Mixing things up on the last day of the workweek, I was able to add a few new bits of art to the Canal Furniture Map.
Taking an alternative canal route, I found this kitty:
And, some masked hoodlums that I don’t think are social distancers:
Full disclosure: I prefer cartoons of ducks (particularly like the one above) and rabbits like the mascot of this blog over frogs.
Last night we watched the documentary, Feels Good, Man, which followed the various ways Pepe the Frog has been applied to various cultures. Its creator, Matt Furie, seemed to intend Pepe as a tripper mascot or, rather, one of a cohort of tripper mascots. In turn, it was taken up by bodybuilders (who may have shared a copy of the comic book with their ‘roid dealer), 4Chan misanthropes, bopper girls, Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, conspiracy theorists, and pro-democracy rioters in Hong Kong.
Someone has been practising a bit of revisionism on the canals, too. Several large areas have been painted over a mile either side of the Smethwick Junction:
Rainy, windy, cold. The run to work was a misery, Tuesday, and when I arrived at the FTICR lab I was also greeted by a crashed chilled water recirculator that meant the cryocompressor — that slows the liquid helium boiloff so we only have to top up once every 18 months — had also shut down. Panic.
It restarted but one of the fan motors has a breached bearing seal and must be replaced (it is the one that eventually shuts down, third time in a week, now). The mount configuration isn’t unique but the bolt array on these fans is only ever used in the US and that’s where the motor has to come from. After looking for a suitable match, I finally found a British distributor of the original motor but even they have to source the motor from Uhh-Murrka. Looks like I’ll be checking on the FT twice daily for at least a week to make sure the magnet doesn’t quench (a very expensive and dangerous prospect).
9.6 miles with a stop at a DIY place for some adhesives and some self amalgamating tape.
Earlier, I was insulted by the UniBrum IT “Help” site’s search engine whilst trying to find out how to recover my work PC that was BitLocker encrypted by UniBrum IT. No need to be rude…
9.3 miles for the run home, today. Saw a graffito I took to be Canal Users’ Advice. Passed at least 5 people heeding this counsel, along the way.
The slow run from work went a little out of the way via Wolverhampton Road under Oldbury to the Screwfix between Dudley and Dudley Port before dashing home through Great Bridge. Picked up a little over 12 miles and some cool respirators for the upcoming Week of Sanding.
Been off work doing more house refurb stuff since Tuesday night. Exhausting. Somewhere in the shifting of the stars, darkness has encroached and for the first time since spring I was on trail before sunrise. Busy week ahead at the labs and another semi-week off to sand the wood flooring in two weeks. In the meantime, I reckon there will be many commuter runs as I make a push to finish my annual mileage goal a month early.
I had a moderately successful wildflower bed in the back yard this year. A few weeks ago I bought a mixed bag of 125 spring bulbs and scattered them so that the tall ones wrap around the medium ones to the rear, while the shorter ones wrap around to the front. About half are supposed to bloom in March and April and the rest are due in April/May.
Next year, we’ll spend some quality time arranging the garden properly. Until then, we await: 10 Tulipa van Eijk, 18 Puschkinia, 20 Anemone Blanda Blue Shades, 7 Narcissus minnow, 35 Muscari armeniacum, and 35 Allium neapolitanium.
I haven’t really been paying attention during The Plague, but Time has trundled along and somehow it is now Autumn.
The run home was ahead of taking annual leave the rest of the week to try to finish the dining room tiling. Hopefully, we can make time to go for a walk in the festive but falling foliage.
Working quite hard at both The Job and the never-ending refurb project, I’m finding the time remaining after those items — including prep before and clean-up during and after — is mostly consumed with personal maintenance…cooking, First Aid, sleep, and about 50 miles per week running slowly between the two sites of slavery.
Being too old for all of this doesn’t make it stop, though.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 
