Finished the shed preparations Sunday, 03-Nov-24 21:14:29 CET

Almost finished the fence of the southwest field Sunday, 17-Nov-24 20:41:04 CET

Sunday, 10-Nov-24 21:11:04 CET

Finished construct the rigid fence around the garden

I finished constructing a fence around the garden this week using building fence parts.

Monday 4 November

Outside, it is 3°C, and inside it is 21°C. The time is 7:02 AM. Yesterday evening, it was such a lovely sunset. This morning, the dawn was also beautiful. I took a photo of the sun rising over the horizon on the east side of the building.

When the sun lightens the horizon, it shines on my hope for a rule-based world order. So, I hope that barbarianism will be a thing of the past. Even if that fails, I will keep the hope for it in my heart.

I was just done with work when DW called me. She told me that the trains were canceled. So I immediately went into the car, drove to Amsterdam's center, and picked her up. The traffic was decent. I turned on location sharing so that she could see where I was. That was convenient. It was the first time we used that.

In the evening, I took the earth auger to neighbors who wanted to borrow the drill for a few days.

Tuesday 5 November

Tuesday at 7:17 AM. It is 3°C outside, and it is 21°C inside. I gave Merida her ½ pill.

Now, it is 8:40 AM, and I am driving to work. It was not that warm, so that was the reason I decided to take the car today. DW is working from home today. I was thinking about the new shed. The building that we are building, and how nice it will be.

I had this creative idea of making a party tent with the help of the scaffold. Then, I am depicting myself sewing a tarp for that. It should be a considerable amount of tarp. I don't know if I will do it, but I fantasize about doing it. I see myself doing this with a shed by putting the sewing machine and sewing the tarp for that party tent. I cannot sew a tarp in the living room since it would fill it with a tarp. That's not going to work. So this is the kind of thing that the shed will make possible: creative stuff that is a little bigger. I want to learn how to weld as well. I can see myself making a sculpture from rests from the building fence parts. You cannot do that in the living room. The workshop that we have in the main house is for finer stuff. Yeah. I will have much fun.

I hope I don't need to listen to Trump supporters today at work. That would not give me a good feeling. If I get into a discussion with a Trump supporter, I do hope I have the proper things to reply. I would like to know what to say in response. When I talk to people, I often do not find the right words I would like to use at that moment. Another problem is that I am fluent in English on this subject but not in Dutch when discussing Donald Trump.

We will see. I don't know what I hate more, Trump supporters or my inability to confront Trump supporters with adequate things to say on time. It makes me angry at myself that I need several days to figure out things to say. Well, that is usually too late.

The road reconstruction is finished.

The time is 5:55 PM. I'm on my way home, and you can only see a dark blue sky in the distance. For the rest, it is entirely dark. It's now 9°C. That is okay, bicycling weather. I used to bike in the dark years back, but I am not ready for that yet.

There was no talk about Donald Trump today. That was great.

Today, I suggested that I play a list of tunes, which was accepted. So, I played music the entire day and was happy about it. That's the way you want it.

Europe is about six hours before the US. When the first polls open at 7 AM in the US, that is afternoon in central Europe. The polling stations are closing on the morning of 6 November in the European time zone. We went to bed at the usual time. We will see the results tomorrow morning.

Wednesday 6 November

It is 6:14 AM, seven °C outside, 21°C inside. I did not sleep well. Around 4:00 AM, I was up and had a little peek at the election, and it was clear there was no surge for Kamela as I had hoped. It was a little disappointing, but it was too early to call. After that, I could sleep for a while.

DW attended a conference today, so she had to be there early. I worked from home until lunch. I went to the grocery store at lunch to buy bits and bobs.

Without the drill, I could not have just gone out and continued with the fence project as I had worked on it last Sunday. That did not matter because I was running short of screws and angle grinder disks. So I went to the hardware shop to get those.

This way, the day was shopped up in small chunks. These are the things that I need to prepare for when working continuously on the fence, but working was not for today.

I measured one fence section and put out markers to see if I could place the parts in good places. It looked like it was going to work well.

This day was the day of doing small trips, and I had to go to the food corporation to pick up and order what DW had done last Saturday. When that was safely placed in the fridge, you would expect I was done driving for the day, but that was not the case.

DW had to be picked up at her conference. She could go there quickly, but going home would take one and a half to two hours. With a car, 21 minutes. I went there and picked her up. That was the last trip for today.

