Fly strike Sunday, 13-Aug-23 21:09:47 CEST

We finished the cupboard Sunday, 27-Aug-23 20:20:20 CEST

Sunday, 20-Aug-23 20:03:09 CEST

Decluttering started

The healing of Hanna goes well. We booked progress on both our indoor as well as outdoor decluttering projects.

Monday 14 August

Today we were back at work and went to the office. DD stayed in our house and watched Merida and the sheep. Before we went to work in the morning, we put ointment on Hannah and wiped poop nuggets from the platform below the rain roof. Then we went to the office.

In the evening, we treated Hannah again. She is gaining strength every day. She also likes the treatment. I also give her a hand with food supplements, and I think the sisters are a bit jealous of that. I try to compensate them by grooming them a little after the treatment of Hannah.

Hannah's nose had been a bit red from the sun. She has had sun protection for a few days, and today it started to look nice pink again.

Tuesday 15 August

Today we worked from home. DD was still at home; we had lunch together!

Before and after work, we gave Hannah her skin treatment. We discovered that she had developed new skin on her legs! It was bright pink and still partly covered by old skin. I think this entire process will take a long time. I tried photographing the new skin, but she was too busy.

Wednesday 16 August

This morning Hannah almost came to us for her morning treatment.

Today I worked the first part of the day from home. After lunch, I had the rest of the day off. DW was supposed to have a day off, but she logged in to work and had a couple of meetings. Huh? After lunch, I brought DD to the train station.

The cat shield in the stairs got trimmed down. We believe that Merida can walk the stairs; she has done it hundreds of times. It still sounds like "plop, plop" when she jumps down the stairs. When she walks up the stairs, she is silent. We will remove the last part of the shield in a week.

We worked on the cupboard project this afternoon. Until now, we used the shelves as cat barriers to the utility room. We moved all the packages to the hobby room on the first floor. I made some changes to the utility room to make it kitten-safe.

The cupboard is just slightly too high. I cut off the corners of the vertical units. That way, the shelf can be placed snuggly next to the wall. We will continue to build the shelves another day. It will be fantastic when we can really start to declutter our house.

Hannah got her afternoon treatment, and now she knows it involves sheep kibbles. She almost sprinted to us. At some point at the end of her treatment, a sound from a car scared her. She ran away. Then she noticed nothing to be scared of and returned to us and let DW finish her treatment. I felt this was an extraordinary moment. She really likes the ointment and the grooming.

At the end of the treatment, her sisters also wanted some attention. It feels so good to be together. It feels good that we everted this crisis.

In the evening, I created a paper template token and spray painted that on the outside of our garbage bins. A neighbor got their container missing, so it is about time to put a mark on it. There are stickers on the container, but they let loose and curled. This is better; I would be surprised if the container ran away when it got our mark.

My neighbor in Sweden had reviewed my survey findings and presented an entirely different document from Lantmäteriet. It turns out that there is a vast document from 1953 describing some of the borders, mainly his borders. The good thing is that his borders are also mine borders. It is fascinating, and I will analyze it carefully. I had not thought that restoring borders is also research in archives.

For a while, I have been playing with the idea that I will provide suggestions for podcasts. For some, it is one episode; for others, it is the entire series. You must know what fits you best if you start from the beginning or the end. This list is obviously a snapshot of my current choices. In a couple of weeks, I might come up with other suggestions. Either that or I slip in my interest in podcasts, and it will take a year before I repeat this experiment. I put links to Podcast Republic, but you can use any of your favorite podcast apps.

