Roadplates returned Sunday, 26-Jan-25 21:30:35 CET

Sunday, 02-Feb-25 21:10:04 CET

Electricity in the barn

This week, the electricity for the barn was connected. I made exceptionally few photos, and I don’t know why.

Monday 27 January

It is Monday already. We had a great weekend. Merida came to sleep next to me for several hours. She is one hot lady. I woke up this morning at 4 AM, recalling that the alarm clock was set to go off extra early. That was unnecessary today, so I changed it to the regular time. Merida had enough of me by then, so she got to sleep somewhere else where it was quieter. So much disturbance is annoying for her.

Both DW and I worked from home today. It was sunny and beautiful outside. At lunchtime, I brought DW to the train station; she had a meeting to attend.

On the way home, I listened to music in the car. The song Blue Monday by New Order came up in the playlist. I heard the song and concluded that Eurodisco is a genre I need to do something with. Somehow, I thought about Brexit while I heard the song. I could make a song about Brexit. Eurodisco with a British accent about Brexit. I love the idea. There is much drama to build on there.

I was working on a new project for work that went well, except I did not understand everything. I have to figure out the rest tomorrow.

Today, I forgot to call the vacuum robot company. I had thought the message I sent them on their website was sufficient, but that was not so. Oh well, another day.

The scaffolding company came back to me. They can deliver on the correct date. That will be great.

Tuesday 28 January

Today, DW worked from home, and I went to the office. I gave a neighbor a ride to the train station. It was not sunny today; we were back in the regular grey, overcast weather.

I was not incredibly productive today. I had an issue with the computer that I caused myself. My bad. It took some time to figure out.

On the way home, I played new songs for the neighbor, and I cannot say it was a super enthusiastic response. Oh well.

I paid for the Swedish scaffold in the evening. Let us hope all will work out fine now with that project.

Wednesday 29 January

Today, I worked from home. DW was supposed to have a day off but also had meetings. In the afternoon, she went to the hairdresser.

The sheet metal arrived by truck today. I will not have time to mount it before Monday next week. Besides, I have no clear idea how I will mount the metal.

After lunch, I continued digging the trench for the rainwater pipes. I did not finish that project before Friday. At least Mr Radi can look at the trench and advise on how it is done. I took out the laser to measure the level.

In the evening, I was tired. I managed to blog a few words and release the new song. It is called Donkeys bray. Start to realize that some people do not like riddles. Like, what is this song about? I could start the song by saying that it is about Brexit, and I depict the UK as a Nanny lying so much and so loudly that it sounds like a donkey screaming awfully. I wanted it to be like a riddle. The line on Britannia should give away what I am meaning. I tried many different song styles, but in the end, I concluded that a song like this has to be Euro Disco, whether you like it or not. It is just the most logical song style for this subject matter.

#Chorus
Oh, she left us in the cold, in the night,
She took her bags and said she’d be all right.
We begged her to stay, but her heart turned gray,
When she left, her lies rang like donkey's bray.

#Verse
Once a pillar, a guiding hand,
She stood with us across the land.
Her voice was strong, her wisdom vivid,
She gave up her perks; it made us livid.

#Pre-Chorus
But whispers grew, a seed of doubt,
She spoke of border control. Shut us out.
Promises made, but truth astray,
We watched her slowly drift away.

#Chorus
Oh, she left us in the cold, in the night,
She took her bags and said she’d be all right.
We begged her to stay, but her heart turned gray,
When she left, her lies rang like donkey's bray.

#Verse
They said she’d be free, a shining star,
Better borders, she would go far.
Red tape disaster, the walls closed in,
The dream she chased was paper-thin.

#Bridge
She opted for gold but fell in the dust,
Built on a lie, she betrayed our trust.
The 350 million was just a game,
The truth was lost, but she felt no shame.

#Chorus
Oh, she left us in the cold, in the night,
She took her bags and said she’d be all right.
We begged her to stay, but her heart turned gray,
When she left, her lies rang like donkey's bray.

#Verse
Now we stand at a fractured line,
Her absence is felt in every sign.
But maybe someday, she’ll see the cost,
Of what she left, of what we all lost. (so tossed)

#Pre-Chorus
Nanny Britannia left the union.
Braying like a donkey limping on a bunion.
Yet, we miss the time before the break.
Can we forgive and get rid of this ache?
We still think she made a mistake.

