The road was finished!

This week I continued on the staircase hall. We also planted sweet chestnut trees. The road was finished!

Monday 11 until 17 December, week 50.

I was happy with myself and my blog effort when I ended last week's blog with a cliffhanger. All the time this week, I had hoped to sit down and continue blogging, but it did not happen until Saturday morning. Worse yet, besides not blogging, I did not post the previous week's blog until Saturday morning.

If we start with the cliffhanger, how did it go with the screen glasses, Jens? Well, I went to the car at the school nearby and found it in the trunk. The path to the car is now slippery, and quickly get droplets of sticky clay on the trousers. The glasses were lying under the ironing board, still living in the car. I use the ironing board as a table in my DJ set. That works very well. I was happy I found the glasses because I was eager to start work. Did I bring the ironing board back? No, I don't want to fall over with an ironing board in the clay.

I could work from home on Monday since I found the screen glasses. DW also worked from home on Monday. That was nice. She works from her office, the large room on the west side of the first floor, and I work from my office, on the southeast side of the house. DW often has meetings, and I am so far away that I am not bothered by that. I can even play music, and it is not bothering her. If it bothers her, she can ask me to lower the volume.

We had a lunch walk that day. The sun was shining, and things were good in general.

Monday evening, while we were eating, Merida was sleeping on the couch. Until she suddenly had an epileptic seizure. It took three minutes. That was the longest three minutes of my life. There was nothing DW or I could do. Her body was twisted in a strange curl, and her legs shook. She did mouth movements and lost saliva.

This is the first time we encountered this. We googled what one should do, and there are a couple of things you should not do, like touching the cat while it is having a seizure. It was suggested that one should document the incident so that it is possible to talk to the veterinarian about it and present information about what happened. Two hours later, she had a second seizure. It did not last that long, and it was less intensive. This time, I filmed the incident. No, I am not going to publish the film here.

The day after, we sent the film to the veterinarian, and we talked about the incident and what we should do to handle the situation. It was not that straightforward. She suggested making a health check. Merida already had a health check, but at that time, it was only by looking at her and listening to her heart, etc. She was healthy; there was nothing wrong at all. Now, the veterinarian suggested taking blood samples. We will do that, but not this week. We have time for her next week.

The general conclusion is that we will wait to see how it goes with Merida and how often it happens. That is the decisive conclusion. If this happens often, then we can get medications for Merida. If it happens less often, there is no need for medication.

The first couple of days after the epileptic seizure, I was a bit shocked actually. I did not feel like sitting and blogging. In retrospect, that had perhaps been a better idea. Towards the Wednesday, the shock was over. Every day passing without a new epileptic seizure, we gained more confidence that we were not in a worst-case scenario.

On Wednesday, I continued to work on the staircase hall project. I removed the remaining things and started measuring how long the metal hook beams needed for doors, windows, etc. I did not have the energy for the project, though.

I have been working on a new scene for the Visual Effects program in the evenings. The idea is to use the difference between camera frames. That difference is colored I color and drawn to the screen. In the next iteration, I scale down the previous frame and paint the current colored difference on top. This gives the effect of an infinity mirror. It worked well, but the music did not have much influence on this algorithm. For that, I made a bar chart of the different frequency bands at the bottom of the screen. The bar chart also vanishes into the infinity mirror. I am not perfectly happy with the result, but I will keep it like this and see how people react.

On Thursday, both DW and I worked at our respective offices. I had an extra luxury lunch at work, which was really lovely, and this day, the road was finished, and we could drive home and park on our driveway!

Friday, DW worked from home, and I went to the office. In the evening, we had Pizza for the first time in several months. DS came and participated. That was nice.

Saturday, we decided to plant sweet chestnut trees. It was a bit hard to get started on this project. When we originally planned for this project, we had decided to set up a net around the trees. We need that to keep the trees safe from the sheep. Most significantly, the net should be attached with screws and a large ring. We had forgotten about the screw and the ring. Instead of getting the things together, we started to search for the electric stapler. After a long search, the idea was that perhaps we lent out the stapler. I went to the neighbor who perhaps had the stapler, and unfortunately, the neighbor was away for the rest of the day. We still had not determined that the stapler was not part of the plan.

After a long time searching, it was almost getting dark when I realized that we had planned to use screws. No need for the stapler. This was not a pleasant moment. I got the drill going and planted seven sweet chestnut trees. Three of them got a pole and a net fastened with screws.

In the evening, I worked on the infinity mirror scene of the visual effects program. It is not as I envisioned, but I will keep it now. I have other ideas I would like to work on instead of the infinity mirror. It was really late before we got to bed.

On Sunday, we had a filled program. We started off by planting two more sweet chestnut trees. Then, we went to a garden center to buy a larger litter box for Merida. We also wanted something larger for her to scratch her claws on. Rather have that than her scratching up our furniture. It was complete holiday season chaos at the garden center. People are mad.

Instead of a pole, we bought a cat scratch barrel with various hiding places and a lookout point at the top. We got a larger litter box that barely fit the place we had the old smaller box. She did not appreciate the lookout point. It had a cushion, and she held her paws away as if it were yuck. The litter box was accepted. Now we will see if our furniture can survive.

With the cat stuff fixed, we went to a garden party. That was nice; they had two fires, and we had anticipated that and not put on our most elegant clothing. In the beginning, the sun was shining; it was beautiful.