Insulated the pipes of the tiny house Sunday, 11-Aug-24 22:11:27 CEST

Continued on the boards of the tiny house Sunday, 25-Aug-24 20:23:55 CEST

Sunday, 18-Aug-24 22:35:36 CEST

Started mounting boards below the tiny house

This week, I started mounting boards below the tiny house. I biked a lot this week, and that was fantastic.

Monday 12 August

It is Monday, and this will be a hot day. Yesterday evening, I uploaded last week's blog, which was a really long one. Although I said in the morning that early mornings are so magical that one would go to bed earlier so that I could get out of bed and enjoy the morning, I did not do that. Stayed up late finishing the blog. With climate change, more days are scorching, and one way to enjoy hot days would be to make better use of the morning. We will see if I can gather more discipline to get into bed earlier.

We had a look in the garden before work. The tomatoes urgently needed more support, and we had been talking about extending the scaffold to make that possible, but it became a forgotten task over the weekend. Now, I decided to do it this morning.

I also harvested a handful of pickles and two courgettes. These pickles can rest in the fridge for a while. Perhaps there will be more before DW has the time to put them in a jar?

Both DW and I worked from home today.

At 11 AM, my feet were cold, and I had a sweater on. When my feet are not too cold, I will probably forget about them.

Do you recall the incident with the iron a couple of weeks ago? The iron was left on overnight, and when we discovered this, we decided to order timer switches that turn off the power after a specified time. So what happened with that? We never got them; we did not even get a message. The things were paid, but where were they? Today, at lunchtime, I discovered that the email we registered at Conrad went to an old account we no longer use. I managed to get back into the account. Now I was happy. I found the missing messages. One message said that if I don't pick up the package today, it will be returned to Germany. Oh, that happiness was short-lived. Here started a happiness roller coaster with ups and downs.

So now I'm on my way to the pick-up point, hoping they have not returned it already. First, I drove to the wrong address. When I arrived at the pick-up point, it had a huge sign saying closed. Now I was unhappy again. A much smaller sign said they had lunch, and the lunch pause was over. Now I am happy again.

A person came to the door and opened for me. I gave my details, and the kid started searching. He kept searching and could not find it. Now I was unhappy again. I started thinking that the package had already been returned to Germany.

A girl comes to help the kid; it's always the girls who have the brains. She found the package, and now I am happy again. I got the package with me home. What remains here is that I'm unable to log into Conrad's customer portal, which annoys me.

In the evening, we had dinner on the east side of the house.

Tuesday 13 August

I am on my way to work on my bike. It is 8:22, a little later than last time, but I think I'm fine. Today I am using my new geeen bike bags. The bags are unusually full because I brought extra clothing if someone wants to put the office into arctic temperatures. If the temperature is too low, I will need to start a discussion about it. While biking, I started contemplating the progress of the tasks.

Last week, I finished the insulation of the tiny house. That is really itchy business. I'm glad I'm done with that. The next phase is to put on boards around the bottom of the house. I do hope to start with that tomorrow afternoon.

I will have a day off on 27 August to help neighbors pour hemp-create mix into their walls.

The way it feels now when I'm biking, it does not feel like I have to buy an electric bike. It is beautiful along the canal, with big, large poplar trees. I'm biking on bike lanes made of concrete and asphalt. I made a photo so you can see it for yourself. In this part, the trees form an arch over the bike lane.

Yesterday, I viewed an episode of Bryan Tylor Cohen's show on YouTube talking about politics. He said that both Kamala and Tim are currently good at developing catchphrases. It is the first time the Democrats have been able to do that in the last 20 years. This is a crucial lesson that resonates very well with my thoughts. Take the example of the paper dispenser at work from last week. I have been annoyed by these paper dispensers for more than 10 years, but I've been unable to express my ideas in a simple, catchy way. Now I have a proper catchphrase, and everybody instantly understands it. With a sizeable bulky paper towel dispenser, it feels like pulling out the toilet paper from the butt of one of my male colleagues. That is the catchphrase, and everybody understands immediately. With that, I can focus people's attention on the issue correctly. The same thing goes with Tim Waltz's expression. Mind your own damn business.

