Started preparing for plastering the workshop Sunday, 24-Mar-24 21:09:06 CET

Merida sterilised Sunday, 07-Apr-24 22:07:26 CEST

Sunday, 31-Mar-24 21:52:42 CEST

Worked on the building plan of the shed

This week I finished the drawings for the new building plan.

Monday 25 March

Today it was marvelous sunny weather. I was almost feeling bad I made such a sad song about rain this weekend. DW went to the office, and I stayed home to work from home. In the morning, I had a bit of backache; I even contemplated writing a song about backache. I did some curl-ups. It was the first time Merida could see me do curl-ups. She had eyes big as saucers; she could not believe her eyes. I almost got shy.

The curl-ups worked, and I got better in my back. So, I skipped the idea of writing a song about my backache. It is like writing a song about rain; it has to rain the whole time while you write it. Otherwise, it will not feel authentic. No worries, it kept raining until the song was finished.

Merida came to accompany me while I worked.

I actually managed to bring my current sprint to work. That was great. I do think I will do some more testing tomorrow.

DW had train problems in the afternoon, and on top of that, her bus was canceled. She asked if I could come and get her, and of course I did.

In the evening, I sat scrolling through YouTube shorts when I saw this lovely lady singing It is a Heartache. Obviously, I heard Harley. It got me thinking about when I drive in the car and play my own songs, and I feel so awesome, but it is a dirty old Skoda. Perhaps I can make a pastiche of that song.

It was interesting to look into the song's structure. The song is written by Juice Newton and sung by Bonnie Tyler. The verses all have similar rhyming endings. The beginning of the verses ends with identical words. I took this idea and kneaded it into my own. I went from four regular lines per verse to three lines after a couple of test runs in Suno.ai.

[Verse 1]
Sitting in my Skoda.
Playing my own song.
No one else will play it.

[Verse 2]
I am the only one.
Playing my own song.
Not always good, I can admit.

[Chorus]
Driving in my Skoda.
Playing banging beats.
It is my song, my own hit!

[Verse 3]
I am lost in my Skoda.
Is this actually good?
Here is my exit.

[Instrumental outro]

So sorry.

I suppose this song is about pursuing a creative passion without support and enjoying it while simultaneously wondering its meaning. I laughed about it when I finished the song. DD liked it! It got late, though.

It was a full moon. Who cares? No one cares. There are full moons several times yearly, so what is special about this full moon? Perhaps that happened after 20 March when day and night have equal length, called equinox. Just saying.

Tuesday 26 March

Today, we both went to the office. It was overcast and a little chill, but no rain. DW had a course again. She has a series of Tuesdays when she goes to the office. I had a regular day at the office. There were many people at the office, and I liked that.

There was a little progress at the puzzle table. The house was connected to the right edge.

I brought fresh water and hay to the Sheep when we came home. Hannah came pushing, so I scratched and groomed her. She liked it, obviously. For a long time, Bea has been skeptical of any scratching or touching for that sake, but today, I won her over. I scratched her, and she liked it!

It was like I had a lot of energy this evening. I even continued to clear up the workshop a little. Cleaning up and moving away all the things is a tedious task. Every little bit is helping a lot.

Wednesday 27 March

This morning, I woke up with the sun shining right over the horizon. When it climbed higher, the sun came behind a blanket of clouds. I like morning sun pictures. Sunsets are lovely as well. I always feel pity that reality is so much more beautiful than images.

Today, DW had a day off. She had been fighting a cold for a while now. Luckily, I have not got it yet. First, it went away, but now it is coming back. We are not used to that. I worked from home for the first part of the day. I finished the sprint. Then we had lunch.

After lunch, we went on a walk. It was holding up during our walk. We went to the forest in the neighborhood of the alternative grocery store Odin. We also bought a couple of items there. There were flowering blackthorn brushes on our walk. We also planted blackthorn at our new house, which is not that big. You can make Sloe Gin from the berries. We will see if we can make something like that. That would be cool. For this project, we need to come into action around September.

We took a small walk, but it was beautiful. There were two buzzard birds in this forest. They circled slowly around to find rodents, I suppose.

I recalled discussing the shed the last time we walked in this forest. The shed project is not progressing so quickly at the moment. I have been prioritizing the staircase plastering project, but it is finished. Perhaps I need to let the shed plans come before the workshop. We will see.

When we came home, we took it easy. I started working on the plans for the shed again.

DW ordered a GPS tracker for Merida. Next Thursday, she will get sterilized, or is it called neutered. When she is healed, she can go out on her own, and she will wear a GPS tracker. It is unclear to me how long time the healing will take. I will find out.

I wrote several paragraphs with an ending where I wonder about something.

In the evening, I felt sore in my knees. There was no reason for this other than that perhaps DWs cold is getting to me now.