Thursday 7 November

Temperatures today are 8 and 21°C. Yesterday evening, I had pain in my nose because of smog. We already had terrible air quality on Tuesday afternoon at work. It was not the air system in the building; it was the air quality in the city. Interestingly, other people don't feel it. I am the Canary in the coal mine. I detect fascism and pollution before everybody else. Jokes aside, it is a real pain in my nose. Right now, it is okay this morning, so I am fine.

I've not blogged about what happened when I sent the drawing about the pipes to the shed builder. They noticed that I had the door to the toilet opening the other way. I explained it was to prevent you from getting stuck, and I had it like so from the start. They were willing to switch the door opening direction. That's so sweet of them. They introduced the error, but we did not notice it. I am not sure. Now, we get the door in the right way. That's good.

8:25 AM I'm on my way to work with the car. It is completely overcast and 8°C. The last time Trump won, it was a complete surprise. During his presidency, there was something new shocking every day. There was much lousy energy streaming from him. It got hold of me. This time, I don't want that to happen. I will zoom out a little bit from the news flow. I will make room for myself in this new reality. Last time, my creativity slumped. I suppose I was doom-scrolling a lot at the time. I don't want that this time. It is difficult to predict the future so I won't do that. But Trump will carry out Project 2025. The rule-based world will crumble. Alliances will break up. We will be on our own. There will also be good forces in this, but they will not be in front of the camera.

Most importantly, I will not give up my creativity this time. Not even if the worst things happen. Like a Trumper, I will snap my fingers and invent a new reality.

He not only talks like a 6th grader, he's thinking like a 6th grader. His economic plans are illiterate.

It is 6:21. PM, and I am on my way home, and it is entirely dark and 6°C. It is not that warm, either. The smog situation is not that bad, but I can feel it. There is some haze to be seen from from the street lights.

Yesterday, I made a playlist with Hello Songs, and today, I played the list to my colleagues. That was fun for me. Tomorrow it's Friday, and I will go to the dentist's.

Making a playlist theme based on a universally understood word is very lovely. It was funny to see people's reactions. Now I wonder what other universal word you can have as a theme for a playlist. I was considering "goodbye," but that's sad. I would like to have a positive word. I will think about that.

When I came home, we discovered that Merida had been peeing on the floor. Usually, that means she had a seizure. For the rest, she's never been peeing on the floor; she's only peeing when she's having an attack. This happened on the ground floor, and DW worked on the first floor.

Since 31 July, when she started to get the new medication, half a pill in the morning and three-quarter pills in the afternoon, she had two seizures. That is much better compared to before medication.

Friday 8 November

Good morning. It is. 6:56 AM outside 5 and inside 21°C.I slept well last night. Merida came to sleep next to me for a long time.

So yesterday evening, I listened to Ukraine-the-latest. There was a person from The US explaining what happened in the election. He said that Trump was better at talking to the blue-collar class. Kamela did not distance herself from Biden and spoke better to the educated middle class. It is painful to realize that I have been in a bubble. I would instead like to feel that I know what is coming. I mean, Trump is a con man, and that does not change. I would have felt better right now if I had figured out beforehand that the con man had tricked most of the US population. Well, I am a white man living in West Europe. That alone makes me a privileged person. What I only now need to do is to not get sucked into the negativity streaming out of Trump.

Now, it is a new day. I'm making a smoothie for breakfast. I'm taking a day off today, and DW works from home. That was my idea when I woke up. DW also takes a day off except for one meeting she couldn't reschedule. Had I known I had not jumped out of bed on my free day to make a smoothie early in the morning. Oh well, it makes the rest of the day more useful.

I will move the sheep grazing area, but first, I entered the calendar entries for the building project into the calendar. In my calendar, the new entries did not show up, and in DWs, they showed up with the correct color instantly; that is not fair.

I managed to finish the sheep fence. Perhaps it took a little too long. The visit to the dentist got awfully tight. I came three minutes late, but the patient before me was too early, so they let her go first. I had no issues with the teeth. That was nice. It was brilliant!

During the rest of Friday, I worked on fencing our new garden. I mounted two more fence parts. With that, I reached the corner.

DW asked what to cook for dinner, and I suggested the zucchini we still had in the garden. She grilled potato parts, zucchini, and bell peppers in the oven. It was delicious. With that, we had the last zucchini harvested from the garden!

