas. I am in awe. My grandma used to grow them and we usually ate them directly from the plant and the never made it into my grandmas kitchen. In the end that was the plant that was open to roam any time.
My friend worked in customer service and she told me a trick: if you don’t answer at all the default is to always put you through to a human. I have used that trick multiple times and it works. I might try the ranting thing though maybe it releases some of the anger before a human is receiving it.
You do have a clever dog.
This was one of the type chat bots, so I’m not sure whether the not answering would work in that situation, but I’ll definately try that if I get on one that you speak to.