There are pouches on the trees in the city. I think that is to combat the oak processionary caterpillar. With climate change comes diseases, and new species of plants arrive at northern altitudes.

Now I finished my working day. I wore shorts today and a T-shirt. I was curious to see if I would get too cold. When I arrived at the office, I was warm from biking, and the first thing I did was to increase the temperature from 19°C to 21 ½°C. The most warm-blooded colleagues complained immediately, but I was sure this was vital. I must say I could stand it. It was still a rather loud noise from the AC system. At the end of the day, a colleague sitting next to me exploded, saying it was too cold, too much airflow, and too much noise. He could have said something about it earlier, and we would have fixed it for him. If he had been present last week, I wonder how he would think. For me, today, it was okay-ish. Last week, it was terrible. It is possible to adjust the system, and we will get it right. It is a question of adjusting the system and finding a bliss point when most people are mostly happy.

I was working on a complex issue today, and concentrating was challenging. Fortunately, I like debugging.

After work, I went into the city center to pick up the shoes I ordered on Saturday. My new shoes don't have strap hooks, which is so fantastic! The hooks on my old shoes got stuck in the sheep nets, and I will not have them anymore. I've eliminated two irritation factors: broken shoes and getting stuck in sheep nets. My new shoes are green, dark green with brown lace, and are from Lowa. The shoe is Renegade. It is funny that I bought green bags and green shoes. Perhaps I am into a theme here?

I had to make an emergency break. A guy was sitting beside the path in his scooter for disabled people, and his dog was on the other side of the path. The dog was about to pass the path when I biked there, but I could break in time. My brakes are excellent, so much so I was almost launched. That surprised me a little. Then the guy and I had to explain that we both became a little scared of this incident, and it took a while for him to understand that we both were scared, not just him. But he was a nice guy, and I told him that he should have a lovely evening, and then I continued.

Wow! A large bird flew from a tree next to me, and we biked and flew next to each other for a while. Sometimes, I wish I had a camera on my glasses to turn on with a voice command to keep memories of lovely moments. Listen to me, this is the guy who dreamed of having a digital reflex camera and now has that, but usually, he's too lazy to bring it with him. Now, he has his multipurpose phone that can pay, dictate blogs, and take photos and films. It seems it is not enough. Apparently, there has to be another gadget and another gadget, again and again.

Around 1900, people had to draw with pen and paper to save an image of something. It is easy to hold back on doing things now because of the things we don't have today. I was withholding from biking to work because it would be much nicer if I had an electric bike. That's wrong. Come on, I'm so happy right now; I'm biking now with my own energy; it takes that time it takes. Now I'm biking on my old regular bike and am happy about it.

It is funny how much things can change perception by changing how you look at it. I heard the term GAS in music production: gear acquisition syndrome. Instead of learning to use the things you already have to the fullest, you buy more and more stuff.

That said, I have been walking around with broken shoes since February. I recall singing a tune from a Swedish troubadour, Cornelis Vreewijk. Some people walk around with broken shoes, say why is it like that? Cornelis is whistling in this song with a nice reverb. The hallway at the new office got a really lovely reverb as well. In answer to Cornelis, I would say it is because I did not give myself time to go to the shoe store.

We had a nice dinner on the east side of our house this evening (again), where we could enjoy the evening shadow. It was still over 30 degrees Celsius.

After dinner, I discovered that the Western Sunrise courgette has small balls! Could this be the beginning of the plants forming fruits? In that case, we will have an explosion of courgettes. We received the Western Sunrise seeds from Vreekens seeds on 3 April. On 5 May, the first seeds were sown into pots. I did not sow all the seeds, but this is unclear. We transplanted the first batch before going on holiday, and everything was eaten by slugs. Then, I transplanted the final batch of courgettes on 5 June. The other sort of courgette was Ola Gabriela. It has been producing fruit much earlier.

