Blog

We’ve been making slow but steady progress on the many, many projects ongoing here at chez us. Having let the oiled pieces off-gas in the garage for about a week I took the opportunity to put them up this week – so we now have a step into our bathroom…

Which is very, very pleasing.

There is a rawness to the edges you cut into a building. It’s something that most people rarely see, because most people live and occupy finished spaces. But when you build it yourself you feel them. They rub against your daily existence reminding you of the fragility of things that we rely on. Of how much work it takes to build and make whole any given thing.

Our house has been on this edge since we owned it and in many places, where we’ve slowly covered the torn holes with trim, it’s easy to forget they exist. But in our bathroom, which curiously feels incredibly luxurious now, the ripped and coarse edges are still there. At last we are getting the trim in, but you still now the space isn’t finished yet. Despite the room itself being more or less complete, you have to pass through this short void, this space where you feel the distance between the plan and the reality. And now, we’re in that limnal moment when both the finished and the unfinished edges coexist.

It’s amazing how quickly you forget, though. All the places where the trim is up? I forget that underneath lies the coarse cut edges of drywall, nailheads just hammered flat to the surface, and the fragile, tituratable edge of the limestone. Perceptions are often shaped by what’s on the surface, and it’s so easy to forget what lies beneath.

---

I now need to cut some more pieces, shape them to fit, oil them and [repeat]. The biggest single job on the trim front (ignoring the skirting) is the bathroom, which I’ve kinda mentally put as my “up next”, although I should take the opportunity of having the ladder in the house tomorrow to grab measurements of the bookshelves above the doorways. Things that I can’t easily measure when Kathryn isn’t here.

We’ve also made some progress on Kathryn’s studioshed – Kathryn’s got the floor now fully grouted, so there’s just cleaning, sealing it, a bit of spray-foam under the door, popping in a few outlets and…trim. Always and forever, trim.

And in the garage I’ve made progress with the wiring that will – eventually – link to the studioshed. Thankfully, yesterday was less of a mare of a job than the first day (which was utterly miserable), and we’re now nearing the denouement, with cable now running from the south wall (still needs some conduit and an outlet box) to the east wall (needs the outlet boxes screwing to the wall) to the north wall (about 50% of conduit is done, about 25% of cable is done). I’ve also worked out what I need to do to the ceiling lights so they’ll work – which is good – because I didn’t really want to have to make up a bunch of new cable, and I don’t think I need to.

And I glued in the final filler pieces to the crates that will be our replacement media-stand. They’re dry now, so it’s time to break out the chalk paint (never used this before, but considering the shoddiness of the underlying material, chalk paint seemed like a good idea – we bought some paintbrushes today for that job, and some masking tape), and we need to lasercut the tiles to go onto the visible sides and the top surface. We miiiiight do some of that tomorrow.

And today, which wasn’t really a project day because it’s a holiday weekend here in the US*, we spent much of the day pottering in the garden. We finally cut back our raspberries – I have concluded that I have no idea when you’re meant to cut back raspberries. The advice online is either “immediately they’ve fruited” “spring” “late winter” “when there’s an A in the day and the moon is in conjunction with Venus” or “when I say so”. There’s also a whole thing about whether the canes are this year’s growth or last year’s growth…

…so we, uh cut them. I think we did it right – although I’ve just (literally as I was typing) realised that we didn’t do one the raspberry bush on the other side of the garden. Which we’ll need to do, too. Bother.

We also dug up a bunch of bramble that’s been bothering me since we got here (yay!). That’s been slow progress over the years that we’ve been here, and now – at last – that frees up another bed. Albeit a bed with craptastic soil. Although since the chickens have routled about it in it’s definately better. We also split the artichoke, which is a job that’s been overdue for years, and planted the honeyberries my sister gave us for Christmas.

We also stopped by the Urban Farm and Garden to get some fresh seed planting whatsits (because at least one of our other ones leaks), and some coir pots. They also have peat-free (albeit potting, not seedling) soil… And this year – for once – possibly for the first time ever, we put a bunch of our seeds in at the right time. Now we just need (a) them to sprout (considering many of the seeds are ancient) (b) us to keep them alive, and (c) us to get them into the garden and protect them from the chickens.

We actually have a whole bunch more seeds to plant that go in the greenhouse, and – some to direct sow (assuming that it’s not hacking down with rain in the morning). All in all, things are moving in a direction towards completion.

* We were actually thinking of “getting away” for the weekend but kept failing to organize it and now it’s here.

So I finally got myself together enough to tackle stripping down the Acorn A4 laptop. I’d been somewhat nervous about it because of all the admonishments on the forum that it’s a nightmare to get apart, and that it’s fragile. Now the latter part is true – it’s 30 years old this year – and the plastic isn’t…great.

By the way, this isn’t going to be detailed instructions – because they’re here: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~theom/riscos/a4/dismantle.html. Y’all don’t need me to reiterate them (although perhaps twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows might be necessary ;) ).

That said, step one – remove the econet expansion cover didn’t go very well. Folks on the forum said it’s super stiff y’just have to do it – so I applied more force and the econet expansion cover kinda disintegrated as it came out. Not completely, I can glue it and it’ll look okay externally. I am unsure if it was that way before I started – I mean, I clearly broke one of the tabs – but to be fair it looked like it was corroded in. There’s also some breakage around the vent, but again, I think careful gluing from the back will salvage it.

…because at some point this has had a significant battery acid leak. There was battery acid trapped under the edge of the LCD, there were crystals of NiCd corrosion on the vents…

Interestingly, though, despite some very ropey bits of the board – at least two of which are going to require me to reference the circuit diagram and work out what resistors (assuming they were resistors) go in the place where there’s now a just corroded pads with some solder on there and spaces… the acid damage isn’t as bad as I feared. It’s not as good as I could have hoped (had I not seen the crystals through the vent at the left edge of the case). But it does look – salvagable? I hope. But it’s also clearly been apart before. These resistors are apparently not OEM (which explains them, because I thought they were odd):

But also the IDE connector is missing. I’m going to replace the IDE drive with an SD through an IDE adapter. At least, I hope I am. That’s the plan. But it will, iirc, still need the cable – which is kinda annoying. I’m hoping I have the right size of connector sitting around… because otherwise it’ll be something else I need to order.

