Much of my week was spent with the US elections, making sure that reporting worked as well as it could. Looking after the systems and tools telling the news makes it easier to detach from the news. However it isn’t always easy to stay detached: That’s the rub.

This week in data:

• 🧦 Sponsored socks worn: 3 pairs.
• 🍖 Meat consumed: 0 grams.
• 📧 Emails deleted: 6251 threads.

Bluesky is now my primary social media network. If you don’t already, give me a follow!

Coverage of the US election took up the entirety of the first few days of the week, with Tuesday and Wednesday turning into something of an all-nighter. We were prepared for a several-day marathon, but it quickly became clear that this was much shorter (yet faster) sprint instead.

It all went rather smoothly. We got some delightful feedback from some readers — and several million page-views in the first day. That’s the upside, or, a “reason to be cheerful” as GC would put it.

A lot can change in thirty hours: There's now a lot of commentary floating around, and with the exception of a few interesting anecdotes such as The Bronx being the biggest swing, I'm mostly blocking it out. Especially the hit-pieces rushing to apportion some blame. Mostly those, actually. It isn't that I'm apolitical — I am not — or even that I want this blog to be: I am just still processing, as I'm sure many others are too.

Unlocked a very big personal achievement involving a cake trolley.

Oh yeah, we had a few TVs on in the background and I finally got to see what Fox news is like: Wow.

Finding it tricky to get work done in the office at the moment. For some reason, people now keep wanting to grab coffee or to chat. I'm bad at saying no.

Went to Birmingham at the weekend to celebrate my mum’s birthday and eat much cake.

I had a very hard time getting to Brum, and an even harder time coming back. The trains are scuffed.

L popped over on Sunday to help me out with some long-running chores. I made some dinner and introduced her to Konbini Confessions. Did you know that with M&S’s 3-starters-for-£8-deal you can pretend to know what you’re doing?

Had a fun little back-and-forth with someone who was convinced it was week 44. I said 45. Didn’t want to admit how I knew. That’s our secret, reader.

Psych: the Movie (2017) was super fun. It felt a lot like what would happen if I fell asleep and had a fever dream whilst in the middle of a Psych binge. 3.5/5.