Saturday 9 November

Good morning. At 8 AM, it was 6°C outside, and inside, it was 21°C, completely overcast. This morning, I weighed Merida, and she was 4.6 kilos. She's overweight, so I have to give her less food.

We had a slow morning. Eventually, I got out to continue my task of setting up the new fencing. I could reuse the port from the old fence. That saved so much time. The only issue was that I tried to drill straight through the bands holding electricity, data, and water pipes. The drill got so stuck it was hard to get it out. I could get it untangled after digging a hole next to the drill.

The garden's west side follows the berry bushes' edge in a curved line. The south edge follows the bushes in a straight line. Here, I also want the fence to be in a straight line. I think it will feel better like that. I also want the fence to be level.

I used a thin yellow thread to mark the straight line I wanted for the fence. From here, I had to figure out how to distribute the fence parts to reach the house's wall, leaving an exact right opening for the gate. The first pole was in the middle of the line. The fence parts lined up on the line as well. I placed the poles at the gate in front of the lines, and the gate opened outwards. The pole at the house could not be drilled at the wall because then I would hit the drainage pipe. I drilled the pole about 40 centimeters out, a little less than 16 inches. Here, I put the pole behind this line. It is just a fence, but still rather complex. It looked nice. It is remarkable how much thought went into getting it to look right. It was too dark at that moment to take any photos. I will do that tomorrow.

With that issue, I decided to put the fence a little more outward. The garden has no 90-degree corner here, but that is fine.

We have had more visits from Hunter lately. Merida is curious but is not overly happy all the time. Hunter is not afraid of anything, which is totally different from Merida. She is not sure what to think about Hunter. Looking from a distance behind glass is doable, but just barely.

Sunday 10 November

We woke up at 7 AM. Outside, it was misty, and 8 C. We had a cup of tea in bed to start the morning. DW loves it when I bring the tea. A quick search reveals that it is not healthy in India to drink tea in the morning, while in Britain, it is healthy to drink tea in the morning. Who would have thought? I am not going to dig into the reasons. I just scanned the search results quickly and found it funny. So, I did no research on this. She drinks green tea with jasmin imported from China in tin boxes with hologram quality stickers, and I drink Rooibos tea from paper bags, often with a flavor of orange.

We are often impressed with how fantastic software is, but we also forget how stupid software can be. I have been blogging with Microsoft Word since 2017 and insert photos in every blog. During this time, Microsoft Word has not figured out where I pick up my photos. It is just an example of things computers cannot do. "But you are a software developer yourself; you should understand that nothing will happen if no software developer changes the program." Exactly, that is my point. There are people out there right now thinking that software developers will be replaced by AI. At the same time, Microsoft Word cannot figure out where I pick up my photos. I make that in my own programs. Storing and reusing the location when the user opens the file location again.

After a slow morning, we got out to work in the garden. We had regular visits from Hunter; unlike Merida, he uses our garden. I suggested we use leftovers from the fence project, laid out across the bed he likes the most. It won't be easy to use the bed. We will see.

I finished the work from yesterday, mounting the fence parts with more screws. Then I started working on the gate on the west side of the garden near the water pump we don't use anymore. It has salt water, and we cannot use that. There was not much time because we were also visiting the PILs this afternoon. I managed to mount the hinges of the gate. I aim to measure the opening and make the gate fit the opening. But that is for another day because we went to the PILs.

MIL had a dentranthema x grandiflora chrysantemum, Garden Mum. It was stunningly beautiful.

I could see myself having one of those as well.

DW sewed changes into MIL's trousers, and I helped in the garden. These were just light tasks. We also had tea, and we talked a little. She had an issue with an arm. FIL was up and about as well. He did not like this overcast weather. MIL was enthusiastic about the birds eating peanuts in the garden. It was great to see them.

When we drove home, it got dark. The traffic was not bad.

Here ends this week's blog. I finished putting up the replacement fence of the vegetable garden. The original fence was not made of rigid nets so the sheep could put their feet on the net to get access to our berry bushes. Now, we use rigid metal fence parts with narrower gaps. The sheep will have a much harder time abusing our berry bushes. I also widened the garden to accommodate the lost garden along the driveway.

I wrote 3064 words this week. Not bad at all. Please come back next week for more stories about our projects.