#Chorus
Oh, she left us in the cold, in the night,
She took her bags and said she’d be all right.
We begged her to stay, but her heart turned gray,
When she left, her lies rang like donkey's bray.
Oooh oooh

#Outro
Oh, she left us in the cold, in the night,
She took her bags and said she’d be all right.
We begged her to stay, but her heart turned gray,
When she left, her lies rang like donkey's bray.

I have noticed that for some people, listening to a song for three or four minutes is hard. Should I stop making those long songs? I suggest making my song 20 seconds long with a complete story arch that ends with a cliffhanger, and if you want to hear the cliffhanger, you have to click on the next song. No, I do not like that format idea.

Thursday 30 January

Today it was sunny. I liked that. Both DW and I went to the office. Not the same office. DW continued to the city by train, and I went to my office. I brought with me a laptop to do my work. Usually, I leave it at home, but I am working on a project where I need my laptop. It took some figuring to work as I wanted, but it was okay. I was productive and managed to produce a result. It is not the final result, which is often the case. Most of the time, I work on improving things gradually over time.

Today, the municipality came to cut the reed of our filter. It got disposed of in our compost. It is a nice idea, but we don’t want the reed seeds in the compost so I will remove them tomorrow.

When it was time to pick up DW, I sat waiting at the parking outside the train station; I discovered a nice feature about the song Raining again and again. It had a sick bass. Goosebump sick bass. I need to play it with my subwoofer one day. It is going to be interesting.

Friday 31 January

Today, DW worked from home, and I had a day off. Our electrician, The Superman Mr. Radi, came to us to work on the electricity and water supply for the barn.

It was chilly and sunny today. In the barn, it was not that bad. We talked through the piping for the rainwater. I concluded that I was on the right path but had to dig more. Mr Radi would order the parts for this. It is 45 meters of piping—a couple of 90-degree elbows and Y-connections. These will be delivered directly to us.

We started dragging cables through the case pipes we embedded into the floor. He had cable for most of the case pipes. The three-phase cable for my workshop outlet was forgotten, and a couple of other bits and pieces had to be bought. I had marked all the case pipes with letters. That was nice. It was hard work to drag the cables. Mr Radi went to buy the missing cables, and DW and I had lunch.

After lunch, he installed three temporary 240 outlets in the barn workshop. We can then have electricity installed there and do not need to run a cable to the barn running over the driveway. The proper cable is in a casing pipe below the driveway, which is much better.

Next up, Mr Radi installed the water. The water pipe of the tiny house runs across a trench I dug with the digger last year. Mr Radi cut the pipe and connected the pipe running to the stable and the pipe to the barn. He used two T-connectors. With this, I could start to fill in the trench, but I did not do that.

Next, we connected the other end of the electric cable to our switchboard in the house. We led the data cable and the two electric cables up through a vacant green pipe in the utility cupboard. The green pipe is designated for gas lines, but we will never have that so we could use it for our three new cables. That worked fine. Mr Radi temporarily connected the barn to our group for the tiny house. Later, he will get separate breakers for the barn and the stable.

We talked through the plan from here on. On Monday next week, the building company will come and install the walls for the restroom. They will also set up the remaining planks on the walls, and they will set up the last downpipe. They will also replace the hinges of the doors. I am curious how that will work.

When the restroom is in place, we can prepare for the next session with Mr Radi. He suggested we have the ceiling beams in place for the ceiling plates. He also suggested we isolate the walls. It is a bit like the chicken and the egg; what comes first? Putting the plates along the wall may be more complicated if we put up the ceiling beams. I have to think about this and how we would like it. There will be upcoming holidays as well. We are going to Sweden and getting our scaffolding. That will be exciting.

Mr Radi went home in a timely fashion. I decided to get rid of the reed. I filled up the small trailer and went to the upcycling center. They will put that into compost, I am sure. We do not want it in our compost unless we want to have reeds all over the property, and that is not a good idea.

While out and about, I got a thick hose for the water pump. When digging the trench for the water pipes, it is already sloping in one way and will sometimes be wet down there. After all pipes are connected, I will fill them again, but until then, I would like to be able to pump away the water. For that, I need a hose for the water pump.