Thursday 28 March

Today, DW worked from home, and I went to the office. We had a dog visiting our office today. His name was Olaf. He was great fun; he liked to play peekaboo. He did not stay in my room but in an adjacent room and behaved well. That was nice.

The puzzle developed during the day.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, and we, the people at the office, decided to work from home.

I booked good progress on my work. So much so that I suggested we walk around the office, and two colleagues joined me. While walking, we talked about hobbies. Excellent subject for a short walk.

After work, I picked up more medicine against epileptic seizures for Merida.

Friday 28 March

Today, we both worked from home! DW still had a cough. I feel fine, though. DW had meetings as usual, and I worked on finishing a sprint. I got things working quite well, so I was satisfied. I have a more significant deadline coming up. It is a little unclear how finished I can make things. I do think "finished" is not totally well defined.

A neighbor borrowed a wheelbarrow. It was actually really nice weather today. At lunch, Merida was lying in the sun. In less than a week, she will get her operation.

I stopped working early today. That was nice. It is part of the package for this weekend when we celebrate that a guy woke up from a short coma he suffered when he had been tortured by the Romans. It is a cruel history.

It is funny, though, the specific choice of date. I made a cartoon about it.

I find it funny that "the corporation" decided on a date like this. What corporation am I talking about? It is a multinational selling unbound accountability. It is the most straightforward product you can imagine, and they made a fortune from it. Give them money and loyalty, and you will be forgiven forever. The unfortunate part is that accountability should not be something you can sell. With the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I would like to say that everybody has to be accountable. That is my morality, and sorry for bringing you the bad news. You can still be loyal to "the corporation," but you must be accountable if you do bad stuff. That is just how it is.

This cartoon is the first artwork I am doing this year. I hoped I would make more cartoons, but that has not happened. I posted the cartoon to my Instagram account. One person liked it; that is a smashing hit so far! Over the years, I made cartoons from time to time. Here is one from 2019 that is actually funny.

I worked on the plans for the shed after work. It is as if I need to learn how to use Autodesk Fusion from scratch. That application has a lot of confusion before one starts to understand it.

It was a lovely sunset this evening. DS came for a short visit. Merida was curious about what he was up to.

Saturday 30 March

Today, we had a slow morning, not only that. The entire day was slow. DW was feeling better, and it seems I never got the cold. So far. After breakfast, we had coffee on the couch. Merida came to sit on the cushion next to me, purring. That makes me happy.

I worked on the plans for the new shed. We will need to send in a new application for a building permit, so I will need to create a new property map. It has been some time since I worked in Fusion 360. The application is renamed to Autodesk Fusion. I still had the file from the previous time I worked on the building permit. From January until March 2019, I worked on the development plans. I wrote a blog post about it in January 2020. This was before I started blogging throughout the week. When I return to earlier blog posts, I like what I read. It does help that I am using a proper spell checker: Grammarly.

It was overcast the whole day, but did not rain much. In the evening, we had a lovely sunset.

Sunday 31 March

This is the last day of March. We had a slow, overcast morning. So this is the actual Sunday after a full moon. We had that full moon on 25 March. I do remember I woke up that night experiencing the bluish light from the moon.

	Belle de Boskoop apple blossom.
	Juneberry blossom. Amalanchier lamarkii.
	Mirabelle blossom.
	Peer tree blossom
	Cherry tree blossom.

 

When the morning was over, the clouds were lifted. We had sun for a couple of hours. It was almost a divine experience. Will this wetness amplification continue in the future, and will we have rain again and again from September to the end of March?

I even let the sheep out. They liked it very much.

In the afternoon, I noticed that another new neighbor borrowed our wheelbarrow from our neighbor. I went to the second neighbor and said it was okay to borrow the wheelbarrow.

Today, we changed the time to summer time or daylight saving time. I set the wristwatch one hour ahead. I got an old manual watch that you need to change manually. My mnemonic is that I am looking forward to the summer; hence, the clocks should be moved one hour ahead in the spring. In autumn, I often look back to summer; hence, the clock is moved back one hour.

DW applied primer to the walls of the staircase hall. Now, all walls are primed. I think she will paint corners next time.

Today, I finished the plan for the building permit application or the preamble of the permit. This is a considerable shed; I do not know if we will make it that big.

In the previous plan, we had trees, planting, and all sorts of fancy stuff. The driveway was curved! Cleaning up the plan and removing the bells and whistles took a long time.

DW made a complete document around the drawing. Next week, we can send it to the municipality. I doubt it will be accepted on the first attempt.

It started raining in the evening. It rained heavily, and there was flash and thunder! The divine feeling of beautiful weather was totally lost. I was back in the mood of, "It is raining again and again."

Here ends this week's blog. I did not do much work on the workshop this week. The staircase painting is progressing. This week's tangible progress must be that I finished the drawings for the new building plan. This week, the creative side ticked all the boxes with a song and a cartoon.

See you next week!