2021 Week 7 Recap: Acid, Cats, and a Friend in Texas

The subtitle refers to an old friend’s book. I’ll try to tie Acid, Cats, and a Friend in Texas to the events of this week by the time I finish editing this post. Wish me luck.

Not a lot of excitement this week. Coppers entered the tram one stop from my destination. “And, what is the purpose of your trip today?” Whilst digging through my backpack for my ‘key worker travel authorisation letter,’ I thought better of answering, “the rave ended late so I’m just headed home to pack my bags for a holiday.”

Fees last week were £32.50 and Fines (impatiently early or shamefully lazy or both) were £50. I’m running a lot less than at any time in the last year save for the last 3 weeks and it has really weighed heavily on my latent malaise; this is not an excuse but more a forensic examination of The Condition. And speaking of ‘condition’ and ‘weighing heavily,’ I even noticed a sudden increase in body mass (okay, only a kilogram but I’ve been a 70kg calibration standard for well over a year). Might be time to adjust intake to match fuel requirements while I’m in physical rehabilitation mode.

Oh, right … Mr Kitty, Talitha‘s cat, finally left us for The Great Porch Glider in the sky. Godspeed, sir, you’ve been a good friend to us all.

This year’s catnip dedicated to Mr Kitty. Let’s hope I remember where it all gets transplanted, this year.

Canal Furniture: Selly Oak to Bournville

It was a longer than usual day at the labs broken by a lunchtime run down to Bournville along the canal to resume the Canal Furniture project (started roughly this time last year). Above, there’s a barge turn at what appears to be a former wharf followed soon on by what is simply a former entrance to another wharf in Selly Oak.

There was still some snow lingering but it was merely cool out yesterday.

This railway bridge crosses almost parallel to this gauging station beneath it.

Directly across from where I took this photo of the Raddlebarn Road Bridge sits the Country Girl, an unremarkable pub except for the funny memory it evoked when I visited it a couple of years ago (not even a couple of months after we moved here from that London).

The bridge is marvelous, though. The red doors/hatches are on a lot of bridges around here, installed during The Blitz so fire brigades could pump from the canals.

I ran this section several times per week when we lived near Weoley Castle but never really noticed that the bridge, below, goes nowhere. There’s just a vegetation filled gully beyond the rails to the right and someone’s driveway to the left.

Then, there is Bournville Station, my turnaround point for the day. That wasn’t the plan but the blind lady and her escort were travelling exceedingly slowly and by the time we reached the bridge a pile-up of 6 cyclists, 4 other runners, and a dog walker had accumulated. I needed to get back to the labs, anyway.

2021 Week 6 Recap: Winter doldrums

Busy at work. No running save for a Saturday 5K diagnostic jog to try out the sore IT band (good, but not good enough to start ramping back up). Painted the bedroom (that we plastered last week). Trump did not get convicted in the Senate but may soon do so in Atlanta. Pubs are still closed. I’m getting squirrelly enough that even I notice it.

£30 in fines, £39.50 fees.

2021 Week 5 Recap: Dried Meat and Memory Lane

Walking downtstairs is searingly painful, this week, as the IT band strain mentioned last week continued to wreak havoc on my running plans. As a result, I’m taking two weeks off the trails to focus on stretching and weight-bearing workouts (highly unsatisfying, but I really want to avoid one of those multi-month recuperations that seem more frequent these last ten years than in yore). It’s almost like I’m getting old.

Made a big jar of beef jerky early in the week. Homemade jerky will usually last in storage for 6-8 weeks, I’m told, but none of this batch remains as we go to press.

The photoscanning we started last week continued turning up items from our time on Mecaslin Street (and, to answer many queries, we didn’t move there just because it looks like Mescalin street…just a happy coincidence). At the head of this post, you’ll see my creepy barber, Jerry, who probably wasn’t as creepy as I think since, for about fifteen years, I only ever went for haircuts whilst tripping balls (see “Mescalin versus Mecaslin,” above). I was easily 30 years younger than any of Jerry’s other customers; one of whom I occasionally encountered was Lester Maddox, a reprehensible local character and former governor of the state.

£30 in fines, £23.50 fees.

BR2/Office Redo Part 1

We’ve been beset with niggling details of other room projects but we need to be done upstairs before the first week of March when we will focus on fireplaces. The 2nd Bedroom (which serves as our home office since no one visits even without the excuse of a global pandemic) was the first ceiling plaster job I did to cover the Artex abomination. It was my “learning to plaster” room and as such I have always intended to go back and put the whole thing right.

For instance, look at the corrugation in the plaster around the wiring rose. That’s all my lousy trowelling and failure to smooth things before the mud set permanently. The entire ceiling was like that.

First, though, I moved the light fixture to the perceived centre of the room. If you draw diagonals from the corners, the actual centre is almost directly above the desk chair due to the chimney breast jutting out. This was unsatisfying so we tried the a point behind that one and midway between the chimney breast and opposite wall; this seemed to far back so we compromised on halfway between these extremes.

As luck would have it, the hole I drilled went directly through the centre of one of the rafters making this location suitable for heavier fixtures when we decide what we really want in there.

Anyway, in addition to the old through-hole (inexplicably right next to the west facing window, if you look in the above photo) we also had to fill in holes for shade mounts and the old radiator mounts plus extend the wall plaster to the height of our slightly smaller skirting boards.

This will need to cure a week or so then we can carry on painting the hovel.