Another month rolls around and we are nearly half-way through the year. Staggering.
Lots of dog dramas this month with, just as I was about to take them to the vet for their vaccinations, Boo getting kennel cough. Luckily she recovered quickly, but I did think that would derail my house sitting plans, as the house sitter has a dog and kennel cough is so contagious. Luckily, due to her having had vaccinations, she had stopped coughing within a couple of days. Phew: house sitter back on. Then Finn got (a) a skin condition which has made his ears and feet very itchy, and (b) an infected toe which needed surgery. Warren has been left with the care of the invalids and some pretty complex drug regimes... and a trip to the vet on my behalf :-(
Other than that, my theme of the seven Rs has continued this month (Refuse, Repair, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Rot/compost, and Recycle - and if any of you are interested in more of my story, read here), starting with cleaning out the office. After the clean out, then I did exactly the opposite of the seven Rs and consumed... but making timber purchases, and buying as many things from the op shop as I could (as well as re-purposing things that we already had).
I got containers and drawers to put away the things that didn't really have homes, to keep the dusting to a minimum. Jan had lots of computer parts which were gathering a lot of dust in open office in-trays, and the room was smelling dusty. So after cleaning, reorganising and putting away, it is all looking pretty good, and - even better - it will be much easier for me to keep clean. Only a matter of flicking a feather duster around now.
Jan and I talked about what I was doing as I was doing it, so none of this will be a surprise when he gets back. He also had a couple of A4s posters on the wall, which were getting very faded. I put the originals safely away, found replacement images online, and put the replacement images into two cheap wooden frames from K-Mart.
After that, I did the same for my desk, again using timber storage solutions:
So our home workstations are both looking good. Tidy and - even better - easier to maintain.
Shelley & Kevin had a great function at their place, with a load of the old Sealord hands, which was a lot of 'remember whens' and 'remember whos'. It was a good catch-up; and a surprising one - at times - when people turned up whom I had forgotten. Shelley & Kevin have an amazing place with views right across to Separation Point upstairs, and a microlite being built downstairs in the garage! I got this shot just as the sun was going down across the bay with some very dramatic views:
I decided, after thirty years of using an old wardrobe door leaning against the wall as a dress mirror, that I would get a dress mirror ordered and put on the wall in the bathroom. Viridian glass came and did that at the beginning of the month (and allowed me to take their photo):
As instructed, I took down the props holding the mirror in place after a day's worth of adhesive drying. The mirror looks great, and makes the room - already large - feel even bigger. Now my old wardrobe door has been repurposed... to the spare room.
John F & Chris W helped me by felling some of the kanuka on the south-east side of the building platform (the left to middle of the photo below), so that there is room for the fence that the neighbours are going to put in, and room to move the garden beds from the front down the back. They also moved the railway sleepers ready to reconstruct the beds. I delimbed the trees and John & I chainsawed the thicker wood up for next year's firewood. I would love to have left the trees there, but they were in the wrong place. At least they self-seed like wildfire, so the next generation will spring up in no time.
I will spend some time over the coming weekends barrowing the compost from the front of the house to the back. Good exercise. By the time I have done that, hopefully I will have enough in the 'house projects' bank account to get another truckload of gravel to spread around the house.
I caught up with Nane - who is in Nelson for a few weeks and staying at Scott's place - Warren, Tracey, Erica and Jenny at Headquarters in Brightwater. Jenny was up for the weekend. She came back to my place with me, then Ed with Alice, Tom and Max came around to pick her up. Ed and Jo are in the process of planning a new build, and wanted some ideas. While they were all there, I got them to help me move the last item on my 'carpark tidying up list' to a new home: the tally hut that Jan had got from the Port has now been moved around to the end of the shed. I can now do a three-point turn on the car park in the Subaru again :-)
Nane and John came up to stay for a few days before Nane flew back to Germany, which was great. John cooked and, as he too is on a ketogenic diet, we ate wonderfully well. John introduced me to smooth clotted cream, which is fantastic when dipping my chocolate coated almonds in it...
Speaking of chocolate coated almonds, I 'make' my own. Microwave two rows of Whittaker's Dark Almond chocolate for 90 seconds on 60% power, add three hands full of roasted almonds, stir, pat out into a thin cake and refrigerate until set. Snap off a bit when you feel like something crunchy. And dipping a bit into clotted cream? Delicious. And, as long as you either don't eat too much of the chocolate almonds in one day - or limit other carbs that day - you can stay within keto boundaries.
My mother & I caught up for coffee a couple of times in the month, once in Nelson and once in the Moutere. The Nelson catch-up was at Zumo after I had taken Boo to the canine physio: it is a great place to meet, as Boo could come too.
Work is manageable at the moment, though I haven't quite managed to get the pace of the post-graduate supervision right yet. After reflecting, I think the issue is that my supervisees aren't necessarily aware of what their responsibilities are to drive their own programme. I got my latest supervisees to do a survey, asking them what areas are their responsibility, and what are mine. Then we go through that, item by item. The survey I liberated and amended from the one I had to fill out at Griffith. This is a very useful process as it sets the expectations at the outset. Hopefully that will make the supervisee responsibilities very clear to each supervisee, and allow me the time I need to help them with concept editing, and to ask those awkward questions which every supervisee hates... but which makes their projects much stronger.
The under-graduate stuff is going very well, though. Next month there are the research project write ups and reflections to mark, and after that I will be done with marking and teaching until the Semester 2 start in week 3 of July. Of course I still need to set up courses for semester two, but as long as everything is done by the week before we restart, it can be done at my own discretion, and nothing is 'urgent'. The post-grad carries on, but as I only have two supervisees it should not be too onerous. Steady work for a bit over a month sounds lovely :-)
No frosts yet, and the weather has been pretty good here. The views from Rose Road remain a pleasure:
Jan's work as at long last started to slow down a bit. He has had the last four Sundays off, and has seen some of the area. He took some photos when he went to Mission Point, north of Traverse City:
Being spring, the weather is uncertain, and he has been unsuccessful in several attempts to go across the Mackinac bridge. He has been up to see the bridge, obscured by rain, on the shores of Lake Huron:
Hopefully when he returns to Grayling after the Toronto trip he will be able to get up that way in fine weather and go across the bridge to experience what it is like.
As you get this I am on my way to Canada to meet Jan in Toronto. We have a week of things on our bucket list, including catching a baseball game at Rogers Stadium between the Blue Jays and the NY Yankees, Niagara for a day, many museums, art galleries and tours, and a couple of Fluevog store visits.
After that, Jan is here for a chunk of July, with us being in Fiji for a week in the middle of his time back. I need him to help me with some things at Rose Road, as there is lots I want to do that I simply can't do on my own. The garden bed sleepers which John and Chris kindly moved for me still need to be rebuilt down the back so I can get the gardens started in late spring.
When Jan goes back to the US after his July furlough, he starts at a plant in South Carolina. He is currently trying to find some accommodation, but, being summer, the prices of rentals are quite alarming. At least he has a month and a bit to find something, so hopefully the time will give him some better options to negotiate a longer term rate.
Back to you next months with shots of our Toronto trip :-)
Sam (& Jan)
