Category: General

It’s not that I dislike nights, exactly, for themselves. The actual experience of running the department at night is way better, in many regards, than running it during the day. No politics, or at least, far fewer politics. The actual shift itself is often pretty good.

The problem is, of course, the unutterable harm it does to me. The exhaustion, the attack on my immune system, and oddly it turns out that when I’m working nights our house becomes a tip.

I’d not made the connection before, because I’ve almost invariably done regular nights. Recently though I had a run of day shifts – and my agency work I’ll almost invariably only do days – but when I’m on days, Kathryn and I work as a team. We cook together, and clean together. The evening plan is to cook a meal together and often as one of us is prepping veg, the other is washing up. Switching over the dish washer. Cleaning the kitchen.

Of course, when I’m on nights suddenly there’s 3 or 4 days when we barely see each other. It completely screws with the system, and suddenly we find we’ve a sink of washing up to do. It’s frustrating and yet another one of those subtle ways that nights screw with your life.

shadesofmauve:

and I’m suddenly allergic to everything

Oh god, you too? I’m currently debating whether to try upping the dose of my antihistamine to see if that brings things to more of a level of sanity.

Today has been a flurry of activity. My frustration with the current state of affairs; namely waiting for other people to do things. Like, for example, waiting for my universities to send forms to the US. Waiting for the embassy to process our application. Things I have no control over and am entirely dependent on others…

…these things make me cranky.

Also, I’ve suddenly be struck by the realisation that if we’re to be moving in October / November, that’s *really f’kin close*. And the house is, you guessed it, not yet finished.

The List (which is now really ‘the house list’ as we have ‘The Great Escape (list)’ on our wall, thus meaning they should be distinguishable, I suppose) is actually looking a hell of a lot better. Although I keep finding small items to add to it just as I cross things off.

But, the additions to the list not withstanding, today has been a day of progress.

– The boxing I made for under the stairs has been filled. Most of that filler will end up coming back off when I sand it, but the hardboard needed a bit of fillerly-love because there were some ‘slightly iffy’ joints.

Irritatingly, I actually broke out the mitre saw and made some beautiful cuts which would have made really, really nice boxing. Had I then not just thrown it together with a few screws and no-more-nails.

But, hey, it looks okay and it is just a bit of boxing to sit over the fusebox. Feh.

…I have filled (and now painted) two more sections of the kitchen skirting (base)boards.

They need another two coats but it just leaves the two piddly bits next to the fireplace and the big long section with the sockets under the bench. That should be quite ‘entertaining’ because I also have my special bits of hardboard to go around those sockets to sand and attach too. It took me quite a while to come up with a good solution to the sockets because they weren’t quite sunk into the wall far enough. Hopefully my solution will look okay.

…I have removed the two rotting planters and made a new raised bed (with no soil in it, as yet)…

Pleasingly I managed to salvage quite a lot of wood from the grotty planter I threw together (last year?). Which means that the wood is not merely recycled, it’s re-recycled. Heh.

…I’ve planted a bunch of leeks that my mum gave us (and some swiss chard, too).

…I have cut and installed a blanking plate that allows all the cables that run to the TV / Hi-Fi / etc out of the wall. It was, until today, just the bare metal box sunk into the wall with the cables hanging out of it. It’s not something that people will probably even notice (thankfully, because I didn’t do that great a job of cutting the blanking plate and I wasn’t going to disconnect all the cables to try and feed them through a nicer outlet), but it’s better than it was and it now bothers me much less. It also doesn’t sort of scream at you from across the room, which it was doing (at least to me).

…I’ve also sanded and put two coats of paint on the old handrail that goes on the other side of the stairs. I probably should have removed it permanently, because it’s not that nicer rail. Something which has become more apparent to me now I’ve been cleaning it up (it’s got some massive knots missing).

But given the choice between, at this point, removing and filling the rawlplugs in the wall and then attempting to paint over it and putting the rail back up I’m going with the latter.

shadesofmauve:

Two men were shot by a police officer today in Olympia. Both Andre Thompson and Bryson Chaplin are alive, but Thompson is in critical condition. They were suspected of shoplifting (though the article states taht they threw the items back at the employees when confronted, which… actually means that even if it IS the same people and that IS what they did, they didn’t actually steal). The Olympia Police are NOT investigating themselves; Olympian article says “It will instead be investigated by the Thurston County Critical Response Team, a group made up of five local law enforcement agencies” which is… unfortunately vague. (googling the group name turns up ZILCH except for links back to the Olympian article).

I’m very glad that both men are still alive, and absolutely furious at the continued use of lethal force against black people suspected of misdemeanors.

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2015/05/21/3737619_two-suspected-shoplifters-shot.html?rh=1#storylink=cp

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Per the Olympian, updated one hour ago.