Continued on the board project Sunday, 22-Sep-24 20:35:59 CEST

Cleared the area behind the sea container Sunday, 06-Oct-24 22:07:19 CEST

Sunday, 29-Sep-24 21:50:25 CEST

Moved the hay shed

This week, the hay shed was moved to a new location in preparation for building the large shed.

Monday 23 September

Good morning. It's a new week. It's 7:15 AM, and I am about to make breakfast. Outside, it is 16°C, and inside, it's 24°C. I did not finish blogging yesterday evening as I had hoped I would. There wasn't enough energy, and it had been hot outside, so I was drained.

On top of that, I woke up in the night. It was a little worm. After an hour, I could sleep again.

Today, DW and I work from home. We can concentrate well, but it didn't go so nicely with work. I was done or almost done and would do some cleanup in the code, but while debugging, I found an aspect that had been lost, so I started working on fixing that. And then things came tumbling down, which was a little bit annoying. I continue working 1 ½ hours longer. But it didn't help so much. So. In the evening, I worked on the blog. I was too tired to finish it yesterday. It became a rather dark blog post. That's how it is.

In the afternoon, Merida had an epileptic seizure while lying sleeping on the platform on top of my laptop. Already throughout the morning, she had been a little annoying. At 3:44 PM, the seizure started.

Depending on how we look at it, it is now 19 days between each seizure. If seizures per day are clustered, the average interval is less than 29 days.

She did not pee so much, just a little bit. While the seizure was going on, she was lying on the floor doing running movements, shaking. She did not bite any foot this time. In a way, it was not a very strong seizure. It lasted about three minutes.

It was eighty days since the last seizure; that is the longest time between seizures so far. Let us keep that in mind.

Tuesday 24 September

Good morning. Outside, it's 11°C, and inside it's 23°C. Right now, the sky is clear, but it will rain today. I have not figured out if I want to bike. I slept very well. I was dreaming about some augmented reality game. It is unclear if I was programming it or only playing it. It was not that sophisticated, but intriguing. I can recall that from the dream.

Merida did not come to us tonight. I discovered large holes in the slices when making the bread for lunch. DW and I use the proverb, "The baker is celebrating his birthday," for large holes in a loaf of bread. We did not check the origin of the proverb. It is not something people use in general in the Netherlands. Can it be something from another country?

It is 9:35 AM, and I'm biking to work. It is a bit chilly today. And that hurts my hands. So I stopped and put on more clothing. My new bike bags can hold very many items. So what is the problem with that? Well. It's hard to find things. Anyway, I'm biking again.

The neighbor's cat, Hunter, walked around in our garden this morning. He's much more slender than Merida. And another thing, he is not that afraid either. He's roaming the entire neighborhood. That's not what Merida is doing. She is very homebound. I think that has to do with the fact that she is afraid of everything. So Hunter came. He was curious about Merida. Merida was also a little curious about Hunter but decided to go inside instead.

What are you actually doing to kids when you give them electric bikes? Well, besides giving them obesity. I suppose that is one of those unanswered questions that came to mind when I passed by an E biker.

So this week is the big week in the United States, at the United Nations Assembly Week. You are somewhat naive if you think the United Nations can do anything for you. Like a duck that wants to walk across a nine-lane motorway. Well. Zelenski is there, and he's trying just that.

The traffic works because there are rules, and we are abiding by these rules. If everybody were going to start ignoring traffic rules, would the situation on the roads be instant chaos? Can you imagine?

I noticed that Microsoft Dictate works better when talking into the microphone. Some of the aggravation goes away, but it is sometimes insufficient.

Biking along the cow field. Arrived 9:10 AM at work.

6:10 PM. I am on my way home. I had a good day today. I solved issues and moved my large algorithm forward. I was not disturbed about ad hoc issues. There was not so much noise in the room. That's fantastic.

I had just passed the bus lane and was going to turn left when I changed my mind and went straight ahead. Now, when I have the mobile phone holder, I can display a map on the phone. That is convenient. The street was in a straight line to an industrial center. There, the bike lane evaporated into a lawn. I will need to find a better route at that spot.

The parking lot beside the survival park had a row of DAF33 cars.

 

The cars had different colors that looked nice. Can you imagine the drivers coming out from the café of the survival park in the same colors as their cars? Imagine each in a costume and everyone with a hat precisely the same color as the car; I can imagine that!

I think I biked at a good pace. I got a little too steamy. It was 6:57 PM when I came home.