This evening, I listened to Ukraine: The latest while doing the dishes. In this episode, they had a special report from Finland. It was the journalist James Rothwell who reported from the Åland islands. He reported that the Fins talks about hazardous and scary situations in a typical Finnish, understated, and calm manner. For more than nine hundred days, a group of elderly islanders protested outside the Russian consulate every day at 5 PM about the war in Ukraine.

This episode also tells about the successes of the incursion in Kursk, the Ukrainian special operation in Russia. Putin was recently appointed to become president in a special nomination operation. A bodyguard of Putin is appointed to deal with the incursion.

Dark clouds mounted, and it was time for a thunderstorm. I had expected it to be intense from the forecasts, but it was mild for us. One flash in the distance and one and a half millimeters of rain. That was all.

Wednesday 14 August

This morning, I worked from home. I had a challenging issue to work on.

At lunch, I thought it would be nice to drink homemade tea. I took mint leaves, a black currant leaf, and salvia leaves. That was a great success! DW has been knitting pouches for soup bars, and now she has a bag full of used pouches. How should one order these to make a lovely pattern for a seat cushion?

This was great fun. We will see what DW makes of it.

We bought the cutting celery seeds on 29 June, and at the time, I thought it was brilliant to sow the seeds between the coriander and the wild strawberries. I pretty soon realized that it was crammed, and not only did I realize it, but DW also realized it. She informed me promptly about that. Today, I decided to remove the remains of the arugula because it was flowering and not delicious anymore. With that, I had more space, so I transplanted most of the cutting celery into the newly won space in the raised bed.

But Jens? How is the board project of the tiny house going? Well, it was rainy today. I did not feel like pulling out equipment and working on the project. I am pretty happy with every water drip, so I am not complaining.

DW made rowan berry and apple chutney today. The recipe came from a book. It tasted nice! She used lemons for the chutney. I took two pieces of lemon and made a lemon, black currant, salvia, and mint tea. It was delicious.

We went to the food cooperative to pick up an order primarily for vegetables. We got information about how to deliver vegetables to this cooperative, what lists you should be a member of, what to do, and when to do it. We could send a message about what we can deliver on Friday. On Monday, we will hear what people ordered, and on Wednesday, we can deliver those things. I suggested delivering potatoes; we will see how that goes.

We then went to the alternative grocery store for additional things. They had mini sheep in a fenced area. That was nice. Perhaps six of these little sheep eat less than our three ladies.

It was five sheep that came right away to me. One stayed far away and was more skeptical of my appearance. We left these cuties and biked home. It started raining while we biked.

Thursday 15 August

I am biking to work, it's late. 8:42 AM. Yesterday, I worked one hour longer, so I decided there was no need to hurry this morning. It is now 20°C, but the weather forecast says it will be 28 degrees Celsius. I brought shorts and proper rain gear with me. With my new bags, I can be prepared for any situation.

Ukraine has conquered 1000 square kilometers of Russia, according to today's Ukraine: the latest. Putin displays a lack of confidence in his own military and appoints a bodyguard to take care of the Ukrainian incursion. Actually, Ukraine has revealed a huge weak spot in Putin with this incursion. Putin is doing everything he can to hide the war from the Saint Petersburg and Moskow middle-class elite. The Russian economy is nearly in stagflation, which will be hard to escape in these circumstances. The economy is shrinking. The war is tumbling in over the borders of Russia, and the country is shrinking. The borders are not safe. Putting will soon not be able to hide the issues of his actions. People cannot buy eggs due to inflation, and the mothers in Russia want their sons back, but the sons will not return. They are dead, consumed by Putin.

Elon Musk had a campaign rally for Donald Trump on X. The technology didn't work, and the two narcissists tried to get the technology working for an hour. Unhinged as usual, Donald sounded like the cartoon Daffy, the Duck. Perhaps he was under the influence of a drug; it is unclear what the reason was. Donald, afterward, tried to blame his Daffy the Duck voice on Musk's technology, but that is nonsense. It was probably drugs. You have to remember that Donald is convicted of 34 accounts of felonies; Don is out on bail. Donald almost revealed the plan of fleeing to Venezuela if the election did not go the way he wanted. Baffling revelation. Sure, I see the Secret Service flee with him. Not.

