Month: April 2021

2021 Week 16 Recap: Spring, redux

Spring is afoot, really this time. Bulbs and other early bloomers are shedding but the trees that flower are ablaze with colour. If the warmth holds out this year it should lead to one of those glorious extended springs that few places do better than England (April’s heat wave last year only teased us ahead of the frigid and locked-down summer).

The first lockdown was in full bloom at this time last year. Jackie likes to say she got through it binging wine and Bojack Horseman; I would add Brockmire to that, and this year Hank Azaria reprises the role in what is turning out to be an absolute treasure of a podcast. The first guest was Charles Barkley who used to come around and hang out with my, then, girlfriend’s sister down at Auburn around 1981 (I knew a lot of jocks and musicians, then, and couldn’t have named a professor with a gun to my head). The Brockmire/Barkley interview is, objectively, bonkers but also not at all surprising (it seems Mr Barkley and I have shared a lot of things even since we briefly crossed paths…except the success part, to be sure).

Barkley and Brockmire would both have probably appreciated the Level 2 experience overlapping my run home from The Hawthorns Friday after work. This capped off a brilliant and busy work week that also included the first of the runs-at-work section of the running map started, appropriately enough, on April Fools Day:

In a bad behaviour rut, my Fines and Fees for the week rolled in at £103.83.

2021 Week 15 Recap: HIGNFY online

Running is still a very slow matter but the distances are increasing, slightly. Got in nearly 10 miles on Saturday while the spousal unit was down with Pfizer Dose 2 side effects (the photos are from this run and the map is of runs since April 1st). I also ran past a house, 11 Oak Road, that was in the news this week (I can’t emphasize enough how important is the outdoor growing season that looms, especially when your house faces the police HQ directly across the street).

Akrill Nurses Home, NOT the drug house over by the coppers

Speaking of news and current events, we’ve been to a couple of tapings of Have I Got News For You, the last time a couple of months before we moved to Brum. We did a socially distanced version last Thursday on something similar to Zoom. Very strange. You couldn’t hear any of the audience sounds they were recording. The host was kind of a dud but Paul’s guest was on fire all night.

The warm up guy asked for anyone attending from foreign site. A couple shouted they were in Michigan, another guy said Wisconsin. The emcee said, “I know there’s more than that, just shout it out.” Dead silence for a few seconds and he encouraged us again so I spoke up, “West Brom.” He actually giggled and said something about the free state of West Bromwich. Successful heckle, I think.

Photo details paragraph. The Akrill Nurses’ Home was built in 1901 for the well being and training of nurses that specialised in home care. The statue was from a cemetery on the map and memorialises tenants of paupers’ graves. I also passed through a delightfully stinky horse farm.

Fines & Fees: £71.50 due in large part to neglecting the personal enrichment component of The Rules. Work has been very busy the last week, though, and I’ve been rushed off my feet to get home by 7 each night.

2021 Week 14 Recap: Death, Failure, Dreadful Injuries

Bought a mitre saw Monday. All fingers are still attached as of this writing and the skirting boards, which went up Monday afternoon, are blood-free and look divine. Don’t worry, there will be other opportunities.

The DoE, a decades-long benefits scrounger, is DOA. I have nothing to add to the 10-hour, all-channels blitz-of-remembrance Friday night (except, perhaps this old, related post detailing a personal encounter with the Prince and his woman).

I’ve done a lot of photoshop things in the past but I did not add “Ferret” to the pump clip between the camera and Philip. Nor did I do anything to the photo, below, as ludicrous as it may seem…$2.70 per US gallon for gasoline? That works out to £0.52 per litre! Crikey, it’s £1.18 up at the corner.

Oh, yeah … Congressdude Matt Gaetz is in the news for something or other which may explain the billboard in that shot.

The Grand National was Saturday and we duly made our donations to the jockey retirement funds. I had Acapella Bourgeois for the name and Jackie took the favourite, Cloth Cap. Mine finished the race, at least, but CC pulled up about 3/4 around. Dog Meat and Hansom Cab would have been better choices, but weren’t on the ticket.

Fines and fees: £52.50 (all fines as the only day the ‘double-dip’ would have been in the mix, I didn’t double-dip). Expect a spike next week.

Have been running a few times this month. Found some software I think I like to keep my cumulative trails on. So, starting with the first weekly of each month, from this point on, there will probably be some increasingly cluttered update screenshots of the runs in one area or another. Here’s one for the Every Road in West Brom effort (vaguely akin to Every Path in Old Town, a few years ago):

A few runs that count, so far, but the software lets me merge gpx files so this should start to colour in soon.

2021 Week 13 Recap: No daisy

Traditionally, we watch Life of Brian at Easter but somehow I got roped into Tombstone. Val Kilmer’s Georgia accent is good and his lines are better (e.g., “I have not yet begun to defile myself”). His take on Jesus (“You’re no daisy at all, poor soul, just too high strung”) seems very seasonal.

We don’t yet have daisies but the bulbs have come up in our totally neglected garden:

It is now 180 days since my last pub visit but, like the screen cap from the Malt House says, the decision is out of my hands for at least a few weeks more.

Fines and fees: £73.67 diminished significantly by the psychedelic exemption for double dips (a millidose is still a dose although I don’t believe a microdose should count) and the weekend and holiday exemption eating into a week of nightly wine.

Living room paint — colour

The skirting boards are painted and await cutting and installation tomorrow (Monday after Easter).

We mist coated first thing Friday morning with white, matt emulsion mixed 1:1 with water then adding 1/2 cup of PVA glue per gallon. The water intercolates the new plaster‘s crystal structure and the PVA reduces the surface porosity a bit better than the paint alone would do. It took about an hour to go through the room and ceiling then about an hour and a half to chase through with the remaining mist coat for an erstwhile 2nd layer.

By Friday night at 7, we had finished the first coat of teal. Above, you see midway through that effort where Jackie’s rollers were just catching up to my cutting in.

Even without the trim or anything hung on the walls and with the floor still needing stain and varnish, this is a relaxing — dare I say, “calming” — room.