Barn floor finished Sunday, 09-Mar-25 06:57:18 CET

The southeast field sowed with grass Sunday, 23-Mar-25 20:21:02 CET

Sunday, 16-Mar-25 21:18:02 CET

Started insulating the barn

This week we started insulating the barn and tilling the southeast field.

Monday 10 March

It was a sunny winter day today. It felt like an early spring. DW went to the office, and I worked from home. Before working in my home office, I noticed two birds sitting on the top branch of a willow with the windmill behind. I took the photo when the windmill was in the peace sign configuration.

I had a good, peaceful, productive day at work.

In the afternoon, after work, I went outside, determined to work more on the board project of the barn. It was too bad I did not take any photos of the progress. I mounted two boards. I finished the third board, but it got too dark to mount.

Tuesday 11 March

Today, DW worked from home, and I went to the office. I made good progress in the morning. Then, I started on a research project that led to conclusions a couple of minutes before I had to leave for the day. I will continue on that tomorrow. I am excited about this. It will be great. Today, I had a neighbor in the car with me. I let him listen to my new song: State of the Union. He is a sharp listener and had a few comments I had considered. He did not say he liked the song. That is the way it can be.

One thing was exceptional today. Donald Trump was not mentioned for a single time. I take that as a sign people were fed up with him. It had not been nice to talk about him, and it felt good for me as well that we left that subject unspoken.

There was no time to work on the barn when I came home. That is only possible if you work from home and stop right away when the work for the office has ended. I am back at blogging. That feels great. It was like the last two weeks, and I was not feeling good about my blogging. It did not flow well.

In the evening, it was a full moon! When you get a full moon close to and before the equinox, it pushes the entire easter cycle forward. As you know (me talking about it before), we first need an equinox on 21 March, and the first moon after that marks the week when easter happens. So it will be late this year. 20 April, to be precise.

Wednesday 12 March

Last night, I dreamed I had to catch a bus and had not finished packing my bags. It was a stressful dream. The last thing I was dreaming about was finding the charger for my phone. I woke up, realizing that the charger was next to me.

It was overcast this morning—3 degrees Celsius outside. I worked from home, and DW had a day off. She was going to a wool event.

I was busy with work, and I made an outstanding achievement today. Sorry, I cannot say what it was about, but I can say how I felt about it. I was childishly proud and happy about the result. That feeling stayed with me the rest of the day.

In the afternoon, I continued on the boards of the barn pillar. It looked fabulous!

When I finished the pillar, I went around the barn and fastened the sheet metal at corners and joints.

Neighbors' hens visited me while I worked on the barn. It was not the neighbors' hens on the other side of the street; these were the hens of people living on another street to the north.

They were not at all afraid of me. They strutted around and searched for seeds in the grass. I continued with fastening the sheet metal in the concrete. I even made a lot of noise with the drill hammer machine, but the hens did not bother.

I wondered how the hens would react to Merida, but most importantly, how Merida would react to the hens. She got excited about the hens. She tried to get near them, and they got upset and started cackling. I continued my work, and Merida tried to get near the hens.

In the evening, DW ordered 35 packages of insulation material for the barn.

Thursday 13 March

DW worked from home and I went to the office. I was the first person in the office. That is unusual. Because of this, I turned on my music. I played all my kinder songs one after another. It was a busy day at the office but people were happy. People work better when they have good music to listen to.

In the evening, we went to a dinner with friends. It was nice.

Friday 14 March

This morning, I filled up the hole I dug to connect the water pipes on the east side of the house. I had one remaining heap of soil on the north side of the house, but that was not enough. Then I took soil from the heap on the south side of the house. I took as much as possible below the heap so the ground there is flatter, laying the ground for when we sow grass around the heap of soil. Removing the heap before the next grazing season will not be feasible.

At noon, the truck arrived with the insulation material. The driver placed the pallets at the road near the barn entrance. We had lunch, and I brought the insulation packages into the barn after lunch. Now it is standing dry and ready to be used.

	The local gang of hens checked on my work.

 

In the afternoon I started putting insulation into the east wall of the barn. I used 3 bales when it was time to eat. DW wondered where I was.

After dinner, I tried to let Chat GPT change the image of the windmill so that an airplane left a circle of exhaust behind the windmill. That failed horribly. I also tried Gemini, but it also failed. Is it not fantastic to make a perfect circle on Pie Day? Interestingly, AI cannot finish a simple task as drawing an exhaust trail behind a windmill. That is good, I can still keep my job.

Saturday 15 March

I decided to make a circle for myself when I woke up this morning. Still in bed, drinking tea, I started on my idea. First I used the threshold effect on the image.

That gave this effect.

I removed the vignette effect on the left side. Then I duplicated the original image and inserted this black and white image as a layer mask. This results in all parts with a branch or a windmill not being visible. Then it is possible to draw on that, and the result will be that it looks like we are drawing behind the windmill and the tree.

Then I designed the flight path. I had a kink in the flight path but I kept it. This is for fun, you know, so I allow defects.

Then I traced the path and made it lighter. I gave it one pass of regular Gaussian blur and one with circular motion blur. Then I set the layer properties of the exhaust layer to dodge and intensity to 7%.

Now I just had to add an F-16 to the trail's end.

I just wanted the silhouette though.

Then I added the silhouette also to the layer mask. Used the same trick with the threshold.

Here is the result.

This is the creative work I am doing this week. I will not make any song.

We had breakfast when we consumed the tea, and it was time to start working. DW took over the insulation task in the barn and I started working in the garden. DW discovered that all the bales of insulation we bought had not been delivered. Only about half of them were delivered. She wrote an email about this to the company where we bought them.

I moved the heap of sand to the vegetable garden. We decided I will do my garden effort on the left side of the garden. I want to improve the soil in that part by adding sand. That will make the clay more workable. It is necessary to add much sand. I spread out little heaps of sand that I later will mix with the clay soil.

In the afternoon, I moved all the sand I wanted. There were two wheelbarrows left, and a neighbor got them. I used the shuffle blade to push the sand together to move most of it to the vegetable garden.

Then I changed tools on the tiller machine to have the tiller knives. While doing that, the hens checked out what I was doing. I got a little friend there.

I tilled the southeast part next to the driveway until the tiller machine stopped spontaneously. I have no clue why it did that. I was done for the day so that was okay. Later it started again.

I was too tired in the evening to do anything but doom scrolling.

 

Sunday 15 March

It was a cold, beautiful morning. I saw frost on the roof of the school. In the morning, we continued on the things we did yesterday. DW insulated the barn. She almost finished the bales. When she stopped for the day, she had mounted all the delivered bales of insulation. I hope we get the message that the company will deliver the rest sometime next week.

I tilled on the southeast field. The part next to the driveway is finished. I started on a new chunk but it is not entirely done. I had to stop because I had to go and buy groceries.

After lunch, we went to the PILs. Next week, they will talk to people from nursing homes to see if they can get an apartment there. We will see how that goes. We worked in MIL's garden to tidy up. The weather was nice. It was cold but sunny. If they are moving out, it feels unnecessary to tidy up the garden, but we don’t know just yet. Right now it is vital that everybody is happy so, go with the flow.

We came home at 6 PM. It was not an incredibly active week when it comes to blogging. I finished the foundation boards (except for the kitchen part). We worked on the barn insulation, and that is great! The tiller machine is out and doing a great job. I do hope it will continue to work though. This week I wrote a meager 1804 words. That is about half of my regular output. Where is this going? Welcome back next week to find out!