When you're engaged with Elon, he will always screw you over, and he did that with Trump as well. Donald is the proud owner of Truth Social, a competitor of X. The only compelling thing on Truth Social is Donald, so when Donald posted on X, the Truth Social company stocks tanked (again).

And who is Elon? It is a descendant of the South African white former elite. A PayPal billionaire, maker of the luxury electric vehicle brand Tesla. Tesla is a ridiculous car. If you have snow on your Tesla and open the trunk, the trunk gets filled with that snow. People in the car's back seat can not easily escape in an emergency. The inner panels of the door need to be unmounted to access an emergency hatch because you cannot open the door without lowering the windows. The car is a security failure. Don't think you're environmentally friendly owning a Tesla because all the Tesla profit goes to sending rockets into space. Rockets are no electric vehicles; there is nothing environmentally friendly in how Elon conducts business. He is just screwing all of us over. He also tries to spread the way of business around the world. He has no issues whatsoever trying to destroy the Swedish labor market.

I arrived at work at 9:14. It took 32 minutes, which is not bad if you consider that I was dictating 390 words during that time. When I arrived, I changed the AC setting at work, and I survived the day very well. The most hotblooded colleague was also fine, so we have a deal here.

I started biking home at 6:12 PM in the afternoon. I decided to bike to the canal, turn right, and bike along the canal. There's more wind today. The wind is always good because the wind means the weather systems are exchanged.

I had a frustrating day looking into a really complex problem, but in the late afternoon, I understood the problem. Oh, the bike path along the canal is closed! That means I must go into the town again and find a parallel route. This will be interesting. Here's the sign for bikers. I will try to follow the sign. It looks like I can get to the other side of the canal, and in that case, I can continue from there. This is going to be complex. I'm biking along the train tracks. I need to head south at some point. The route I usually take is far better, but I can see road constructions and places in the city I have never been to before.

This morning, I was not completely finished with my elaboration about billionaires. Some people think a billionaire can also be a cult figure because he is a billionaire. Well, apart from the required charisma, I have my objections. In a world without a climate disaster, I can agree, but in a world where humanity is in danger and not only humanity but every living species can become extinct, in such a world I am not running around shouting Hooray when I hear that Jeff Bezos wants to build a 45 million dollar clock in a dessert that ticks once per year. You can devise many stupid ideas, like sending an electric vehicle to orbit into space. The list goes on. Just because you can do something as a billionaire does not mean you have to do it; this is especially true for billionaires.

Entire species are dying while we are playing games. Should we put up with this ******** from rich people? People who got their money cheating and destroying union workers, putting them in dangerous situations; I don't think we should let them manipulate our democracy.

Money is ultimately just unreleased carbon. When Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have loads of unreleased carbon in their bank accounts, it does not render them any luxurious cult status. Instead, look at them as maniacs who can push the trigger anytime they like to release that carbon and let us burn.

It was a terrible idea to go this route on the bike.

Someone tried convincing me that the working class should have better living standards. What is the result of that? More people will get cars emitting carbon quicker to burn the earth faster. We have massive problems to solve. There are no quick and easy solutions; no one is about the law or a cult figure, and everybody needs to help solve the problems. We really do not need billionaires to manipulate our democracies. Carrying out war is obviously not the solution for anything. We need to help each other; we need to understand each other's cultures, religions, and languages. We need to make alliances and compromises. It's not going to be easy, okay?

I find it funny that the dictate function in MS Word censors me. I can't even use the word excrement coming out of male cows. At that place, MS Word inserted stars. I am flabbergasted. I will publish this text on my website, and Microsoft will try to censor me. That's so funny!

I'm at home at 18:57. It took 45 minutes. I will avoid that route next time.

When I came home, DW was making courgette kolokithokeftedes. I know it first breaks your tongue saying it, but the tongue heals again from eating this heavenly delicious dish.