Wednesday 25 September

Good morning. It is 7:22 AM. Outside, it is 14°C, and inside, it is 22°C. It has been raining in the night. But I slept well. It was somewhat strange and also lovely with Merida last night. She came to sleep next to me. And I think she came pretty early in the night. At some point, I got her paw right over my mouth. She did that a couple of months ago as well, and if you are not used to it, it is a little scary. She has rather sharp claws that she can pull out if she likes it. Last time, I freaked out a little, and that was not good for our mutual confidence. This time, I decided she could have her paw over my mouth. Let's see what happens. It was warm and soft. I'm wondering why she's doing it. It is a kind of a sign, I suppose. Or is it a confidence test? If I trust you, do you trust me? She took away the paw and came and gently licked my mouth instead. Getting a wet kiss from your cat in the middle of the night is an odd experience. So now I'm making breakfast. It's going to be a smoothie, and we have a lot of things to do today.

I worked before noon. DW had a day off. After work, I loaded the tiller machine into the small trailer. Then we drove to another nearby city, to a garden and farm machine repair shop.

It was located outside the city. They received the tiller machine. We discussed the repair. They noted my data, and then we went into the salesroom. There, we had a look at electric garden lawn mover tractors. We are contemplating getting a lawn mover tractor to cut the grass where the sheep have been. While we are at it, I want to be able to hook up a trailer to the tractor as well so that we can bring things around our farm more efficiently.

Then we went home and started moving our sheep to a new area. It was time to graze the area on the north side of the house.

After this, we went to the food corporation. I brought with me one black radish. There was no one at the food cooperative interested in black radish. On the way home from the food cooperative, we went to friends, and they accepted the black radish. Then I went to my neighbors, and they were also interested in trying the black radish.

It was a social afternoon, indeed. Pleased that the tiller machine is at the machine hospital. I hope the doctor can treat the tiller machine.

Thursday 26 September

Today we went to our offices. That usually means I leave DW at the train station and then go to my office. There was no need for an AC today, but the window was open, and it got rather chilly at some point. Luckily, someone else was complaining. I had forgotten one of my gloves, making me think I had to leave both at the office. Much better to keep them there, then they cannot be forgotten.

The work went pretty well today. I am in the rewrite phase of a minor part of the algorithm. When the rewrite is finished, I will need to debug that again, and then I can move forward. That would be great.

In the afternoon, we went home, and DW made dinner. She made runner beans in sajouer sauce with rice. After dinner, I paid the first invoice for the shed. The total sum is divided into several invoices at different milestones of the building project. The first invoice signals they can start the practical work for us. They will start building the foundation in November.

DW and I talked about how to deal with the trees and shrubs we want to move. There is another option, and that is to cut them down. That means we have to replace them with new trees and shrubs. The benefit is that we don't need to do any difficult things with the digger. But on the other hand. It's fun to have a digger for a couple of days. I don't know what I will think about that tonight.

Lately, I have been trying to listen to my own blog. I have been trying to listen to my blog in Chrome, but there is a bug. It starts reading the first link of the page. Not the page itself. It's really odd. So, I was experimenting with trying to hide that link.

Tonight, I changed my blog's website so that it is possible to remove links. Can you imagine what happened? It kept reading the page where the link had previously been. So annoying. I've been busy the whole evening with this, so I have not done the dishes on time.

DW went to bed, and I started doing the dishes. That was when I realized I could let Word for Android read out loud. That worked quite well, actually. That means I will remove my hack of this site at some point, and then we will keep it at this. If I want to have text read aloud, I can just read it from Word. I'm also thinking of talking to DS because he's always using this functionality. I'm wondering how he's doing it. When you have the text read out to you when you are working, you are listening to the text.

Friday 27 September

We went to the office today. I went to my office, and DW went to her office. She was holding a course at the office.

I had a good day today. Puzzle pieces fell into the correct place, and things progressed nicely. The storm Aica arrived today. The storm's tail brought in rain, and it rained a lot. The windows had to be open, but I had my gloves, t-shirt, two sweaters, regular socks, two thick socks on top, and a shawl today. I also had the leg warmers DW knitted for me. The wall behind me bulged from the air pressure. At lunchtime, the person with overheating issues left the building, and we closed the windows. I put on some music, and I could work very well. The only minor irritation was that the light at my desk is broken, so it turns off and on sporadically.

I was pleased with this week's achievement at work. It actually filled me with joy.