One thing I don’t need to order – and where I was (fortunately) proven right, is the screen. I ordered that on spec when I paid for the laptop, because I suspected the dead bit of the screen (right where scroll bars will land up) was, in fact, from a screen problem. And I was right, it’s a nasty, unfixable problem:

Yeah, that crack in the corner explains the strip of dead pixels. It must have happened on reassembly – yet more evidence this thing has been apart. What’s so weird is that it must have been apart – and then whoever did it put this board in which isn’t in quite as bad-er shape, despite the case being obviously contaminated with NiCd juice. So having got it all apart I spent today basically ignoring the advice not to wash it – and went ahead and washed it. At the moment, there’s a bunch of bits from one of the Acorn NOS suppliers – and it’s sorely tempting to just get that and put it all in a brand new case. But I also like the fact this is clearly a pretty early one (although, tbh, it may just be they bought all the cases right at the beginning).

I also got an ESD safe brush and threw some alcohol at the board…

Before:

After:

So I need to work out what the missing components are, and I need to also work out what the variable resistor that controls the contrast is meant to be: Then I’ll have to replace those SMD resistors, which will no doubt be super fun on a board that’s corroded like this… and *then* I can use it to write on.

More pics as usual, here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/49965961@N00/albums/72177720306075058

So, I think mainly I decided for the sake of – lots of things really – that we should drywall the garage – and just run the cable for the power in there in conduit. Mostly this was about timing – we needed somewhere we could make somewhat warmer and drier for some project or other. I think it was an earlier iteration of working on the trim.

Of course – this means that at this point, when we want some electrics in there, it all has to be run in conduit – which in some ways is easier. I don’t have to drill a bunch of holes in studs, for example, which is a pain.

But of course, it’s not *really* easier, because the garage is now full. Completely, actually distressingly and frustratingly full. There’s simply no where to put anything – and that means trying to work around stuff. Including Rebecca.

And of course there’s the fun of trying to thread difficult to thread mains cable through conduit – which would be okay in a nice empty room (like it was), but is not easy in a garage chock full of things. To say I found it aggravating would be an understatement. And I’m quite annoyed with past me for the decision to leave this until now. I’ll probably end up stealing some lube to get the cables to pass through a bit easier – but even still, because of the routing, it’s going to be a pain in the arse.

However, it needs doing so basically, suck it up buttercup is all I can tell myself.

Annoyingly, in the process of doing it today I found that I think our ‘nicer’ (aka more powerful) Rigid drill is dying (it needs a thwack to turn it on, and didn’t want to run vertically). I should take it apart and look and see what’s up – but I find that hard to find enthusiasm for because I know we can’t get batteries for it anymore. It has been such a useful “set” (I bought it used – right at the start of this project) – with the circular saw, the demo saw, and the drill. And I managed to find some NOS batteries to replace the dead ones it came with. But I wonder if I should accept that its dying and replace them.

But with what? I guess we could get some of the better quality Ryobi kit, but the rigid drill actually *feels* like a good quality item in a way that none of the Ryobi kit that we’ve had ever has. It’s not my fave, though. That’s definitely still the old Makita, which is smaller and lighter, but has also lasted many years.

Of course, Laura Kampf would say we should use Festool, and they do have some really nice kit that I’ve been tempted by. But then I look at the prices…

…feh.

Anyhow, it was an experience filled with minor irritations*, including the fact that I’m really not quite sure what the hell I was planning when we went and bought the bits. I know there were some spare bits, but there are also some really poorly thought out decisions – like it would just have been a lot easier to run the whole damn lot in 3/4″ conduit – but for the sake of cheapness I chose to do a bunch of it in half-inch conduit, which is going to make feeding the pair of wires that I need to feed vastly more difficult. Although I have a vague recollection that they didn’t have the outlet boxes I wanted in 3/4″.

All in all, past me needs a slap though.

In other news, I continue to rip CDs. Not exactly apace, but these are more popular/common disks – mainly stuff I bought the first time around at Uni, and that goes quicker because they are much more commonly being identified with a complete track listing. Often with the cover too, although quite often it’s a tiny image which I need to replace with a better quality one.

Increasingly, I’m thinking my decision to separate out the ‘digital downloads’ of stuff I have on vinyl, or which I’ve bought digitally, was an error. So I may merge the two which will be… a thing that I do. It shouldn’t be too much hassle – I think? I’m letting myself mull that a bit before I do it though because it’d be a pain to undo.

I’m also now starting to try and work out what the hell I’m going to do with the old stuff on the media server that I only have in digital form, and maybe sometimes not the best quality. But that may be the only version that’s available. Stuff that’s maybe tagged poorly… or not at all! I’m also vaguely wondering about how I’m going to tackle the vinyl.

The project scope has increased a bit because now I have some of the vinyl in digital form, it’s tempting to have it all. But that’s a much bigger project than I originally planned.

Anyhow, I’m going to try and let today go, find it in myself to forgive past me for decisions that made sense at the time, and try to relax for the evening.

* For example, for some reason, my phone decided that it wouldn’t play music off the media server while I was in the garage. Normally it works fine – and afterwards, when I came in the house and went to find out why, it was working. It was seemingly just trying to annoy me (I know it wasn’t, but it feels that way). A worse example is that I managed to chip the paint on the passenger door on Rebecca, which is very upsetting. I slipped carrying the hoover, which I suspected I was going to do, and…yeah. Managed to hit the door. I suspect I also hit the pantry door, and I’m hoping that’s okay.