DW also prepared pickles. First, the pickles will lie in a bowl with salt; tomorrow, they will be put into a liquid of vinegar, sugar, and salt.

This blog has it all. Last week's links to children's animated cartoons. This week, politics and links to recipes.

Friday 16 August

This morning, we had strawberries and raspberries for breakfast – directly from the garden, next to the regular smoothie. Living like a king in the summer.

Today it is raining, that is good! I take the car to work, but am still dictating my blog. It is challenging when it is raining because it is noisy, and the word dictate function has difficulty figuring out what I am saying.

A few years back, I became a member of a poetry website. I had forgotten about it, but recently, they started sending me the poetry pick-of-the-day emails. The idea of a poetry website is very excellent, but the site has quite extensive censorship. That put me off, so I stopped using the website. Since then, I made songs, and I am much happier with those songs than the poetry. In a way, making a song forced me to learn more about the syllables, stressed and unstressed syllables, and the rhythm of words and phrases, and that is also powerful knowledge necessary for making poems. With that, I arrived at work. Fun fact: going to work by car is 114 words while going to work by bike is more than 300 words.

On the way out from the office, I recorded a little sample of the reverb in the hall at the office. It is a beautiful reverb. Did you know you can record the impact response sound of such a hallway, recreate it synthetically in FL Studio, and use it digitally in your own music? I bet you did not know that? I heard about this on a podcast about music production with FL Studio, "The Larry Ooh Show." In season 1, episode 24, they talk about Fruity Convolver about 16 minutes into the show.

I am on my way home, and I am exhausted. It was good that I didn't bike to work today because it would have been highly tiring to bike home in this condition. I am feeling empty. It was raining in the morning. We had some sun at noon, and now it is overcast, with slightly dull weather.

I worked on a really complex problem today. It is the same problem I worked on since Tuesday. I was pleased that I solved it eventually this afternoon, but I didn't feel euphoric about that. I was feeling drained. When I come home, I will probably feel like I want to sit on the couch and not do anything. I will probably edit the blog when I say I will not do anything.

During lunch, colleagues talked about my creativity, which was a funny experience. One person mentioned my paintings, music, and gardening. One even mentioned I was an aspiring writer. That was so sweet. If I could, I would try to make other people more enthusiastic about doing creative things like gardening, painting, music, knitting, cooking, etc.

Ohh gasping. I hope we can move the sheep to a new fence area. I would also like to work on the boards below the tiny house; we will see. Gasping again.

When I came home, Merida greeted me at the door. She was hungry. I gave her the three-quarter pill and chunks of her regular dry food. DW was into sowing, so we did not go to dinner immediately.

Merida was hunting around the water pond. I checked her, and she was right at the water's edge. I sat down at the helophyte filter to join her, and she liked it. I sat on the lid of the filter water quality test well. It was a secluded place. I had the reed behind me, brushes to the left, and the tiny house to the right, but DS had the blinds shut, as usual. In front of me, the pond. Merida slowly, carefully walking with the paws lifted as high as possible to avoid the grass. She sniffed for smells and listened to sounds. It was a magic moment to be there with her.

Merida and I hiked in the neighborhood to neighbors several houses away. They also have one cat. Before the two cat ladies got to fight, we went home again.

I found that many of the grape vine grapes are sweet and eatable. Will I collect any of them this year, or will they get eaten by mice? The dille in the raised bed is so beautiful.

Eventually, it was time to eat. At that moment, Merida came into the living room with a mouse in her mouse; the mouse was screaming for help. Merida dropped her prey, and it started running around on the living room floor, still screaming for help. Well, this was an unfortunate situation. I swept the mice toward the doors, where Merida picked up her prey again and went outside. There, she played with the mouse. What happened with the mouse is uncertain, but I think it died. Merida had great fun, though. This is the third mouse she caught.

If she picks up the skill of catching mice, then her primordial pouch might start growing. She will perhaps get a large belly swinging under her when she is out hunting.