We bought the pump on 15 July 2023, and it has been idle until now. We could use it more often if I had a hose for it. The hardware store near the upcycling center did not have the correct dimensions of the hoses. I went to a more specialist hardware store, and they had the proper hose. I bought 10 meters of this. When driving home, I played with the idea of what I could use the new pump/hose combination for. Suppose we had a reservoir in the stable next to the pond. Then, one could pump water into it. If that worked, it would be possible to have a hose running from that reservoir to the garden. Watering the garden with the water we collect in the pond would be possible. Interesting thoughts.

It was an active day. I was not especially active in the evening. Right before bed, I recalled that I still had to close the sea container door. I went out to do that. Then I realized that it was darn cold. It was minus one degree Celsius. That is when water freezes to ice, and when doing so, it expands. We had water pipes lying in the open at three places. In the middle of the night, I got out again and put the water pipe sticking out of the ground at the stable under a layer of soil. The trench near the house connected to the stable, and the barn was filled with yummy hay mixed with sheep urine and manure. It may keep warm while decomposing. The hole near the tiny house I recently dug for the water pipes also got hay. This is sufficient to keep us from broken water pipes, for now. Perhaps. I don’t know what it is with my spellchecking software that it cannot stand me being vague and wondering if we will have frozen pipes in the morning. No, it wants to change the sentence straight on; this is a done deal, acceptable and fixed. Nothing to worry about. Are you an anxious person, Jens? You know what, this IS SUFFICIENT, so go to bed and sleep now.

Saturday 1 February

Today it was sunny weather again. I woke up, and the pipes were still not frozen. That is amazing. You would think I would stand up, rush out of bed, and fill those holes. No, I sat blogging in bed for a long time. We had a slow morning. Merida got her food well on time; otherwise, she would start a war or something. The sheep had to be patient, however. In due time, the sheep got their morning snacks.

I can imagine how suddenly I woke up with Hannah standing beside my bed in the morning, really hungry, sniffing me in my face while letting out little round black balls behind her—Plop, plop. I say good morning to her, and she starts wagging her tail so that pee splashes beside her. This will never happen; it is just my fantasy going too far. How would she get over the fence, in the house, up the stairs to the bed? No, it would not happen. She is not a goat. A goat would do it.

We went to the city to a shop for wool crafts utilities. DW bought herself a yarn rack to set up yarn to prepare it for a loom. It is called a warping board. In Dutch, it is called the equivalent of a shaving frame. Haha, I'm just joking. Google Translate is particularly bad at translating these specialistic terms for handcrafts. In Swedish, it is called varpram or varpställning. There you have it. She also got two extra spools for the spinning wheel. This was all interesting and new to me. Had this been a shop for electronics, I would have been super enthusiastic, but it was DWs center of interest, and she liked it a lot.

You would think that now I finally got out and filled those holes to avoid having pipes frozen, but I did not do that. I added more hay, but I did not fill the holes. I did not feel like I had the energy for it.

I cleaned the workshop in the house. That was a long overdue task. That was feeling great.

Sunday 2 February

This morning, it was minus 4 degrees Celsius. I have not taken many photos this week. To compensate, I photographed the barn while it was still frosty minus 4 degrees. I have felt tired since digging the rainwater pipes trench on Wednesday afternoon. I feel so tired that I have not been making songs or taking photos. It could also be that I have some cold lurking. I don’t know.

DW and I went out to our dyke and continued pruning our willows. DW has worked on this while I worked on the fence project. The fence project is right now on hold. We have some willows that have developed three stems, and we would like to keep one of them. Finally, we want to cut the willows so they create knots. We treated two willows. We have the cut-off branches stacked up in our branch fence.

When all the little willow pieces were collected and brought to the branch fence, we had lunch. In the afternoon, I continued to clean up in the workshop. That was great, removing clutter and getting tools back to their place.

DW put her new shaving frame or warping frame together.

Here ends this week's blog. This is the 301st consecutive week of blogging, and I wrote 2952 words this week. I took a surprisingly few photos this week, although we even had beautiful sunsets. It does not feel like I have been productive. I made a song about Brexit, dug a trench, and connected the barn to electricity. Everything is relative. Welcome back next week!