So it being my long-work week last week I entered Sunday needing…something. My shifts had been somewhere between horrendous and atrocious, (every. single. day.) and so I felt a real pressing need to achieve something fulfulling. Kathryn and I spent a big chunk of the day planing down the boards that will become our kitchen shelves, which was something we’ve needed for a while. It was a fairly large job – in that the boards were very variable thicknesses being mostly rough sawn lumber. One of the pieces was a Bob 2×8, which it seems ridiculous to have shaved down to an actual ~5/8″ thick, but it was cheaper than getting a smaller piece of wood. Also, to be fair, I bought that when we were planning to use it for thicker shelves…

We, unfortunately, realised that we definitely don’t have enough to do the dining room shelf, which is quite sad. But that wood is all planed and ready, so if I get a nice day on my day off next week, I might have a look at that problem. I also ordered – and last week received the special drill adaptor I need to allow me to drill at 90 degrees to the board… which should make doing the oak dowels that I’m going to use to run through the joins nice and easy to drill accurately.

I also oiled the trim I’d cut the previous week, which meant that yesterday I could put it up. Weeeellll, I did put it up, but maybe – because of the cold – it needed to offgas some more in the garage. Or outside on a sunny day when it was warm.

Because while it says low VOC on the tin, the stuff absolutely honks when you get it in the house. And so last night Kathryn ended up sleeping on the sofa to be as far as possible from the smell.

But the en-suite and furnace room now sport the interior door-frame trim, which meant I could do the outer pretty-cover-the-gap-to-the-wall trim today (yeah, yeah, these probably have actual names). I was going to say “these are the last few doors”. In fact, I typed that. Then I realised it’s a total lie, because really I’d done the bedroom doors and the hallway cupboard, and half-done the main bathroom and laundry. But there’s still some bits that I need to tackle in the laundry, the main bathroom, and then there’s the back doors too… So yeah, there’s a bit. Then there’s the attic door accesses, they also need trimming… And the built in bookcases in the walls in the bedrooms. So uh, quite a lot. Which does answer my question to myself earlier today about why I thought I needed so much wood… ;)

Today? Yeah, we’re back to the trim. Well, I am, because Kathryn’s at work. I’ve spent the entire day on – fundamentally – ten pieces of wood. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but each piece of trim remains a horrendously fiddly thing. I will be suuuper glad when the last one of these is up and I can move on to skirting board – because having cut them to length – a process that didn’t start off great because despite measuring more than twice, and then measuring twice on my cuts, the lengths I’d measured inside were wrong. Thankfully, I’d started with the longest pieces, so I trimmed them down further, and they all found a home.

I also came up with the hodgiest “we no longer have a tablesaw” bodge I’ve ever seen. I needed to rip to a narrower thickness exactly one 1×2, which…is difficult. I debated a variety of solutions, but I need it to be pretty fucking straight since it actually meets another board along the cut edge. Eventually I came up with the genius plan:

Yes, I clamped it in place having made a fixed width channel out of a stack of scrap wood. It is…a thing that I have done. However, it was pretty successful, and I think it’ll work for what we need. I do need to check that the piece that mounts vertically doesn’t need to have anything trimmed off, though. But hopefully this means that we’ll have the bathroom step, which is quite exciting.

Then there was the endless planing. Because – as I’ve wittered about many, many times before, our limestone plaster is thicker than the spray-coating typically used on drywall and for which ‘most everything is designed. Now – had we been more knowledgable, had we have been able to move quicker, all sorts of things, then we might have got the trim up before the lime plaster – and then the plaster could have run-up to the (at that point) much easier to install trim. Although protecting the wood that we did manage to get in – which was the corners – that was a total mare. But we didn’t get the trim installed ahead of the lime, and now this is the result. That’s what you get for learning about sequencing a house build on the fly.

Still, they look nice once they’re up.

So, yes. Today was, as per – cut one to length, check it fits (+/- trim a half mil or two off), check it fits again, mark up the back with which bits need planing, and how much, run the electric plane down the back many, many times. Well, several times. Usually at least 4 – it’s a bit painful how much of the wood ends up being turned into shavings – considering how expensive this is. And how much effort went into growing it – but the chickens seem to enjoy it.

At any rate, I finished the day oiling those ten bits of wood:

Which feels like a big chunk of progress. This weekend I should go up and measure – and maybe cut – some of the bits for the bookshelves, because I can’t do that while I’m here on my own. But we want to do some work on the studio this weekend, so that’s definitely got priority, because there’s plenty for me to be getting on with on the trim down at ground level.

Back when I was a baby trans, full of fear and excitement, there was a term, a term that was kind of wandering out of favour. Woodworking. By the time I was out and being me in the world, it was called being stealth. I was Stealth for quite a long time – at least, in-so-far as people at work didn’t know, and I have often had a mix of friends who know and friends who don’t.

Not because I’m concerned about the fallout of coming out, if someone’s in the category ‘friend’, not ‘acquaintance’, then it’s probably just a matter of time. I’ll mention it at some point, but it just kinda gets old. And I don’t think of myself as having been a boy, because I wasn’t I was a hot mess. I wasn’t socialised male, because I was sent to Coventry during a lot of my formative years at school, and then by the time I was at Uni I was already working up to falling apart completely. My socialising was largely under the influence of a lot of alcohol.

And these days, there are people who know I’m trans, and people who don’t. I wander round wearing trans-pride pins and whatever, but a good chunk of people I know are under the impression I’m cis. (I know, because they’ve asked about me getting pregnant, and various other things). Which is fine, because the conversation about being trans can be very, very boring. Especially after more than 20 years of coming-outs. In fact, my transness is one of the most dull things about me, imho. I am not even interesting on that front – I tried to come out at 4 for goodness sake. Then I hid, lots of messy shame/self-hatred for a while and then I get to actually having to exist outside the educational world, encountered people I didn’t for the most part select, and cue total disintegration. HRT and antiandrogens, and huh, I feel like a human and…see?

It’s basically the most stereotypical trans story every.

