Month: January 2021

2021 Week 4 Recap: Hey, I Actually Know These Beautiful People

J & Debra, front porch of house on Mecaslin apparently singing along with the radio circa 1989 (so drink and drugs are almost certainly a factor)

Reading a lot about QAnon but I’m unconvinced. I get the moral outrage of the believers (and to be fair it is only as stupid as the fantasy lands concocted by the more established and mainstream cults) at a powerful, international club of people eating babies but, I have to add, they are not eating ENOUGH children if my own eyes are to be trusted. The little fuckers are EVERYWHERE. The Illuminati would be doing me a gigantic favour by scheduling a cull on the morning rush hour trams in Brum.

Commute #5 of the year was a slow affair as my old nemesis, IT band strain, expressed itself as I negotiated icy pavements and snow covered nature trails on the overland route home, Wednesday afternoon. Stretching and rest are indicated and I’ve done the stretching part and reduced my maximum mileage on any day to 3. Grrrr.

Gardening: the bowl of tulips we kept in the cold, dark attic for a month have really grown well since taking residence in the guest BR window a little over a week ago. The sprouting bulbs in the garden bulb bed are poking through, too, and we will have snow drops and blue bells before you know it. We’ve also started some chillies and herbs inside (no sprouts after a week) and are seeking our tomato seeds to get a jump on summer gardening.

Nearly done with the BR door (slow, yes, but we only have so much time — it mocks me during work-from-home days but, while I try to stretch out 2-3 hours of work to fill a 7.5 hour day, I still can’t justify doing any personal projects while I’m unsupervised. This is funny, to me, since when I’m on campus and I see a spare hour I have no qualms at all about going for an exploration run or drawing up plans for home projects. Ethics are a plastic commodity but I don’t understand how mine got moulded into their current shapes.

Fines, £70. Fees, £46.

This weekly report also covers the month of January so the Fines and Fees totals for the month were, respectively, £140 and £197.80 for a net of £337.80. On Friday, I partially paid the debt to my NYResolutions with £300 toward the mortgage over our monthly payment; this temporarily brought the F&F accounts back into the black but it has been a debauch of a weekend. The monthly Fines include 6 days (£60) of skipping self-improvement but not a single instance of skipping home improvement.

Deirdre (Deb’s one-time long-time thing) with Ralph Stanley circa 1999

During the first lockdown I bought a scanner for slides and negatives. I used to walk, run, ride, or drive the taxi with a camera constantly and we had a proper darkroom from about 1987 until we went to Amsterdam. The photos were some of the better snaps not aimed at publication from that period and that I scanned in during a damp and snowy afternoon this week. I don’t think Throw Back Saturday is a thing, but hope you enjoy them, nonetheless.

2021 Week 3 Recap: Godspeed, Mr Aaron

Continued work on the bedroom door, started cutting the skirting boards for the 2nd bedroom, and took delivery of the fireplace inserts. Approached a work colleague who fosters kittens about keeping us in mind when the foster-kitten season starts (now that the major noisy work is done, we need a kitty).

Wednesday at 5pm GMT, Jenna Ryan and Jake Angeli lost their chances at pardons for their misguided misbehaviour and now face long stretches in a Federal lockup. Seinfeld speaks for most of us in this case:

Fines & Fees: As the kitty bulges with the cash and is likely to accumulate several thousand pounds by the end of the year, we decided to take the monthly F&F and pay down the principal on the mortgage. This is actually an incentive to bad behaviour covered by these debits but, hey-ho, it will be nice to get out from under this debt however we manage it. £30 in fines, £34.50 fees.

Asymptomatic COVID testing has been in place for students since last term but it is now open to employees who have to travel in and have contact with students, other techs, and visiting personnel. I’ve been running what for me is a high fever but since my normal body temperature is 36C (96.8F) and my raging furnace only brought it up to just short of 37C (98.6F) I was able to skirt the thermometer gun toting gatekeeper and get my weekly test of the gag reflex (still negative for the virus, btw).

Oh, Jackie works at an NHS hospital (several, in fact) and got her first COVID vaccine jab Friday. Follow-up due in April but this is already a massive relief. I’m hoping that my occasional time spent at the Medical and Dental Schools will allow me to queue-jump a little, too, but I’m not expecting my first one for a few months (unless the GP or my pharmacist rings to say there is a dose going spare at the end of a vial at the end of the day).

My run mileage dropped off with recuperation from last week‘s dental work and whateverthefuck that illness was. I did finally manage to fit in Commute #4 of the year on Friday by leaving the lab as soon as a vented instrument was put back under vacuum and the bake-out started. Total for the week: 17.6 miles.

Finally, Hank Aaron died. In the 70s, the Braves were my hometown team and they were regularly the worst in the Major Leagues. You could often hear conversations all the way on the other side of Atlanta Fulton County Stadium so few were we true fans. There were only two bright spots in this long, dark period: one was the time I looked up to see a Jack Daniels bottle hurtling above left field and smacking Pete Rose in the back of the head, and the other was Hank’s 715th home run (watched on tv as you couldn’t get tickets for love nor money until the day after the record was broken, when season ticket holders would throw their’s out car windows while driving by before games). RIP.