Podcast artwork	Links	My comment
	Radio Ecoshock: ENJOY YOURSELF (It's Later Than You Think)   This episode was published in May 2023.   https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/1126660051   Should we give up and party like there's no tomorrow? Scientist James Lovelock, the inventor of Gaia, says, Yes. Former NASA scientist James Hansen says No.	This podcast is living up to the name; it is a shocking show. It is many times challenging for me to get shocked deliberately. It is like taking a cold shower; I don't like it.   However, once in a while, this shocking podcast has content that is less like a cold shower and more like an exciting idea.   This episode examines if the current climate catastrophe got so far that we now should not care about it or if we should still do our best to avoid the catastrophe.
	Radio Ecoshock: The Big Greenhouse Gas You Don't Know.   Published on 30 May 2023.   https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/1126660051   Why are we heading hell-bent into a world that nobody wants? Social philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger warns adding AI to our unsustainable system will speed up disaster for humanity. Daniel talks with UK science communicator and former pro poker player Olivia "Liv" Boeree.	This episode made me discover the Moloch force. When you see it, you can never unsee it.   After I listened to this podcast, I searched for more information about the Moloch force.   The Moloch force is about unhealthy competition. The competition goes out of hand.
	Volts is a podcast about leaving fossil fuels behind.   https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/1548554104   In this episode, influential climate blogger Joe Romm discusses whether carbon offsets are, per the title of his recent white paper, "unscalable, unjust, and unfixable."	Usually, this podcast is a tad US-centric to my liking. Perhaps that is why I liked this episode really much because it takes on an international perspective.   This is about how carbon offsets came about and how they work or do not work. It is also the prediction of how carbon offsets will die. I do hope it happens soon.
	Ukraine: The Latest from The Telegraph.   https://www.podcastrepublic.net/episode/94842912891	This podcast is from the British newspaper The Telegraph about the news from Ukraine.   This is, of course, a podcast from the perspective of the UK, but I think they are doing it nuancedly. Former militaries often appear on the show, but also they speak nuanced. Had this been a show from the US, we would need to listen to how brave soldiers are and how thankful we should be that soldiers are killing people worldwide. That is not how the Telegraph report; they give their insight, which is informative, albeit UK-centric.   The link here goes to an episode also about Sweden, which I like, but consider this a perpetual daily dose of insight information about the war in Ukraine.
	On the Green Fence   Can we recycle our way out of the plastic crisis?   https://www.podcastrepublic.net/episode/94798221089   Globally only 9% of all plastic waste is recycled. But why are mechanical recycling rates so low? And could chemical recycling help achieve our targets, or is this the wrong approach to plastic waste?	This is an English-speaking podcast from Deutsche Welle.   This is a German-centric podcast.   This show is focused on the environment in various ways. It is not shocking but succeeds in talking about things that make me learn new things. I like that.   This particular episode talks about the challenges of recycling plastic.
	The Diary of a CEO.   https://youtu.be/ujRwf1HdNjk	This is an interview with a professor at Harward, Dr Daniel E. Lieberman, about health. I am interested in health but not in a fanatic way. I do like the scientific approach to health; I find it refreshing.   Now is this not a regular podcast but a YouTube channel. If you got a premium account on YouTube, you can listen to this show as if it was a podcast.

 

Thursday 17 August

Today, I worked from home. At first, I went to work, but none of my nearest colleagues were present, so there was no reason to be there. When the holiday season is over, this will change. All will be in the office. I went home after a while and continued working from home.

In the afternoon, we took Merida to the veterinarian. She got a chip implanted, and she got vaccinated. We will get back to the veterinarian in three weeks, and she will get her second vaccination.

We got some "bad" news: The veterinarian told us that the best practice is to keep Merida inside until she has been sterilized, which can happen when she is in the heat after about six months. We had hoped she could come into rodent elimination production after her vaccination. Oh well, we will get there one day.

Merida is healthy! The veterinarian administered the vaccination really quickly. My camera was not quick enough to take a photo of it.

Another thing that dodged my lens lately was the new patches of skin on Hannah. Her old skin is letting off on her leg; you can see new pink skin behind it. The new skin is getting itchy, so Hannah is scrubbing her against various things. This is a delicate process that will and should take time. We will let her scratch things off herself.