But the thing is. The thing is, I hadn’t really thought about it much for a long time. I mean, being trans is part of my identity. It’s part of the things about me that I position in the pile of “being me”. It’s part of the allocation of aspects of me that are broadly unchanging, like brown eyes, a dirty great scar on my knee from a motorbike accident, that I definitely drool in my sleep, the fact I think cucumber is the devil’s vegetable (unless you pickle it, then it’s delicious. That’s just how it is, I don’t make the rules).

But, this wave of anti-trans hate. These anti-trans laws. The waking up every fucking day to hearing another group of legislators have let hate, fear and bigotry rule their lives and the lives of the people they’re supposed to represent. The fact that the whiny scared fear-mongers on the right are using me, and people like me as a way to whip their fanbase up into a frenzy of hate? It’s made me… think more about it than I have for years.

More about the way I present to the world. The irony of which is I’ve been having much more fun with my presentation lately – filming for TE and consulting – for the first time in 2 decades I actually wear clothes other than a uniform (scrubs) or jeans.

But the hate – it’s alternately made me want to go back to being stealth, since I have that privilege, or made me want to go to being even louder and out-er.

But it’s also made me dwell on the things I don’t like about the way I look. The things that T did to me that…I wish it hadn’t. I’m not going to list them, because I am fully aware that there are shitty humans on the internet who would use those as ways to attack me. And they may not be good for my mental health which – today in particular aside – has been holding up remarkably well. Ironically, they’re none of them things anyone has ever commented on. But they bother me when I notice them.

Fortunately for me, I have a goodly chunk of blindness about my [human shell]. So I largely forget about the things I don’t like for the most part – they’re not part of my residual self image [cue Trinity] – although for the first time ever I’ve recently found myself toying with the idea of doing something about them. Maybe it’s displacement, I’ve lost about 14 lbs / a bit over 6 kg since I started exercising and I’m much less bleh about my weight than I was, so this is where those thoughts have gone? If so that’s not helpful. But yeah. I don’t know if I would have the enthusiasm to do anything, or exactly where I’m at, but the idea of it is slightly tempting.

But I hate that this feels like it’s me wanting to disappear more. To feel safer & look more cis.

Fuck those politicians and their acolytes.

Today I was moderately productive. I managed – after some prevarication – to cut three pieces of trim, although one of them (for reasons I’ll talk about in a bit) isn’t ideal. I also built the spare tyre stand – because we’re both fairly bored of hauling the tyres up into the garage attic, we’d like to use that space for storing tools, and it also means that when I get a bee in my bonnet about wanting to change the tyres over I don’t have to then wait for me to remember on a weekend when Kathryn’s available to help me get them down.

Also, getting them up there probably isn’t good for either of our backs.

Now there is a risk element, they’re outside and might become home to…small things. I also do have faint concerns about them going walkies without me.

It also needs a proper coat of paint, and I realize somewhat belatedly that I should have put one of the 45 degree angle supports on the other way up – so one was supporting from the bottom. Pleasingly, however, it cost more or less nothing. The wood came from Bob’s 70% off pile, so I think it cost maybe $2 or $3? The screws are leftovers from another job, and a couple from my “stock”, and the paint is left-over from something…I don’t even know what. It’s cheap Bob 1-coat stuff.

I also read a script and did some e-mails for TE, did the washing up, three (COUNT THEM) loads of laundry (although, to be fair, one of them was a dust sheet, and the last load is just my work clothes because they got *covered* in woodshavings, and I accidentally got chicken poo on the work gloves).

Anyhow, the main job I’d set myself for the day was to cut the three boards that make up the left and right sides of the furnace cupboard doorframe (because why would we use pre-bought frames)…

…and the board that the door closes against for the bathroom. Now I knew – I knew – that the bathroom board was going to be a pain in the arse. Probably a spectacular pain in the arse, because it overlaps the tiles in more than one direction, so I knew I’d have to take a *lot* off the back of it. I also knew that the method (hideous though it is) that I’ve used on the other boards probably wouldn’t work, because I needed to take such a thin strip off. I decided to router it out – which I’ve not had a lot of luck with before – probably because I’m impatient and want to take off too much at a time (foreshadowing, there).

…anyhow, so the way today went was that I cut the boards to size, then shaped the tops to fit around the various sliding / pocket door mechanisms. Then I had lunch and pondered whether I should – as I thought I probably should, make the tyre holder. Because the garage…

…yeah. It’s like that. And so I paused for (longer than intended) and did make the tyre support. Then I cleaned out the chicken coop. And then I went back to doing the trim. And that was probably a mistake, because by then I was quite chilly from having been outside in the cold, I was tired, and I really just wanted to get it finished.

And of course, I tried to rout out too much depth at once – although part of that is probably that I think the bit I’m using was completely nadgered – and managed to splinter off a chunk which will be visible. And somehow, in a way that’s not entirely clear to me, when I did switch to taking off thin layers at a time like a proper woodworking person I completely fucked up the depth adjustment – which means that I’ve taken off more than I intended. Although I vaguely feel like some of that was dealing with Problem A – that I’d accidentally hacked a big chunk out. Then, on my final pass, which was actually a reasonable depth, another splinter went walkies. So then I had to get the round-over bit and use that to try and fix the edge by taking off a mm or two, and then I had to sand it…because it wasn’t a perfect pass with the roundover bit.

And then when I finally test-fit it I realised how far out the depth is. I’m now debating whether it will be okay with some grout to fill the gap (which honestly – I think might be a good idea anyway because the tiles are super inconsistent depth wise – actually not entirely a my-fault thing – because 6′ long tiles are quite bowed and to get the wall looking the best it good, the area with the most compromise was the very ends of the tiles on the basis that they’d be covered up by trim). I think it will actually look okay, and I think I’ve done enough to fix the issue with the edge of the wood. But meh. It didn’t feel good.

Anyhow, this all gets me to the elephant in this particular room which is me trying to work out how to deal with my drive to do stuff. To be productive. I mean, I don’t feel the need a lot of Americans I’ve met have to spend every waking hour at work trying to bring home as much money as is possible so we can… whatever it is they do with that. I have a very European work ethic – which is that I do my job, and I try and do it well – but when I’m done I try and be done. And we were both privileged, lucky and wise enough to not listen to the mortgage broker who really felt like we should borrow — and spend more on a house. I mean, don’t you want a bigger house? (I mean, marginally, but basically no).

