Painting

Last weekend was the long weekend, and Wanda and I painted the living room/dining room/hallway - 11 walls, 9 doors, and 4 windows.

It was exhausting!

Now it’s done, which is amazing.

While we were painting, we ate outside in the pergola I bought last year, and we’ve kept doing that. It’s so nice to be able to sit comfortably outside to eat. I’ve used the fire table as a fire-free table all week, and it works great!

In other news, the coffee press from Cabela’s finally arrived. The IKEA refund did not, so now I have to follow up on that.

When we started painting, it was spring; for the last week, the weather has been summer. It’s lovely.

My other project this week was finishing up an online escape room fundraiser for my travel group, and that’s finally done. As part of that, I pulled out a bedspread my grandmother made for a picture. I always loved it, but have never actually used it, but now it’s on my bed.

I miss being able to get stuff

On April 4, Wanda dropped and broke the coffee press. I went on to Amazon, discovered that they weren’t shipping for a month, then ordered on from IKEA. They charged me immediately.

A couple weeks later I contacted them and asked how delayed they expected it to be. The person I chatted with told me it was being shipped that day.

A week after that, I ordered coffee press #2 from Cabela’s. It was supposed to arrive May 6.

In the meantime, I tried to contact IKEA again, but neither chat nor phone support was available for days. I finally tweeted at them and got them to cancel my order (and supposedly refund it, but that hasn’t happened yet.)

I also put a coffee press in my next grocery order. (It was out of stock, so no luck there.)

May 6 came and went, with no coffee press. It appears that it’s lost in the mail, since it hasn’t moved since Tuesday.

Friday I ordered a coffee press for pickup. I got it today. (Canadian Tire came through!)

(The Amazon one would have been faster.)

Hanging in there

Easter was weird. No Easter Vigil, no colouring eggs (we could have but didn’t bother), no guests for the big meal.

We did have a family zoom call, which was fun. And the weather was nice.

This past week I hit a point where I’d had enough. I was tired of having to plan ahead, and of not seeing people, and I just wanted to go back to normal. Luckily, a day or so later, that passed.

I’ve been playing online board games with family and friends on the weekends. We start a zoom call and then go onto boardgamearena.com. We can talk and play at the same time. It’s not the same as being in the same room, but it’s pretty close. I bought the premium membership (which came to $37 CDN) which allows me and Wanda to play at the same time, and also allows us to play all of the games. Well worth it.

Still here

I’m still here, and all is well with us.

I haven’t run out of projects, but I’ve run out of quick wins. My free time this past week has been spent trying to figure out how to move our escape room fundraisers online. (Not there yet, but I’m making progress!)

I went for a walk with a friend yesterday, which was nice even though we had to walk 6 feet apart. Today it rained, so I stayed inside.

The snow is melting, which is nice. Soon I’ll be able to sit outside by the fire table. (For 30 seconds, until I get cold. Still, summer is coming.)

The last couple of days

Yesterday I decided to clean my bedroom. I moved all the furniture, vacuumed behind everything, dealt with the books that I dropped when I had a broken leg ... well, let’s just say a deep cleaning was well overdue.

As part of the cleaning, I found some stickers I bought in November and mounted them in some wooden tiles I had lying around.

Today I started work on some ditty bags that my travel group is going to auction off. (A ditty bag is a bag containing a dishes for a single person.) I made 4 sets.

I’ve been working on the auction site itself, but it’s not ready to go yet. 

An unexpected twist

Last night, we were told that the network couldn’t handle everyone working from home, so only people on critical projects should log in,

That’s right, I’m no longer working from home. I am still getting paid, which is good. But I need to entertain myself.

I made the traditional green pie this morning, and then I spent some time today working on a website for a silent auction for my pathfinder trip. And I went for a walk at lunch.

I miss the amount of walking I normally do on a work day - not the walking to and from the bus, which I can replace, but the casual walking to get some water or go to the bathroom.

Work from home, day 1

Last night at 9:30 we were finally told to work from home today. Wanda had made arrangements last week to work from home, and I did not want to go out and bring the virus back, so I was glad to stay home.

One of the last things I did last week was buy an extra monitor, which I gave to Wanda. (It’s much bigger than our existing monitor, and her work needs it more than mine.)

I had 4 meetings scheduled today, but none of them ended up happening - our web conferencing software was too overwhelmed yo be useful. Still, I was able to get some work done.

Since my Pathfinders can’t currently get together, fundraising is hard, but I spent some time yesterday and after work tonight working on some stuff we can auction off or use as samples at our next craft night.