Saturday 17 August

This morning, there was no time for sitting and blogging in bed while slowly sipping the morning tea because DW was going out with friends all day. She had to be at the meeting point in a timely fashion. That meant that we stood up almost regular weekday time.

The photo of the peer is taken with my mobile phone. I got a Samsung phone. It has a portrait functionality mimicking a DSLR camera with a proper lens. The background of the peer is slightly blurry. I like it. If you have a mobile phone, check the camera settings and be creative!

I made a smoothie this morning with apple, banana, and black currant berries. I was curious if we could include our peers in the smoothy. I picked 2 peers from our trees. The flesh of the peer was hard as balsa tree wood. Grinding it into the smoothie was possible, but it was not smooth, but rather a grainy smoothie. Our peers were not that sweet, but this was fine. It is nice to be able to use your own garden. I like that. We did not have enough strawberries and raspberries; we had eaten most of them yesterday.

After breakfast, I took DW to the train station. We talked about Dutch politics. Apparently, the cabinet consists of parties pro-farming. You would guess they are keen on keeping the natural processes alive and healthy, but that's not what pro-forming means in the Netherlands. Their goal is to make maximum use of nature for profit regardless of whether insects and habitats are dying from it. We hope that before all insects are extinct, they realize that a dying nature is not profitable. When all is gone, they will be standing there with pockets filled with money, but no insects can pollinate; nature is dying. No food; all is silent.

It is a beautiful morning. No single cloud, no wind. Had it not been for me bringing DW to the train station, I would have been around in the garden, soaking up the magical morning. My ambition to go to bed earlier has not given any fruit. I need to establish more discipline to make that happen.

Apparently, someone in the neighborhood started practicing trumpet playing. You guessed it, practicing takes place with an open window. Should I pick up my violin and play with the trumpet for fun?

I started moving the sheep into a new fence area when I came home. That was going to be so easy. The new area is adjacent to the current area; I just had to switch a little section of the fence. I got Hannah with me into the new area. Selma and Bea could not be convinced to go into the new area. Selma was fine reaching into the newer area below the fence but going in there voluntarily, no way. I decided to lure them into the new area. For that, I cut a couple of willow tree branches; they love eating willow tree leaves. Again, Hannah came galloping. Selma and Bea were not in a cooperative mold this morning. I increased the stakes, cut more branches, and eventually, all came into the new fence area.

I noticed there are patches of lice in the willow trees. I think wasps are milking the lice; there are many wasps between the willow trees on the ****, especially at the end of the ****.

Interesting! Microsoft Word censored the word ****, so why is that? It is funny they replace the word with precisely the number of stars as letters in the word. I mean, ******** is a word that starts with B and ends with T and is excrement from male cows. I know that is a curse word, but here I am talking about a word of four letters representing a long wall or embankment built to prevent flooding. Is there a way I can turn off Microsoft's censorship? In the settings, I could change the filter of sensitive phrases. I am blissfully unaware of US slang words and their meaning.

Words can have various meanings. If I talk about willow trees at the end of the dyke you know that I am talking about the formation in the landscape and nothing else. You might think it is only Microsoft Word that cannot make up the difference between a person called dyke and a formation in the landscape. Donald Rump does not know the difference between an asylum seeker and an institution for the care of people who have a mental illness. He is applying for the world's most powerful job and doesn't know that words can have several meanings. He thinks that people with mental illness are seeking refuge in the US.

I gave the sheep a fresh bucket of water as well. It is just a bucket of water, but it looks nice. I also washed the bucket so that the sheep get the very best.

The next task was to refresh the fly traps. We got two fly trap buckets. The system is straightforward. It is a transparent bucket with a yellow lid. The lid has two parts. The upper part can be unscrewed, such as openings are revealed in the bottom part of the lid. You combine water with a bag of LUXAN fly attraction powder and put it into the bucket. Close the upper lid and shake the mix; the trap is ready. I hung one bucket in a tree on the dyke. The other bucket I hung on the scaffold holding up the rain roof.