But that doesn’t help with the drive to be productive not at work. I mean, I don’t always feel like it’s a bad thing, but I definitely find it’s hard not to do something towards the house, or towards some other project. And – yes – some of those are hobbies. Some of these are fun things that I want to do. And I definitely admit that I feel some pressure to get the house done so that if we get the Nazi party in (because that’s what they fucking are now. There’s no point in pretending otherwise. This is a group that are engaged in enacting genocide, scapegoat minorities, and are authoritarian and deeply, deeply racist. The only difference between them and Nazis is that the Nazis wore designer uniforms and the Republicans don’t) at the next election, which since they have the house at this election and will proceed to fuck-up-government, and our media will continue to bothsides things that ain’t got both sides, then a good chunk of the time I just see this spiraling down the pan (I mean, sometimes I feel more hopeful, but the endless deluge of anti-trans laws that would stop me getting healthcare or existing in the world (both actual bills that exist) is making it hard to feel suuuuper positive. If I wasn’t powered mostly by spite and contrarianness then I’d find life pretty fucking hard right now).

Anyhoo, so at that point exiting (stage left) pursued by a (Nazi) bear seems like a wise plan.

(Maybe Scotland will be indie by then).

So that definitely adds a certain pressure, as does “hey, we might adopt at any point and then we will be completely exhausted in a small-child-in-house kind of way”, and I remember my colleague at one workplace who’d started putting up shelves just before their kid was born and joked that he’d only finished after they moved out. That also plays on my mind. Also there’s now a GINORMOUS STACK OF WOOD in the garage, which makes doing things with my other hobbies in there kinda hard.

So yeah, I understand where some of that drive comes from. And I know occasionally I manage to poke it into submission and just chill and read and listen to music for a bit. Buuuuut, I’m aware that it’s probably not healthy and it’s something I should probably examine more. And maybe work on listening to it slightly less.

But sometimes it just seems like there’s just not enough time in the world to do all the things I want to get done (which is it, again. Shush).

First up, our permit is signed off. While our house is no closer to completion than it was a week ago, when our house was signed off as legally complete by our permit inspector a huge weight lifted. We’re done with that part, and can move on to just finishing things that need finishing at our pace. Which had better speed up a bit.

That has meant that we’ve actually used our shower in anger. Well, actually, in pleasure. It’s rather nice. We’d held off using it after testing because, quite frankly, if it turns out there’s a problem we’d rather fix it in our own time than have our permit held up because we’re waiting to fix our shower. So we tested it – it worked – and we then waited… and waited… because other jobs to get us over that legally finished line took a lot of time.

And now? Now we can use it. And it works, and is really quite pleasant. Pleasing, even. The space is remarkably luxurious despite its small dimensions – in part thanks to the fancy floor/wall tiles in the shower area (the rest of the room is tiled in commodity porcelain large format tiles).

There is, however, the ever present trim around the door (and creation of the actual door step) to do:

Buuuuut, last week I also got the wood for the vast majority of the trim that’s left to do. I’d ordered it the week before, but it arrived last week. There’s, iirc, about 25 pieces to cut, shape and oil which doesn’t sound like a lot – and isn’t, really, but the shaping is tricky and takes a fair bit of time and effort. But it feels doable, and having the wood right there makes it harder to ignore or put off. If we can have some days where the weather is good to me, then we might actually make a fair bit of progress.

We have also, at long last, come up with a more affordable plan for the missing doors. It’s a lot of work, for sure, but it’s also something that we can do with the tools we have and which is waay less expensive than our previous plan. Although I still want the fancy tool for other jobs.

The thought is that we’ll get a whole bunch of reclaimed fir (it’s made from wood pilings from Lake Washington) that they have at a Seattle store. The blue staining apparently comes from the clay in the lake. Anyhow, we’ll get some of these and biscuit joint the whole lot together into a door.

That’ll get hung from the simplest barn-door hardware we can find. We really, really wanted something much more minimalist, but neither of us have succeeded in finding what we want – and certainly not ain a reasonable price-range. Anyhow, that’s on the cards… just need to work out where we put sixty bits of wood while we make them into doors(!)

We also have to make the doors for the hallway cupboard and the furnace cupboard – so that’s 7 doors to make. Hopefully they’ll work ‘okay’ with the other – rather fancier – doors that we’ve got. But we don’t want to fork out the roughly $4k it would be to get a matched set for all the doors.

And in final good news, at least, I think final for today our record deck has (re)entered service.

This ridiculous plays both sides, linear tracking record deck has been a complete mare to get working – even our local audio repair place won’t work on them at all because they’re too finicky to get working reliably. I won’t say that my repairs have quite hit perfection – it’s still occasionally got some speed variation which I don’t understand (unless there’s a bit of crud I somehow missed on the belt mating surface, but I was pretty thorough about cleaning that…I thought). It also is still fairly hopeless at identifying tracks on Side B, although Side A is fairly reliable. But since I usually listen to them as a straight-shot A-B it’s not a huge issue.

But it’s quite fun to have something where I can put on records while I do the washing up, and not need to dry up midway through to run and flip the record over. Also, it adds to my growing collection of hi-fi equipment that is ridiculously over complicated.

I’m still trying to lay my hands on a Slim Devices / Logitech Transporter – but if anything these seem to have got more expensive, despite being obsolete and barely supported. I’m starting to wonder if I should give in and just get a Cambridge Audio CXN… but I still really want the the twin VFD VU meters. I mean, I know it’s ridiculous nonsense, but I really want them.

But currently there’s some pillock selling a spares/repair incomplete one for $300! I mean…what now?

Never mind.

Well, kinda.

