Notes from My Week, No. 5

Last weekend I made some reasonable progress cutting boards to length and fitting them. There was a small setback when I decided I didn’t like the pattern that the cuts were making; cue a couple of hours of sliding boards in and out of position until I finally had something I was content with. My thumbs took a lot of punishment trying to do that and I won't be keen to repeat it.

There is now a small area left to lay. Most of it should be simple to do, but there are some interesting angles and cut-outs that I’ll have to work around. Still, to get to that point first requires finishing the undercutting of my skirting boards, and to do that the old carpet, underlay and gripper needs removing. The latter is done, so tomorrow will be time to start cutting, and we’ll go from there.

I could probably make progress finishing this floor in the afternoons and evenings after work, but I never find the motivation to do that, which leaves me with the weekends. But the weekends are for resting, so how can I manage? I was asked recently if I was content with my progress (or lack thereof). I am; it’s slow but I have no deadline, and I don't want to spend all of my free time on it. It’s also tiring work for me, so rather than wear myself out, I’m happy to chip away at it.

There is little to report on the knitting front. I’ve been working on the same section of ribbing as I mentioned last week, and it’s making steady progress. I’m a little bit disappointed in the quality of my picked-up edge – there are a few holey sections – but I’m not going to unravel it as it should be a good reminder for future projects.

I think there’s a good chance I'll have the rib finished in the next week, and the cardigan will therefore be a step closer to completion (inserting the sleeves and attaching the pockets might be all that remains after that).

I’ve been pleased with my running this week. I’m still following the routine suggested by my watch, except when it suggested I both run and rest (I chose to rest). This week’s workout was 4×9-min at tempo pace, with 3 min to rest between intervals. It was nice and hard, but the tempo pace suggested was a lot more comfortable than I would have picked for myself. Could I have run faster for the whole workout? Maybe, but it would have been harder to maintain good form I reckon.

Apart from the workout, the running has all been slow base training. That pace is a little too slow for me, but it is much more recoverable than my normal easy pace, so I’m sticking with it.

For my water rocket project, I had intended to get started with design this week, and in particular to define a work breakdown structure of the components I wanted to have. Unfortunately I got a bit carried away trying to configure some software for that purpose (PlantUML), and through a convoluted series of events managed to break the network configuration of my server. The rest of the week was spent finding time to understand what I’d done, and to try to work out if I could have done something better. That, in turn, led to me wondering about configuring a dedicated “homelab” that was more robust to my meddling experiments. I haven’t done that yet, but it is now on my list...

I finished two books I had spent too long reading this week. The first to be finished was the bleak post-apocalyptic short novel Termush by Sven Holm. It told its tale in an emotionless, almost sterile, way that I found quite interesting. It’s a short book and could be read over a few days I reckon, so I might read it again at some point when I can be more immersed in it.

The other book I finished this week was The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani. Embarrassingly I started this book back in January, but finally took the time to finish it. It tells quite a chilling story of a nanny in Paris. The ending left me with unanswered questions, which, although annoying, is the sort of ending I prefer over the neat ones with no loose ends. It always seems a bit more realistic that way.

One of the new books I’ve been reading is about weaving. I haven’t picked up that as yet another new hobby yet, but if I ever finish spinning all the fibre I have, I might need a use for the yarn, and it does look interesting.

With sewing complete for now and knitting nearly done, I hope to be able to have some time to spin. I have a lot of fibre that needs spinning, including 500 g for my mum that is needed by the end of the year. I’d best get a move on!

Mixed results from my sleep routine this week. I had a couple of decent nights of sleep, but this was far offset by two very bad nights. Despite being very tired, and deliberately going to bed early (but not that early), I could not get to sleep quickly, and it felt like I spent more of the night awake than asleep. Fortunately they weren’t consecutive nights, but I hope I can work out what caused them and do my best to avoid them in future.