Who needs cars or trains when you can hop on a reindeer?

Thanks for these fabulous pics, Lina.  Modern technology isn't needed here.

If you'd like the link for yourself, here it is:

http://www.boredpanda.com/reindeer-people-dukha-mongolia-hamid-sardar-afkhami/

Another time-taker

I signed up to Ancestry.com a couple of years ago and got a reminder the other day to pay for the next year or cancel.  I find it fascinating but expensive, so will think about it before making a decision.  My niece is very interested in family history.  She had these old photos of my mother restored and gave them to me, framed.

(Sorry about the flash.  The ones I took with no flash show my shadow, so I thought this is the lesser of two evils.)

Winifred, Coursera is free and no, the lecturer doesn't ask you questions. There is a quiz question you can answer if you want to at the end of each section. This one on Beethoven Sonatas is the first one I've done where you can follow in another language, but maybe they're all doing it now.  You can do as much or as little as you like - nobody knows or cares.  I thoroughly recommend Coursera.

Another distraction...

I thought I'd catch up on some emails this morning, but didn't get very far, as the first one was from Coursera so I enrolled in a Beethoven Sonatas course from the Curtis Institute of Music.  I know absolutely NOTHING about music, so every word the lecturer utters is new to me.  Amazingly you can click on other languages, too, so of course I had to read the Italian subtitles as the lecturer was speaking.  This is a great way to learn!

Winifred, I thought you might like to do this course in Spanish.  Just search 'Coursera' and you will find it.

If anybody is interested, #4 app in the Oz Phonics series is out now (Australian accent).  You can buy it from the App Store.

Who designs these things?

This is my eye-level view of the controls of the washing machine.  Bear in mind, the day I had the problem with opening the locked door, I was also suffering a pain in my side preventing me from bending down for a closer look. When I eventually managed to bend, this is what those 'buttons' look like close up:

In my effort to open the door I think I actually pressed the button in the middle, expecting that to be the on/off switch, which is really that weird-shaped flat silver thing on the left with a picture of an apple on it.   

What is wrong with having knobs?  Round, protruding objects not invisible to the human eye, such as the ones on the drawing in the last blog would be much more helpful. Are such sensible things now relics of the past?

Good thinking, Winifred - Hugo is likely to do anything, even in your house!!!

Help is at hand...well, in cyberspace.

This morning when I went to put a load of washing into the machine I noticed the lights were flashing and the door wouldn't open.  I called Grandma down and she told me Hugo had pressed some buttons.  We were completely baffled and tried pressing a few buttons ourselves, but still the door wouldn't open.  I put it through a cycle, empty, expecting the door to open when it had finished, but no such luck.

I emailed Philip and got the usual no reply.

I skyped Feyzi in Turkey and got an instant reply, even though it was in the middle of his night.  Switch the power button. Oh, I didn't know washing machines had a power button so it took me quite a while to find it, but find it I did.  All it took was one press and hey presto! the door opened!

All those science degrees at the Turkish Military Academy have been useful after all, Lt Col Feyzi!!!