September 2017 we laid our hands on the keys to a shoddily built 1970’s ranch. Western Washington back in the day had the most wildly lax building regs, and the builders of this house took full advantage. Our floor is built on piers with beams spaced 4′ apart. The floor itself is just car-decking (1.5″ x 8″ floorboards, effectively, laid on top of those beams). And the walls? Oh lordy the framing of the walls.

After 40 years of being rented it was… in very poor condition. I mean, we knew that. We knew the roof was just about done, we knew that internally it was pretty sad. And it smelled like cat urine.

But we didn’t realise just how bad until we started ripping it apart. It was rotten as a pear with the middle of the floor being so rotten it was surprising the hot-water heater hadn’t just dropped through. The floor actually disintegrated in the hallway when I was ripping bits apart because of the bath drain, which it turned out had been ‘repaired’ by wrapping it in a plastic bag and spray-foaming around it.

The kitchen sink can’t ever have drained properly, because the water had to run uphill to exit the pipe, and there were places where they’d managed to nail through the power cables. All in all it was astonishing that it had stayed standing for 40 years. We’d planned to dismantle it anyway, but it meant that we had to do a lot of patching of the structure that was there. And when I say we took it apart and fixed it, I mean we took it apart…and fixed it.

That door on the floor? It’s covering the enormous hole where the water heater had leaked into the floor enough to destroy both the boards and the support beam underneath. It was floating on soggy chipboard subfloor.

And today, after five and a half years of work (I estimated 9 months, I think*) our house permit was signed off.

It isn’t done. There’s still a bunch of – mainly – trim. There’s also the pantry to install. There’s the main bathroom floor to seal. There’s doors to both make and hang. But it’s a big milestone and it’s super exciting. So exciting I treated myself to a pain au chocolat and a coffee (albeit a black one) from OCR.

It’s been interesting looking through the photos because I forget.

I know it was a shit-ton of work. I know it was – and sometimes still is – an enormous slog. I mean, there’s a stack of 20+ pieces of trim to cut in the garage and I am not excited by that prospect. But just the sheer number of jobs we did. We’ve worked on every single piece of framing in this house. We’ve replaced a good fifth of the floor. We’ve replaced probably a third of the structural siding – and reframed those sections to remove or insert windows or doors, before covering the entire thing in wrap and a rain-screen.

We put up / laid every single tile, every single piece of drywall, every piece of trim, and helped put the lime plaster on the walls. If there’s a power outlet – with the exception of the two directly under the panel – we ran the wire to it, stripped the end off the wire, and then wired the outlet. We put the decor plates on every outlet. We installed every damn window, door…

….it’s wild. It doesn’t always make sense to me that we did all that. It doesn’t feel feasible.

Not least for a house we don’t intend to stay in forever. We love this house, it feels so much a part of us, and it’s incredibly individual. It’s fascinating because neither of us is into super-modern houses for the most part, but this place came out in a style that’s definitely more modernist. I’ve been known to refer to it as “Japandi”, because we borrowed elements from what we’ve liked from Scandi and Japanese styles. It’s also got, to be fair, a generalized European feeling. It’s taught us so many skills, and it’s let me learn so much about myself and how resilient I can be.

It’s also got me to try out so many skills, and in ridiculous ways. Did you know the bases for our lights in the lounge are laser cut? Not only that but they are carefully designed so that the bases adjust for the fact that the lamp mounts are equidistant from the floor – but we didn’t realise the floor was horribly not level when we put up them up. And because there’s a picture rail – that is level – above them, we had to adjust for a compromise that makes them look right.

Despite the fact that I don’t love the area – I mean, it’s fine, it’s pleasant and our neighbours are nice – but we live on a fairly busy road (although the clever design of our house means that most of the time I can forget that), but we really want to have more space between us and our neighbours. I mean, if I’m honest, we want to live far out in the sticks – which is definitely not an environmentally friendly option. Really, we want lots of efficient high-density housing. But that doesn’t tie in with us gardening, having our own chickens and possibly sheep and / or goats and/or bees and maybe a horse… P’raps a pig? I dunno. I/we’d also really like to renovate something that feels more like it’s architecturally worth saving (I’m so glad that we did this house, because it did teach us so much, and I’m grateful to it because it’s warm, safe, and cozy, and I delight in the weird angles we created) – either that or do something starting from scratch**.

And we’re aware that this next one? This will probably be the last one, so it better be one we want to stay in long term. Which means being somewhere we feel safe settling. Because really, while the GOP/Nazi party are definitely gunning for queer folks in general, trans folks (worse, brown trans folks) like me are their current main target. And I can say pretty unequivocally that I’m not yet convinced that the US is going to be a remotely safe place to be in 2 years time. That makes me sad, because there’s much to like (although the healthcare ‘system’ here is downright evil)… so who knows where we’ll end up.

Anyhow, enough for one day. If you want to see what we got up to from start to (not exactly) finish(ed) there’s an album with a massive number of photos here.

* I think Kathryn said 18 months… turns out we both failed to realise that working takes time, not living on site for a chunk of the time made it much harder to just “do a bit”, and we massively underestimated how much quicker it goes if you have, say, 4 or 6 people, vs 2 people who can just barely shift the sheets of drywall.

** Which doesn’t mean we don’t love this house. I mean, if I could scoop it up and put it somewhere else I’d be really tempted, although with a kid something marginally bigger would be nice. Not a lot bigger, but a little bigger. But things like the angles in the open-joint cedar that I literally spent months running individual pieces through the planer, hand cutting to length and individually nailing to the outside of the house***.

*** Never-a-fucking-gain. Gorgeous though it is.

Today we started doing things again. I mean, not that we weren’t doing things. But the things we were doing were the things that are good for the soul that US society says have no value. Obviously they have value, and fuck that noise, but there are also things we need to get done which we allocated some time for on the last couple of days of our holiday. One of those was spending some time working on Kathryn’s studioshed.