Those were the excellent parts of this system. The flies fly into the bucket through the narrow openings attracted by the mixture. The flies then drown in the mixture, and the bucket slowly fills with dead flies. At some point, the bucket cannot take any more flies. That is when the story starts to get a little less excellent. But why should I hide any gory details from you? Let us dive into this story.

At some point, living flies are crawling around on a thick crust of dead flies in the bucket. If you clean up the bucket at that point, it is disgusting but acceptable. Wait a couple more days, flies lay eggs, and maggots crawl around in the bucket. That part is revolting and disgusting. I congratulated myself for being assigned to this cleanup task.

Earlier experiences with the fly attraction powder mix taught me what not to do. It is sticky, and the odor is made to attract flies, which works. You don't want it on your hands, and having it splash into your face that's even worse. Then, for the rest of the day, the odor follows you, which is terrible. I put on silicone gloves when I'm working on these buckets.

The packaging of this eco-friendly product says that I can dispose of the mix by putting it in a bag in the regular garbage. Somehow, I'm not convinced about that. Previously, I dug holes, poured the stuff into the hole, and filled it again in a way that worked. The thing is, I don't want to dig holes. This time, I decided to follow the instructions. I took two plastic bags, one in another. I poured the buckets into the plastic bag and tried to shake out as many larvae as possible. Then, I sealed the bag with a knot. The larvae crawl around funnily, but they are disgusting.

End of story? I thought that if the bags were in the garbage bin and someone put something sharp in the bin, a little hole could appear in the bag. Stuff could come out. Perhaps I should put it in a paper bag as well. The first paper bag was too small. I had to find a more extensive paper bag. Everything you touch after contact with the substance will also be smelly. I put the paper bag in the garbage bin and the lid on the beam bin. Why was there a cloud of angry flies flying around the bin? I got a brilliant idea to put the paper bag in a paper box and seal it properly. So I did and decided I would not pay any attention to angry flies. This was it.

All right then, was I finished with my task? Not really, because the buckets had to be cleaned from maggots. I didn't want larvae in the grass, so I collected as much as possible. What should I do with the larvae slush? I decided to dig a hole, pour the maggots slash into the hole, fill it again, and then forget about this entire episode. So I did. The digging-a-hole method won the battle.

Then, it was lunchtime, and I tried to eat without overthinking about the recent task I fulfilled.

I was not especially active this afternoon. At 5 PM, I decided to start working on the boards of the tiny house. Someone is burning something that stinks. Several hours ago, I emptied the fly stuff, and now the flies are still flying around the garbage bin, which is horrible.

All right, I removed the boards that were leaning towards the house so that I could see what I should do and try to figure out how I should do it. I can hear that DS is in the house, but that is fine.

The question is, what could I bolt the board onto? Merida is also helping me trying to find mounting points. There is a screw next to the reflector, and there are sturdy bolts, and that would make 3 mounting points on the side. That is sufficient, actually.

I need some brackets to put on those mounting points. Either rigid brackets or galvanized mounting bands with predrilled holes. Where do I have the galvanized mounting band? So, I started searching for galvanized mounting bands with predrilled holes. I don't know if that is the official name for these bands? I remember the last time I used galvanized mounting bands in Sweden to fasten the ladder on the roof. Did I leave that roll of bands in Sweden, or did I bring that roll back to the Netherlands? Let us look inside the sea container mounting band with little holes. It is scorching in the container. I found the rest-pieces of the window sills. Can that be used?

I was looking for how to mount the board, and Merida caught a mouse. I think that's Excellent Task distribution. Merida should catch mice while I work on the boards. I closed the door to the house, though, as I didn't want to have mice in the house.

If I work with the window sill metal, I must bend it, drill on it, etc. I will need a proper workbench. So, with that realization, I had to clear the workbench from the clutter and move it out in front of the house. At some point, there will be a shed, and in that shed, there will be a workbench that can be used at all times; that will be great.

The workmate is heavy and bulky. Some time ago, I bought a vice at a second-hand shop. I need a way to mount the vice onto the workmate. The vice was €12.50, and the workbench was €29. Well, you can see I am the owner of luxurious equipment.

