Poorly

I should never have gone out on Friday. I have flu, and we are meant to be flying on Friday.

Will is sick too - sicker than I am I think. He was caught in the rain on Saturday, bringing his new bike home.
Felix brought us the gavel he won at San Luis Abisbo - placed in the novices, but he thinks we don't appreciate him and his achievements/ Well, we do.

A Two Bob Watch

Well, here I am blogging when I should be painting backdrops for five interviews today! In two hours!

After sitting patiently through five hours of taped interviews the other day - ten hours of tape as we had two cameras - I think back to the old days when film was expensive and came in 400 foot rolls, and interviews got to the point p.d.q.. When we conduct interviews we usually get what we want in twenty minutes or so, plenty for what is usually a short segment. Well well, we are doing this one on a day rate for the money, and have nothing to do with the nightmare of editing it.

Not only that, but as the last subject (who had been the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice) droned uninterrupted through two one-hour tapes, I began to suspect that there was a lot he was leaving out of his high-flown tale, and that his persecutors might have had their reasons.

All the Things I don't know about Music

Now that my iPod is set up with speakers by my bed I choose a little something each morning to ease myself awake. Yesterday was the Last Four Songs: today Greatest Hits of the Fifties.

I would love to study voice recognition programs, to understand and see the characteristics of each voice, why some are smooth and mellow, others have a thrilling vibrato, or are rich or husky or pure. A Project. How do we even find sound beautiful? Or anything: what is beauty, and do animals feel it? They must, look at lyre birds. Do we ever grieve their aesthetic sense?

The ceiling is finished and looks as though it has always been there.

Coming On

Bliss

Sawing planks while listening to Amy Winehouse...

Channelling Alec Guinness

Two sweaty days cutting wood and putting the planks up not only on the ceiling of the big room, but continuing over the tiny attics on either side. I have started on both sides at once, working upwards to the ridge, as with each pass I have to crawl up into the tiny roof space to secure the ends, with the rafters on my nose and my hands and nail gun extended outwards over my head. The difficulty with the first few was that the nail gun is about eight inches long, so there wasn't room for it straight on. It is easier now, but I am taking a day off as I feel very pale - whether I am or not is by the by. Can barely think of a pleasant activity, so I am taking the chair pads etc to Constance, then at least I will have the pleasure of a cheque.

Alec Guinness? Bridge Over the River Kwai.See how small the space is, instant claustrophobia.
Clearing the foreshore for light relief.

A While

I have been occupied the past few days with the general business of life, and haven't missed blogging. I am astounded.

I woke this morning musing how easy I am on myself now, and how irrelevant it makes all the articles on stress and organising, pleasing and self-assertion. There is hardly a woman's magazine that wouldn't bore me, with all their running on the spot, like Alice.

I am happy as a clam, flooring the attic with the lovely broad old boards which had been stored, and resolutely outing all the short ends and debris accumulated up there. In between times I have been washing up by hand, doing it perversely well to shame the dishwasher. Yesterday I started stripping the sheets of wood for the ceiling, and hope to put it up today. Too early to start sawing yet...

Have I said how much I love my new keyboard, and how it is inspiring me to touch-type again?

It is spring now because the mimosa is in full bloom, and a thundering chorus of frogs serenade me at night. I wonder all over again what frogs are doing in salt water.

Cissy introduced me to a program called calorieking.com, and I have been having eye-opening fun with it - who knew walnuts were so, er, rich? And I had been eating them by the handful, no wonder I am more generously proportioned than I thought strictly fair. So for the past four days I have faithfully recorded my every bite and exertion, and it is wonderfully supportive of discipline, has dear little pie-charts and graphs but not those irritating menus of foods I would never dream of eating. Could I possibly rediscover my waist?

Washing Up

I have just washed up the Old Way, with a basin in the sink, towels on the draining board, scraping, soaking, washing, rinsing, and my fuzzy, added-fibre glasses and plates sparkle as they have not since the dishwasher went temperamental. Yet another man is coming out to fix it, and if he can't it will be replaced under the Lemon Law, how delightful.

The past two days Carolyn and I have been working hard in Sonoma for her client there, good fun in its way, but I was amazed how lazy other people can be - or inefficient. Two men hung one cupboard in the day, and put up six hooks, wow. I suppose I should feel virtuous by comparison but instead feel vaguely indignant.

Meanwhile the table has disappeared under a pile of wood scraps, and solid rough redwood planks lean against the wall; all were stored in that attic. The big planks I intend to use as a new floor for the uncovered sections, seems poetic. Little bits maybe will be chucked.

The big task is still boarding the living room ceiling, and that involves a lot of sawdust, but we are filming too next week. Start and clean up? Leave it?

New Keyboard!

Almost too sleek and skinny.

Let's see if I have as much finger trouble on this one...

Dncelikeithurts/loveforthemoney/workwhensomeoneiswtching.

mykeybordisplyingup-guesswhichkeys.

GoodRed

judson.blogs.nytimes.com

Venus and Jupiter

I set the alarm for six but in the event drifted contentedly awake from three and saw first Jupiter, then Venus, and at last the waning moon come up just before the dawn. Jupiter is almost out of frame but this is the best picture, as in most beautiful. Stefan took it on his big camera, from the deck.

If you click on the picture it comes up full sized - thank you blogger!

New Toy

My staple gun gave out half way through putting up the insulation, so I rushed out just before the hardware stores close and bought a pneumatic staple gun to go with my compressor, and I am so chuffed with it.

Now sitting summoning the strength to buy more insulation, as I ran out 30 feet short of my goal. I drank two glasses of champagne at the immensely smart gala last night and I am paying for it. Still, it was a wonderful day - breakfast with Mary, lunch in Petaluma with a wonderfully focussed new client, then the gala, with a possum, an owl, a hawk and a wild turkey. The food was vegetarian.