So today we got out the circular saw and spent some time trimming bits of plywood. It’s coming along – I mean, it’s hardly phenomenally beautiful woodwork, but the walls are coming along nicely and I think we’re more than 3/4 done. There’s a narrow strip along the bottom of the west wall to do, and a full height board but only a short section – and that’ll be that wall done. Then there’s the north wall to do, and then it’s just getting the floor down.

We did, unfortunately, get some water ingress today. It seems like the door seals (in so far as they exist) aren’t really doing their job. I mean, they did sit a good 5 or so mm away from the door, which is a probably 1920s or 30s door frame.

It’s actually kept the water out until this past week, so far as I can tell, and it has been murderously wet these last few days. I mean, not untypical for the PNW, but it’s the full on winter “I’m just going to pour with rain every day until you’re not sure if you’re a duck or not”, which is not…my favourite thing. It certainly makes my run in the morning less fun (and more damp).

Anyhow there was some water that had clearly made its way in – not a ton, but enough to warrant investigation. And yeah, I’ve repositioned one of the door seals, but realistically they need replacing with new ones.

We also replaced the door lock – it’s largely ornamental in the sense that if someone’s come through our fence and is in our back yard then I suspect they’re not going to stop just because the door’s locked. But we didn’t have a key for the existing lock, and so we swapped it. Which I thought would be an easy five minute job… ha.

Because of course the lock isn’t a standard size. Of course not. So the new lock didn’t fit – and then I made a complete hash of enlarging the hole, which was quite disappointing. That will need either some filling or one of us to let in a small piece of wood to replace it. But – yay for progress.

The other thing that I randomly decided to make some progress on today was the CD ripping project. This endless delight that I’ve set myself of re-ripping to lossless FLAC all of my CDs – many of which were ripped to lowish bitrate MP3s waaay back in the day. Or not ripped at all… is a project which is both pleasing and also incredibly, mindbogglingly tedious.

It’s pleasing because oh hey, I have REM Green to listen to, which I’ve not heard in…uh, probably over a decade. Buuuut, also because a bunch of our CDs are not recognized by Max which leads me to spend a lot of time finding tracklists for obscure CDs – and also trying to track down album art for them too. Then, of course, there’s the endless joy of a lot of modern CDs having the bit set to say “you can’t rip this super quickly”. So instead of being ripped at 40x, they’re ripped at 7x.

I mean, try and push people towards downloading whydontcha…

Anyhow.

I’m nearly through the first – very overpacked but smaller DJ case. Then there’s the random disks in sleeves and the larger, I think better organized DJ case… so there’s a long old way to go. If CD rippers were more reliable about identifying album art and tracklists then I’d be tempted to build the CD ripping robot (which I do have plans for but haven’t printed because it’s so frequent that disks don’t auto-populate with information (thanks Amazon for not sharing), and it’s just easier for me to manually catch all the ones that don’t rather than having to somehow split out disks it recognizes and which have sufficiently good artwork from ones it doesn’t, or which only have some crappy little 200×200 image attached.

In other, other news, I’ve started looking at what I need to do to get Home Assistant running properly, which probably involves removing ChickenCam from the Chicken run… because the Raspberry Pi team fucked up spectacularly on social media – with a really frankly unpleasant response to fairly moderate criticism – and now I don’t want to buy any of their products. I hope that they’ll turn around and fix this, but right now there’s plenty of other things I can use in their place. However, for the moment Home Assistant comes as a prebuilt doohick for a Rpi, and since I’ve got one I might just use it. However, I’m also thinking that I might want to use the little touch screen display that I got for it, too. I don’t know much the RPi displays when running Home Assistant – I’ve only ever used the docker before. But… yeah, that’s another project for another rainy day. :)

The idea is to tie into our Mycroft – when it eventually gains some more skills (although it does currently have Home Assistant, which is the first thing). Although at the moment Mycroft is mainly hilariously terrible at answering questions and also appalling at sensing when its being called. It spends a lot of the time just randomly saying “I don’t understand what you mean” to no-one in particular because whatever its listening for it just…well, decided that “oh, do you want some cheese” meant “hey mycroft”. Given the busyness the rest of the day I decided to hold off on that for now.

So, I think because I ramble a lot at @pyoor@mastodon.lol at the moment I’ve been writing less on here, or maybe this is about my consistent level that I’ve been at for a while. It’s been a minute anyhow.

The house still, unsurprisingly isn’t signed off. I need to get on with that but with Xmas approaching it’s been something I kinda put on the back burner. But – what’s happened since then? Well, we took a very short holiday – 2 nights up on Bainbridge Island, which was very pleasant…

The idea was a reading holiday, but the place turned out to be kinda chilly if you didn’t have the wood stove going, and they only provided a little bit of wood… which meant that we would either have had to run out and buy wood, then bring it back, or alternatively we’d’ve had to just be chilly, so instead of spending the whole time reading we actually spent most of it dinking in galleries, the museum (which incidentally is fascinating), and antique shops. Oh, and the very lovely bookshop where I picked up Chelsea Manning’s memoir, which is on my ever growing reading list. I did, however, spend some time reading The Petroleum Papers, which is currently both making me fascinated, frustrated, and providing grist for my video writing brain.

While we were there, and for the first time ever, Thelma (we think it was Thelma from the photo) decided to go walkabout in our neighbour’s garden. How she got there remains a mystery to us – and given Thelma – possibly to her also. We know this because while we were pottering around an antique store we got a phone call from another neighbour who asked if we’d received the first neighbour’s message… which prompted me to look at my phone (which I’d been studiously ignoring). And there was a message saying that our chicken appeared to be in his garden.

After a photo to prove identification we hurriedly arranged for Kathryn’s dad to make an extra trip over to initiate a rapid chicken extraction – which apparently involved him walking down the street, chicken in hand, with her sticking her head out to see where she was being taken. Thankfully, Thelma is a very tractable soul, on top of which it was dark by the time this happened, which meant that transportation did not involve the Benny-Hill chase and capture we have to do with some of our other chickens.