A New Day

Went to stores to pick up an ampuole of lipids standards and our clerk mentioned he saw some post for me. Turns out a far-too-kind friend from back in the States (and way back in the Olden Days) sent out her New Year greetings in December. To get it on this auspicious day in World history (Biden’s inauguration is t minus 5 hours 55 minutes as I write this) gives me greater joy than usual for a Wednesday.

Thanks, out there in the USA (Unparalleled Shitshow of Alltime), Mik. The mushrooms are on me if you ever find your way back over here.

Fireplace Refurb #3

We haven’t finished upstairs (bedroom door is still in the works and the 2nd bedroom is still a complete shambles). Yet, we’ve ordered and received our fireplace inserts and have plans to spend the first week of March constructing the hearths, mounting the inserts, designing the mantles, and replastering.

The side panels of the inserts hold decorative tiles. We ordered some majolica slabs in holding with Edwardian styles contemporary with the house.

Beyond that, we’ll have to cut away the smallest amount of the firebacks to make everything fit snugly. Very exciting, this.

2021 Week 2 Recap: On the whole, I’d rather have dental work

Commute #3 was an uneventful canalside jog to the labs Monday in cool (but warmer than the past couple of weeks) mist. Commute #4, planned for Friday, was postponed due to continued pain and swelling from dental work.

I threw a LARGE filling from the upper, left, front premolar (the one next to the canine tooth up and over there) two days before Christmas. It was from the second repair of a root canal in the mid-80s and, unsurprisingly, the inside half of the tooth broke off a couple days earlier but after a dentist made plans to extract it this week. Pity, because otherwise it was a healthy bone with a long root (hence the slow recovery from this injury).

It was mildly infected (and there were some bone slivers STILL working their ways out on Sunday) and Friday night the infection spread enough that I suffered a migraine in the night and most of yesterday. Fucking miserable but the body is taking on the infection without antibiotics and the swelling is almost completely gone, now. Whew.

Other news…

At work, we don’t usually do lipidomics and try to steer clients that seek that sort of analysis to other facilities but there was grant money for this junior researcher at another uni to try something with one of the facilities in a West Midlands consortium (mine is part of this) and with no money of hers and no expectations of success from us I’ve been using the lockdown weeks to develop some methods for her samples and am now considering offering this as another revenue stream. If this doesn’t develop into a shit show…an oily, fatty shit show.

House news: 2nd bedroom, living and dining rooms (as well as the kitchen) still look like they’ve been abandoned after looting but we’ve scheduled a full week off soon to install the fireplaces then have a headlong run at the remaining rooms — in the order listed, above — to have the house itself finished mid-summer.

Fines + Fees = £20 + £28.30 = £48.30 with two days F&F free. £24.50 of the fees were for wine and booze and the fines were for a missed yoga/hobby day and a “double dip” the night before the dental surgery.

2021 Week 1 Recap: Nothing, much, about the half-assed attempted coup in the US

A bottle of Sea Dog rum to find when we bring the Christmas decorations down next year

Despite the coup attempt at the US Capitol, this was a sedate week. We mounted the skirting boards in the bedroom yesterday and finished the painting today and started whittling away at the Winterval Holiday leftovers and other excess in the fridge so we can settle back into a winter dining routine.

Friday I received an email to the effect that due to the National Lockdown I should minimise my presence on site but as I have multiple sites I can spread my on-campus presence around to be immediately available 5 days per week. And, with the spirit of the directive being that I should work remotely I’ll consider heading in late or home early on Mondays and Fridays (when I am housed, alone, in the FTICR lab down at Chemistry), I provided some in person training till noon then some of my ICR work ahead of 2021 Commuter Run #2 in heavy snowfall along the iced over canal paths next to the iced over canal. Brilliant.

Thursday I went to the dentist about the filling I threw the week leading into Christmas. Looks like the tooth is not salvageable as it has already been repaired twice AFTER a root canal nearly 35 years ago — the tooth was among those damaged or knocked out in a motorcycle mishap in Atlanta back in me and J’s first months together.

The earlier part of the week was quite copacetic but snowy and icy.

Fines: £20

Fees: £49.50

Paid in: £70, so kitty is in the black

So, next winter’s holiday fund is already up to £109. I wonder if I should use this for the kitchen refurb fund, instead.

No devastating obits — to me, at least — although Gerry Marsden singing “Ferry Cross the Styx” is stuck in my head. Pleasing obit of the week goes to that scumbag woman who met her maker in the Capitol (no I will not, “say her name,” but do invite comparisons to Ethyl Rosenberg, Benedict Arnold, and Alfrich Ames).

Sixth-floor Biosciences Tower stairwell landing last Monday