Week 13: Painty McPaintface

(Mar 26 – Apr 1)

This week turned out to be all about getting ready to paint part of my house. With long weekend looming, some of it #childfree, it seemed vaguely criminal not to make a start on my modest painting project.

Otherwise, my current thing is to start watching a new show on Monday (my main TV night) and then continue to watch an episode a night, in bed, on my iPad. I’ve been surprised at how effective the iPad is for viewing. Being used to surround sound and a 46” TV, I’d always expected to find watching stuff on the iPad somewhat underwhelming, but if anything it’s even more engaging. Just you and the screen.

Or me. It would be creepy if you were there too …

This week I watched Requiem (and since it was only six episodes long I was able to watch the whole thing this week). I had high hopes for it, given that the BBC has a rich history with ghost stories but, while it kept me watching to the end, it didn’t really deliver. The main character was pretty obnoxious, and it wasn’t clear whether she’d be written that way for a reason, or simply because the writer needed her to keep butting her head in so the plot could keep moving forward. In fact, most of the characters turned out to be pretty unlikeable, which is never good.

As for the ghost story; there was something interesting and creepy in there, but it felt like it had just been bolted onto a fairly standard story of someone returning to their home town and finding all sorts of dark secrets lurking under the surface.
Not a complete waste of time, but definitely not what it could have been.

Monday

The day passes in a haze of utter tedium, and yet I still manage to get things done. We end up having cheese toasties for dinner as it’s nearly 7pm by the time I pick up the Elderbeast from his acting class. Also I have a quantity of jarlsberg in the fridge that needs to be put to good use. You know it’s the very best of times when you have cheese toasties for dinner.

Tuesday

Shortly after delivering my time management/productivity presentation two weeks ago, I got a phone call from someone on the academic side at my work. Turns out a PhD student had attended and thought it would be a great presentation for other PhD students to sit through. And so it came to pass that I spent part of this morning in a room with 50 PhD students, doing a repeat of my presentation.

In a curious quirk, I was far less nervous about this than about giving the same presentation to 10 members of staff. I went through the slides a little faster than normal, but hit my 45 minute mark almost perfectly. As far as I can tell it went pretty well. I just hope they got something out of it too.

In the other Highly Exciting News of the day, after spending many weeks trying to hunt down some Slumbies for winter, I found a full rack of them outside my local newsagents this morning. Slumbies for everyone!

Wednesday

I’ve mostly decided that I’m going to start my house painting project this weekend (tackling the ‘sitting area’ of my open plan front room first). I stop off at Bunnings on the way home for supplies. $250 and almost an hour later I come out with everything I need for the weekend.

I get home and (after dinner) start on clearing out the area I want to paint. This small amount of mild exercise leaves me knackered and I start to wonder if I’ll actually have the energy to paint over the weekend.

Thursday

Yay – it’s the end of the week! I get my weekend shopping done on the way home, so there’s nothing to stop me getting out of bed on Saturday and getting straight on with the painting.

Friday

I spend large parts of the day doing paint prep. I dust and wash the walls (with some help from the Kinderbesten), then carefully lay masking tape around the multitude of edges. That done, and the kinderbesten off to their mother’s, I’m free to relax until the real work starts tomorrow.

Saturday

I get up, make coffee, and get into the day’s painting. Today, the primer goes on. The former paint job is so poor that the paint freely peels off the walls. I’m hoping the primer coat can fix some of that. I take well over an hour painting the edges, then attack the walls with the roller—which is curiously satisfying. I quickly realise that needn’t have spent as long on the edges as I did, given that the roller can get within millimetres of each edge.

All in all it takes me about three hours, which is slightly worrying given that I need to do two coats tomorrow.

For now, however, I order myself to relax and reserve my energy for tomorrow. It’s time for waffles, more coffee, and Doctor Who.

I do allow myself a quick trip to JB, and come back with $80 of blurays. In the batch is Star Trek: Beyond, which I’ve simultaneously been wanting to watch while resolutely not going out of my way to actually watch it. I watch it. It’s pretty good: way better than Into Darkness. It leaves me hoping they get on and make a fourth one.

Sunday

I get up and repeat my coffee and painting routine. The first coat doesn’t end up taking too long. I’m just about to settle down for my waffles and Doctor Who when the Kinderbesten return due to their mother not being well. We attempt to watch The Last Jedi, but the Kinderbesten are full of energy and not in the right mood for watching films.

I leave them to play and get on with the second coat (which has had several hours to ‘cure’ by now). It goes on well and fixes the various smears and ‘gaps’ left behind by the first coat. Now I can leave it to dry, and my only job tomorrow is to move the furniture back.

As an added bonus I’m nowhere near as knackered as I expected to be!

Things I Did Buy

• $45 Slumbies (for me and the Elderbeast: I bought a pair for the Kinderbeast, but they were way too large and had to be returned)
• $80 blurays (couldn’t resist the combined power of 20% off *and* a Buy Two Get One Free deal)
• $300 web hosting renewal – this was a bit ouch, but considering I used to pay about $25 per month for my web hosting, and my new hosting works out at about $14 per month I’m not grumbling. Too much …

Watched

Read

A week of reading fail. Read not a page of my book. Not even a word.

Eaten