Month: March 2021

Living room paint — preparations

The first of the downstairs rooms we planned to finish (ignoring the laundry/WC) was the living room. With the fireplace and hearth, ceiling fan, and radiator installed, the next step was to plaster up the abuse all of these inflicted.

The bright yellow laundry at the far end of the ground floor contrasts greatly with the Teal we opted to paint the LR so we planned to use the colour wheel to transition from one room to the next with Maple Haze and Empire Jewel as transition hues.

First, however, we needed to move the sockets to their final locations. We have planned to build in some cabinetry on either side of the chimney breast so those needed to come up at least 75cm.

We’ve increased from three duplex outlets (six plugs) to five duplex, two triplex, and a bank of data connections so we now have 16 sockets, two CAT6 network ports, and two satellite feeds. There were also some lighting fixtures to cut out of the existing plaster (picture in this post).

All these cuts and the tops of the skirting board locations needed coarse plastering. This also served to spackle some holes.

The finishing plaster wasn’t even put down as a full skim coat. Instead, it was only skimmed very thinly into my ceiling trowel marks from the initial push to move in and the coarse plaster from which we excised all that old wallpaper from back then.

We finished cleaning up at 9:45 Sunday. This gives 5 full days for the mud to cure (it is humid in there, right now) before we settle in to the mist coat and probably three coats of the teal.

2021 Week 12 Recap: Rabbiting On

A busy week at work. A busy weekend of refurbishment. Not a lot of time for bad behaviour. Fines and fees: £47 (and we paid off the month of deductions — and more — with a £499 extra payment on the mortgage).

Added a new Rule For Living Well (or at least, well, living):

Foto credit (top, for lack of the actual shooter’s identity) goes to “I Love Fat Chicks,” an Arizona Hasher with whom I’ve tenuously kept in touch over the years…thanks, Fatty. Searching for hash hare clipart, below, I managed to find my own Drunken Bunny logo (the one with the bottle of Wild Turkey) in several other locations — no attribution, either (which makes it funnier, to me).

Cowboy Henk

The agenda handed out to AMOLF employees in 2003 was not used by most Dutchies back then because they have had their own pocket calendars since they have been able to walk (no shit: I overheard my boss’ then 5-year-old scheduling in playtime with a mate). I have been using it off and on since then as a spare notebook when I needed to dedicate a few-to-many pages to a project (last entries go back to the move from NW London to SW Birmingham in 2018).

In 2003-2004, though, we subscribed to Het Parool and my go to comic strip was Cowboy Henk. Here are a few examples of why, both representative of the comic and specific to a recurring theme close to my heart and head. Enjoy.

2021 Week 11 Recap: Watched (With Relish … @HendoRelish to be sure)

Surveying the garden, I realised it needs a thorough tidy-up. I also had the odd feeling I was being watched.

I had a burger whilst waiting for a train in Sheffield in the pre-COVID days and splashed a bit of the sauce on it from the bottle the bartender brought with the meal. SWEET JUMPING JESUS ON A STICK! Newby mistake: I only expected a knock off Worcestershire and not a life changing flavour bonanza. I drenched the rest of the bap and my chips then drank a couple of spoonfuls neat. Henderson’s Relish is The Shit (as I kind of mentioned before). I finally chased down a stockist locally and now my life is complete.

Same stockist had another product nearby that made me smile. Backstory: A guy from Ireland came to Tucson to meet up with a woman who was in my old drinking club, the jHavelina Hash House Harriers, and who wrangled him into running with us four or five times in the week he was there. He absolutely earned his Hash Name, Gentleman’s Relish, referring to a bit of Ulster innuendo. Haven’t tried the stuff, yet, but it makes me happy just having it on the shelf.

It was a drinking week. Fines and fees: £53.50. Double dip fines were largely attenuated by split weekend and psychedelica exemptions.

Jewellery Quarter to The Hawthorns via the canal

It seemed like ages since we’ve been out (I mean, when did they install this pissoir in the JQ, anyway?). Not the proverbial ‘out out’ but just out for a long walk and a stop by a shop. Jackie had a brief appointment on the prison island Saturday afternoon so we put all that to right.

The hike was uneventful but very pleasant. There were people out socialising and we ran into Davey, a work colleague of mine who lives in the city centre, and had a brief chat. Leaf buds were everywhere — a green explosion looms. And, there was a new graffito since the last time I ran this stretch of towpath (one I am especially taken with):

We veered off the path at the Smethwick Junction and walked up to the Range near the Hawthorns stadium. There were some Johnstone Paint tester pots we wanted to try out and all three were decided on for the next rooms to paint over previous testers (Teal Topaz for the living room, Maple Haze in the dining room, and Empire Jewel for the kitchen). These paint swatches are everywhere downstairs, at present; but, at least two of the rooms will get covered during the upcoming Life of Brian holiday:

Heroic

Of the notebooks, some of the best are the pocket ones I carried around while still in graduate school.

Heroic was often used (in this notebook, perhaps others) to describe excessively high ingestion of psychedelics. For instance, if I had a day off and 6.5g of dried Golden Teacher mushrooms I COULD do two very high doses or one ‘heroic’ dose. Typically, I would eat the heroic dose, go for a run, then come home to listen to music and let my ego collapse under its own weight (and, that of the fungus) for the next 6 hours.

Something I now find truly heroic is an entry from 15 November 2000 where Jackie, in the passenger seat of our car, started humming the theme to “I Love Lucy.” We were at a stop light, and she saw me giving her the side-eye. Pointing to the car ahead of us, she said, “see.” It had a “I Love Jesus” bumper sticker. We were home before I told her she had misread it.

Here’s another entry from one year to the day before the World Trade Center destruction:

Pulled up to the Burger King drive thru. The squawk voice asked, “Would you like to purchase a Backstreet Boys video or CD, today?”
I looked to my right, into the rearview mirror, up at the building…dumbfounded.
“Hello, is anyone there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Wait…I’ve GOT to come in.”
Met at the door by the manager who asked, “is there a problem, sir?”
“Yes, there is. Your cashier is trying to sell me her Backstreet Boys collection.”
“Yes, sir, that’s our new promotion.”
“Oh. My god. That’s awful. Can I get 3 burgers and a Coke?”
“For here?”
“Noooooooooooooo.”

Athens, GA, September 11, 2000

Oh, I had the day off, today.

The Notebooks

I think these started as running logs 25 years ago but they also served as notes on rental properties, travel journals, and scrapbooks. They were scattered throughout the bookshelves and provide occasional, nostalgic entertainment when opened (sometimes for the first time since the final entry.

They are now (mostly) distributed amongst the catch-all items on the catch-all shelf of my closet. The plan is to fill in the quiet periods in this online journal with blasts from the past. The first book I chose, at random, started a couple of weeks after we moved to Tucson in January 2006 and ended at New Years 2007.

This is the first post of probably many with very little of the personal content from the books, themselves, in the posts. They should all be tagged ‘notebooks‘ for ease of chasing them down. I find the cartoons like little koans. Enjoy.

My first topographic map of Tucson with most of the routes from 2006 marked. The more things change….