Friday 18 August

Today I worked from the office the entire day. I brought with me a courgette to share with my colleagues. I placed the courgette on a plate in the cantine. Some colleagues had never seen such a colossal courgette and had to take pictures of it. At the end of the day, three colleagues took a piece each.

It was warm in the afternoon, 29 degrees. We walked to the grocery store, posted a package, and bought some things. The package contained color samples for the cupboard. Pieces of wood in various colors that the cupboard can be painted with. DW did not like any of them and ordered her own paint. I talked about that on 15 July. The paint arrived on 21 July. DW finished painting the back panels on 26 July, but then we went on holiday. The cupboard project is the start of our decluttering campaign. DW can bring order in her hobby things, creating space for me to order my office. It will be great.

It was warm, and we had our walk before dinner, so I got slightly dizzy. That was a little unpleasant. We bought the things we needed at the grocery store, and one was an apple for me. I ate my apple on the way back, and all was fine.

Saturday 19 August

I discovered that two cucumbers were ready to be picked.

Before the Tiny House and the big party this summer, I knew what we should do, when, and why. Now some loose ends need to be finished. It did not feel like the right moment to figure out these things today.

Instead, we went on a shopping tour. First, we visited a vast store for farmers, animals, and riders. There was almost nothing for sheep farmers, but they had what we needed. We bought a Calendula spray for Hannah, a harness for Merida, and some other things.

They also had cat flap openings. Regular old-fashioned flaps and cat flap openings unlocked with the chip in the cat. The thing is that the only door that is good for this, that is the garden door. We don't want the opening there. It will be interesting to see how we solve this in the future. This issue is not urgent since we will keep her in-house for several months.

The animal store was located in an adjacent smaller town. I suggested we go to a second-hand shop to see if I could find a replacement for a transformer I have for the audio equipment. I put the name of the shop in Google Maps, and it turned out to be so that we were near a shop of the same chain in this town. We went there. It was huge.

They did not have the transformer I was looking for, but they had a lot of things. We took a couple of things with us home. An outdoor lamp, a book about painting acrylic, etc.

When we came home, we worked on the cupboard. It was not an IKEA cupboard. This is Lundia. It has a totally different design philosophy compared to IKEA. The packages are flat and so far it is similar, but the systems are more complex, is my feeling. The cupboard is built while standing up; it has to be standing up. That is awkward. You had to be two to build the cupboard and have ladders to climb up and do things at higher altitudes. There was a long moment when the cupboard could not stand by itself. I have never experienced that while assembling IKEA cupboards; they design things so you can put them together more straightforwardly.

Another thing I have never experienced with IKEA is that we got too many items we don't need and other things, screws, are missing.

Eventually, the first section could stand upright by itself. That was fine.

We momentarily put on the harness on Merida and had her in the garden. She did not like that at all. Every so often, we will practice the outside with her. When she returned indoors, we removed the harness and replaced it with her collar. From now on, it will be one or the other. We tried the collar several times, but she managed to remove it. She also tried this time, but now the collar fits her better. It stayed on her. From time to time, she tried to get it off. It was an annoying evening for her. She has developed a bit of attitude from time to time. It is as if she is not interested in being petted continuously and all the time. I can understand that.

Sunday 20 August

This morning it was sunny weather.

The thistle control effort has been great. These days when I see thistles, they don't give me a feeling of a problem that has grown over my head. I know I can control them, and I am in control. It is lovely how much relief that has given me. I did not think of it that way in other years, that something could be mastered and create a feeling of relief. This is like a story arch that has come to a resolution; it is lovely.

I expected the rest of the day to be overcast, but that was just a short moment. The entire day was beautiful weather.

It was about time to fill the hole I dug for the tiny house's power, water, and electricity. I made the hole on 4 June.

 

In the evening, I finished filling up the hole and made the surface reasonably flat. I left the jacket tube for the e-car. I want that to come up a little more to the south. That is for another day. This project is part of decluttering the area at the end of the driveway and behind the container. There is more to do.

In the evening, I worked on preparing new music for my DJ sets. That was about it for this week.