So...
Staggered off to bed at just before 7 (am that is. Worked on
2AC last night. Sort of...), only to be woken by Ken at about 9.30 saying if I was sufficiently composted, could I come and look at the little shelf for the upstairs landing?
To explain... regular readers might remember we had a lovely shelving unit for the bedroom made by 'our' carpenter last year - my main orchid display is sitting on it - and at the time we asked about having a new main gate made for the front garden. (He said yes, he could do it, and started work, but was then struck down by illness, so had to put all work on hold.) He'd also brought along a lovely little corner shelf that had been made for someone who then decided they didn't want it, so we said we'd have it. Only thing is, the corner it was originally made for wasn't 90°, and neither is the corner we want it to sit in here (nothing in this house is exactly straight or exactly level. Makes hanging wallpaper a nightmare. Which is why I don't. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)
ANYway. Dragged myself out of bed and pointed blearily to where I want it to go, then decided I may as well get up. The carpenter had brought along the gate - and very smart it is too, so much better than the tatty, ugly, broken, wire-mesh thing we inherited with the house - which needs priming, underpainting and two coats of oil-based exterior paint before he can come back and hang it. (yes, we could prime and stain it instead but then it'll need repainting every year rather than every ten years, and quite honestly the less hard work we have to do around the house the happier we - and our hands - will be). At the moment debating between terracotta - to match the house bricks - or a neutral mushroom to blend in with the pennant stone of the wall. Pretty sure the mushroom will win...
It was another gorgeous day, brilliant sun, no wind, temperature out of the sun still only just above freezing - too nice to stay indoors. So Kai and I leapt onto a bus to Keynsham, had a wander around the second hand shops then went to the park, where Kai climbed and swang for a bit before we did the river walk (sounds grand but it's not long).
This entailed pausing at the downstream bridge until a train had gone past (luckily not too long), then walking upstream as far as we could go before doubling back to catch the bus home.
It's a really pleasant walk, and takes us under this road bridge, which has a cute acoustic effect: if you stand under the first arch close to the stream itself, it sounds as though the water is running
above you. Coupled with the sparkles on the underside of the bridge, from sun reflecting off the water, it can be quite disorientating. Rather nice though.
There were snowdrops in the little wooded bit at the far end of the walk, and yellow and purple crocuses appearing around the trees. Beautiful.
We bumped into Ruth and Jun at the busstop, and will try to arrange a meet before the sprogs go back to school.
It was a lovely day, but I was dropping by the time we got home - went straight up for a sleep. So I'm only now about to start...
Ken's still ploughing on with the Dartmouth book. He ended up having so much material he had to request an extra text allowance, but even with the additional wordage (heh, can't remember if it was 10K or 15K) he's going to be hard pressed to get everything in. The manuscript is due with the publisher at the end of March and I still haven't proof-read it yet. So that's the next deadline.
Going to make a start on beta-ing Lutra's
SFSG on Monday. In the meantime, still pushing to finish
Band 3, but it's not proving easy...
Oh yes... Lutra's mentioned the online comic
Two Lumps (that link goes back to the first comic) on her blog. It's hysterical - Carol, you and Adrian will love it! I was in stitches. (And I consider myself vindicated. See? Cats
are planning world domination!)
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 11:29 pm
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