I picked up DW at the train station, and she said she was cold. She turned on the seat warmer for the ride home, but when we came home, DW was still cold. I started a fire in the wood stove. It was nice! Eventually, she got warmer.

In the evening, I listened to the Ukraine-the-latest. It sounds as if Biden has been listening to my critique about the "We will stand by Ukraine as long as it takes, but just barely" and is now replacing it with "We want Ukraine to win this war." That is a much better slogan. To cite Elvis Presley: A little less conversation and more action, please.

We submitted our offer to the food cooperative. We will sell black radish for €1.5 per piece, which is cheap. But that does not matter if one person buys it, then I am glad about it. This is new to us, and I wonder how it will feel on Wednesday. If anyone ordered black radish. We will see.

Saturday 28 September

I discovered I could listen to this week's blog with Chrome with the listen-to-this-page functionality this morning. It was something I had contemplated: Could it be so that it takes a couple of days for Google to index the page, and when that is done, the page is ready for listening. I got this confirmed because the blog headline had a spelling mistake. I fixed it, but the read-out-loud functionality did not pick up the fixed spelling. I must say that the read-out-loud functionality of Word has more emotions in the reading. Chrome is monotone.

This morning, DW cut my hair. Nice!

While making breakfast I listened to Ukraine-the-latest podcast from yesterday. They had a guest, Terry Virts, mentioned the help organization UkraineFocus.org. So, I decided to go to the site and donate 100 dollars. It was $114 because I also donated to the organization.

They will use the money to get ambulances to Ukraine. Those ambulances will save many lives.

We went to a friends for a visit. It was nice. They had made scones. We brought a zucchini, a handful of tomatoes, and soap. Their son was one year and a month old and could almost walk independently. He pointed to a book I had to take down from a shelf, crawled up on my lap, and had me read the book to him. I think I was accepted as a visitor. He liked my wristwatch a lot. He pointed at it and laughed.

When we came home from the visit, we had lunch. DW started to bake her chard quiche pie. I started dismantling the hay shed. It needs to be moved so that it is not in the way of our shed activities.

Before the building of the shed starts, the temporary hay shed needs to be moved. It felt so wrong to put the shed apart. It will never come back like it was before. It was tempting to move the shed instead of taking it apart and rebuilding it a couple of meters away.

I figured out that I had to remove the roof tiles anyway because they are heavy, so in any case, they need to come off.

Initially, I can put the shed on a scaffold platform; perhaps that platform could be on wheels. I lent out the wheels, so that plan was impossible. The people having the wheels were not at home. That made the plan double impossible.

Then I thought that perhaps I had other wheels? I found a box of wheels I bought at a second-hand shop a few years ago.

I jacked up the hay shed and secured it with trestles. Then, I could mount the wheels under the shed. Then, I did the same on the other side.

Then DW and I moved the shed. It was not quick, but it was not necessary to move it quickly. We placed the shed beside the outdoor unit of the heat pump.

Then, I leveled the shed on garden tiles. I left the new wheels hanging freely above the ground. Now, the building was stable. I put back the roof tiles again. They are heavy. The door mechanism worked as well. The door closed nicely.

I was so pleased with the result! That was a good start on the preparations for the shed-building projects.

Sunday 29 September

It is 8:15 AM on Sunday morning. Outside, it is 5°C, and inside, it is 21°C. It is sunny, and the sky is entirely free from clouds. I slept well tonight, and I had no cat besides me spinning, so I suppose that was good. I can see we still have a couple of zucchini. Strawberries. Runner beans are still flowering. I am starting to make the breakfast. It is going to be a smoothie. Two apples from Sweden, a peer from the grocery store, and a banana from the grocery store. I will add a couple of black currant berries to that.

After breakfast, we started preparing for a coffee event in the neighborhood. That was our first social event for the day. It was an absolutely blue sky. It was perfect for being a day in late September. People enjoyed drinking coffee and socializing.

When the coffee morning was over, we cleaned up and returned the trailer to its home. Then, we went to the PILs for our second social event. We celebrated FIL's 96th birthday.

We were not done with social events. After FIL's birthday, we went to a restaurant with SIL and BIL.

After three social events in a row, we went home. All had worked smoothly. That was a great day, but I was tired.

Here ends this week's blog. I am most happy that the hay shed has a new place. It is excellent that the tiller machine is being repaired. The social activities on Sunday worked very well. All in all, it was a great week.