Our holiday was also cut short by a storm that deposited a bunch of snow on the PNW, meaning that escaping from our Airbnb (which had a fairly long, steep drive) involved us backing our car out, much to the chagrin of a neighbour nearer the road who was in the process of clearing his bit. That’s because going forward there just wasn’t enough weight on the front wheels to keep us moving, and we lost traction pretty rapidly. Raven and her oh-so-expensive Hakkapelitta tyres did their job though, and actually the rest of the journey while not exactly relaxing, was conducted without issues.

Just before we headed off, I also forked out a bit of money for a treat – well two, actually. One was accidental and foolish – I was considering a laptop that is less good at distracting me for when I’m writing my story (by which I mean the – I think 2014 NaNoWriMo story I started and have continued to write since, on and off, mainly off. I picked it up again a while ago and found that I still don’t hate it, much to my surprise, and keep writing little bits, but my “oooh, shiny” brain gets distracted rather easily). So I was sort of contemplating something like a Cambridge Z88, because I always wanted one of those as a kid, and they’re simple and functional and y’know, it’d do the job nicely. Unfortunately, the seller of the ones I was looking at wouldn’t ship to the US, and for some reason eBay wouldn’t let you ask that seller questions.

So then I was browsing around, as y’do, at least as I do. And I saw something I literally don’t think I’ve seen more than once on ebay before, or even for sale anywhere before. An Acorn A4 laptop. A working, A4 laptop. I was frankly stunned. I still remember standing before Helen Morgan, my computer teacher’s laptop in awe in about 1996. I’d wanted one of these since reading my copy of Archive with a review of it. It would have gone so nicely with my Archimedes A410/1.

But obviously they were uber expensive and there was no reason I needed a laptop, so… I just gazed in awe. I wasn’t allowed to touch it* but it stuck with me. Anyhow, that was up for sale and the owner was really forthcoming about it and so I was quite, uh, overexcited. And put in a bid. And won. And that was all very well, except that when he was checking it before sending it turned out that it had died and would no longer power on.

Incredibly, and reminding me of part of why I loved being an Acorn user, he e-mailed me, explained the problem and suggested a full refund. I in turn suggested that maybe he’d like to make me an offer for what he thought it was worth dead – and I agreed to that price which was frankly very good, and now its winging its way towards me. Along with a spare screen I bought because I knew the screen was faulty when I bid on it – but it only seemed to be a small issue…

I hope I can get it working again.

Which doesn’t really help with distracting me from writing.

Maybe I should still get a Cambridge Z88 ;)

Also in the archaic technology world, something else that has been somewhat fixed:

Yup! The piano is actually in tune! It’s astonishing. The guy who we got at a friend’s recommendation was lovely. He was suuuper hesitant to take on the job, because she’s not been tuned for coming up on 8 years, and at well over a century old complete with overdamper action and being a 435Hz middle C piano, there’s, well, much to be said by many folks for “it’s just ornamental” or “throw her away and get a new one”. But as I explained my sentimental attachment to this enormously heavy lump far outweighs its financial value. So I was delighted that he was willing to come and do it, and he, it turned out, rather liked the piano. Win-win.

Now I just need to find time to play, which means not spending quite so much of my life online…she says, writing a blog post. Although the demise of Nazi Bebo / $8Chan by Elon “can’t manage a turd” Musk has helped with that. While I enjoy scrolling through Mastodon, I don’t feel quite so…required to do it? I dunno, it tempts rather than feels necessary.

Anyhow. So that’s happened.

Also, and you may have noticed this, Christmas rolled past. Because we somehow missed our anniversary in a pile of stressful events, we decided to be a bit more laissez-faire in our spending limit this year, which meant that I could finally get Kathryn a sewing machine (albeit one that really, it turns out, needs a new case because it is quite, quite musty), AND a drafting chair to go with the desk that I got her years ago.

She in turn got me so many awesome things, including some jewellery making tools which I’ve wanted for a while. And a book which instantly prompted me to realise that I’ve been making my life needlessly difficult with one particular part of my process. Have I mentioned I added jewellery making to my list of hobbies? I think around the same time as I started toying with makeup (she got me an awesome makeup book, which incidentally, is not a phrase I imagined passing my lips until fairly recently), I started making earrings from… electronics stuff. An odd choice perhaps, but one that entertains me.

It’s a hobby I’d like to parlay into a sideline business at some point, but it’s also one of those things at which you have to practice. Anyhow, she gave me a book, which seems very helpful (and which made me rethink part of the way I make these) – and as a result meant that I twigged I should be dipping my chips in pickle beforehand (pickle is a cleaning substance). I’ve been working with archaic chips which are often a pain in the arse to get solder to flow on, even with flux, and then look shonky when you do…

…and if I pickle’em first they’ll probably solder better.

Anyhow, that, a book I really wanted, a book I didn’t know I wanted… a stunning print that combines music and electronics and – a jewellery box because with my stint of making jewellery (well, earrings) I’ve ended up with more than will fit in the box I currently have.

Xmas was, as usual, spent cooking up a storm. Our seasonal favourite Christingle Pie (although they now put leek in, instead of shallot which is what’s in the recipe book), Sweet and sour sprouts with chestnuts and persimmons (it calls for grapes, but there weren’t any in our co-op), Nadia’s roast potatoes, and of course

It was totally worth it for a really delicious meal, followed up – of course – by the christmas puddings. I’m not as happy with either my mincemeat (forgot the nuts) or my Xmas puddings (a bit too gingery) as I was last year. It’s the challenge of what I replaced things with last year that are just harder to get here (crystalized fruit, for example) – I didn’t write it down last year and this year just did some things differently. They’re still good. I still like them, but in a side by side taste test (easy because I still had a jar of last year’s mince pie mix) last year’s still wins by a country mile.

Anyhow, time rolls on so I shall disappear back into the eternal void, and pop up with more rambling later, I’m sure.

* Probably wise, she knew I’d accidentally allocated all the spare space on our BBC Micro based / Econet network to myself – because I’d hacked it but not realised that the allocations were, I think, in kB, not bytes.