Dining Room and Veranda nearly finished

		Maple Haze all in my brain.
		My dining room don’t seem the same.
			--apologies to Jimi

There was more plastering after the veranda was done. A lot of it was patch plastering but the entire ceiling and the wall to the arches in the dining room needed a full skim and the arched doorway to the living room and entrance needed extensive touching up.

We started painting with a good undercoat after the plaster had cured for a week. Cheap, white, matt emulsion diluted with water so there would be some ligand exchange between the water in the crystal structure of the plaster and the water carrying the paint. This dried a further 24 hours before a levelling and obscuring coat of the base.

To be fair, the colour choice is a bit bold. We should install cool white lighting throughout this area as the slight blue cast fights against the Trump-tone on the walls.

We still need the coving and skirting boards to go. up (eggshell brilliant white for them and the door frames) and pictures need to be distributed, but this leaves only the entrance, stairs, and kitchen to tackle (inside the structure).

Week 25 Recap: Fruit, Far From Ripening

I encourage all Americans who can emigrate and want to do so, to do so. I also encourage people who can somehow get in to work in labs in Amsterdam, Cambridge, and Oxford to do so. But, just because I managed to do these things doesn’t mean that anyone who chooses to can — luck, and years, no, decades of stress and careful positioning, did that. I wish you luck.

The first tomato emerged 26 June (see photo for its glory). Need to make some mozzarella soon and buy some basil as ours is lagging behind. Caprese summer looms large.

Mileage still light at 26.7 miles. Fines and fees, £80.50 .

2021 Commute #15: On Site Until Power Is Restored

On a training course for work this week (MaxQuant Summer School) from 11:30 til 6 everyday but there was also a planned electrical shutdown prompting an earlier than normal periodic maintenance cycle for three of the instruments in Biosciences Monday and on site presence required for me Tuesday when the machines can be brought back online.

With no hurry to arrive Tuesday, I did a long, slow, slog into the labs from West Brom. 9.7 miles of age- and drink-related sweat, pain, and toil. And, a riot of foxgloves interspersed in dense mats of fern.

Short Movie Review: The Good Lord Bird

It’s alright. You should see it. [Technically, it’s a series but a movie if you watch it all in one sitting.]

2021 Week 24 Recap: Metaphysics

The entire Metro was offline Monday just like it was the Friday before that. The bus is very slow and packed so getting the trams back Tuesday was a great relief. Bright side: I got to see this absurdist road signage — maybe British highways departments really embrace existentialism.

The damp, cool weekend made the push to finish painting the living room and veranda a bit easier. We still haven’t decided on coving and we’ve got a weekend’s worth of putting that up when we do (as well as the skirting boards). Photos, soon.

Weekly mileage lagged a little (23.5 including a 9.5 mile commute). There were also £112.50 in fines and fees, mostly from lack of self improvement all week…so…very…ashamed.

2021 Commute #14: COVID Strikes Close

The plan was to leave the house early to get a commute in with time to clean up before training a couple of masters students in how to use the FTICR-MS (easily the least novice-friendly bit of kit in the mass spectrometry corral at the uni). Someone in that research group tested positive so they instead had to schedule PCR tests and otherwise self isolate. So, I started a little later and took a more scenic route with some paths I haven’t done in months. About 9.5 miles (9.8 by GPS but it inexplicably freaked out in two areas).

2021 Week 23 Recap: Earthly Delights

Cast some wildflower seeds in window boxes Monday and noticed my first flowers on the tomato plants:

Continued to jam long, flexible swabs up my nose and continued to get negative results. Which is a positive result. Confusing.

Fines and fees: £102.

Plastering seems to mix well with drink, and over the last two weekends I have mixed and spread 7 bags (25 kg apiece) of plaster whilst exploring that theory. Mist coated the first of it Friday night but ran out of basecoat Saturday so we have two large rooms to do next weekend — I wonder if painting is more or less like plastering when it comes to substance abuse…let’s find out!

Short Movie Review: I Care A Lot

It’s alright. You should see it.

2021 Commute #13: Arse-On Arson

At 7:30 (with a 9am group meeting pending), I was faced with the three sided dilemna: leave RIGHT THEN for a faster than normal commuter run; or, catch the Metro; or, stay at the house and do the meeting from the bedroom and go in later via options 1 or 2. I opted for the Forced March and did it with enough time to buffer exchange the excess salts off my body in the sink of one of the labs, change into my big boy clothes, and retrieve my laptop from another building and still make the meeting from my office. On time.

Faster than I have been able to maintain over this distance the past couple of years, still I was not so fast that the friction of me cutting through the dense, early-summer air could set fire to a comfy chair.

Veranda Part 2: Plaster

Since last week entailed a major redesign of the plans for the Dining Room and Veranda, I focused on getting the smaller room close to finished.

The cables have been chased down the walls and the trenches for these — and, all the exposed substructure of this part of the building — have been packed with a base coat of plaster. The entire room was then skimmed with finish plaster then given a bit of a wet polish with tile sponges.

Exhausting, again, but next week while Jackie paints this now-nearly-finished room I will be mudding the dining room ceiling and the wall to the veranda with finish plaster. It takes a week for this to cure enough to start painting so that has us busy each weekend until roughly the end of the month.