Beautifully. That works fine. Merida is having a great time with her rodent toy. I am having a great time with my second-hand vice on my second-hand workmate. Now, if I can find the piece of window sill I was carrying around a while ago before searching for a workmate, that would also be fantastic. Well, it is the theme of my life when I'm working on something I lose… ohh, here it is. It started to be frustrating briefly, but I found the missing sill part.

So it was an easy thing to bend the window sill to 90°. The more the mouse dies, the more I can see Merida play with it as if she wants to say: don't die so quickly. Let's have some more fun! She throws the mouse into the air and then catches it as it falls to the ground. She is poking at it. Are you already broke?

Drilling a hole in metal is difficult without punching a dent into the metal. The mouse is now properly dead, no doubt about it. I think Merida started chewing on the mouse. I hooked up my angle grinder to cut the metal from the leftover window sill. I need to wear protective glasses because otherwise, I will get warm shrapnel into my expensive glasses, which will not be good. I finished my bracket, and Merida finished her meal.

I managed to mount the bracket, and it looks beautiful. Now, I need to make two more for the first board. Luckily, I have an entire box of leftover window sill metal. Little bend that. The next bolt was not 22mm from the edge. It was much closer to the edge. Moving a hole is difficult, so I must make a new bracket. The next bracket is also mounted!

It is almost 7:00 PM in the evening, and I think it is time to eat. I will leave all the tools outside and see if I can find something to eat. With a bean salad and things from yesterday, we'll do fine. Merida looks at me like she's hungry; somehow, I think she's lying. You already had a little snack, so you're good? I gave her a little less than usual. We do not want her primordial pouch to grow so much that she's gonna drag it on the ground, that it will have no fur on it. That would be terrible.

After dinner, I took care of the house of friends. Watering plants, bringing in the post from the mailbox, etc. I was whistling Swedish folk tunes while doing that work. Today, I heard someone practicing the trumpet with an open window. We also have a neighbor kid practicing on drums, and his father is practicing on electric guitar with open windows. I told you I might bring my violin to practice. When I returned home, still whistling, it dawned on me that perhaps I should bring out my violin. I brought in all the tools I had lying and then did it. I took out the violin, and I practiced. And I did it with the door open. If the neighborhood will enjoy all the people practicing their musical instruments, then who am I not to join in doing the same. I even thought I should bring all my violin friends, and we would play music for an entire day in the garden just for fun.

There is a sad side: I had all my music on an SD card, which got corrupted, so I don't have the music I used to practice. Perhaps I should somehow rebuild that archive again from scratch. In September, we have a Swedish music festivity that I will attend. I'm not going to practice anything for that. I will go there and play it by ear; it is what it is, and it will be great.

So now I'm driving to the train station to pick up DW. She had a lovely day together with her friends. They went to a market and did other fun shopping.

Sunday 18 August

You will be surprised by the lack of blog text from today. We went to visit friends. There was not so much time for blogging; it was that simple. I will make a summary of the day anyhow.

The first task I wanted to do today was to harvest potatoes. Some potato plants had reached the top and started to crumble away. This is the twister potato sort that we bought on 4 May. On 3 August, I harvested the first Twister potato plant. This time, I harvested three plants. I brought a paper bag of potatoes together with three courgettes to the neighbors. They appreciated this.

DW went around with the brushcutter and cut grass in front of the house. The battery did not hold up for the whole patch, so some still need to be done.

After lunch, we met friends in a small town further south in the Netherlands.

We went biking in the area. It was lovely weather. At a farm, we had delicious ice cream. Such a pleasant experience! It could not blog while we were there. That does not matter; it was so lovely, and I got a vacation from my blogging, which was also okay.

It might be so that I am back here in October and do a DJ gig at the venue. I got requests for Afro-influenced house music, so I will investigate that.

Here ends this blog. It has been a very active blog week. I have never blogged this much before, but I loved doing it. I might not do it like this next week. Then, I could be back at my regular amount of texts. We will see; it will be a surprise even for me.

I wrote 7420 words this week. That is not bad!