Now that we have come into the autumn rainy season, we are, once again, getting muddy areas where we drive on the lawn in front of the house to park the car. We have addressed this problem by putting in concrete slabs dug up from other parts of yard, but we don’t do many at once, and we never found the time to do any last autumn or this spring. So, yesterday afternoon when I saw it, I decided that since today is a work from home day, I could put in one new stone during our morning phone call.
Today I actually remembered this plan when I woke, so I dressed appropriately, and set to work as he started driving. First I scraped away the grass that has grown over the edges of the old stones, and revealed that I had used a broken slab to create a gentle curve towards where we drove on the grass two years ago. However, that was before the city re-did the asphalt on our street and added curbstones along the edge of the street, complete with a lower bit for our driveway access. As a result, we drive in and out at a slightly different angle now, so, to align the parts that have stone with where the driving marks in the grass are, I replaced that broken slab with a whole slab. Then I extended the path by one more slab, rotated by 90 degrees compared to the one I replaced, to make the paved part wider yet.
I forgot to take a before photo, but I got one during, which shows the broken stone over by the road, and the new one lying next to the hole, ready to flip into place:
If I had been able to stick with plan A, and do only one new stone today, the morning’s phone call would have been pretty much enough time. As it was, I was in the process of setting the replacement new, whole slab by the time he got to work. But I had started digging the place for a new one before deciding to replace the old, so I decided to get that one in place, too:
Then I had the extra hassle of cleaning up the dirt, after accidentally tipping over the wheelbarrow. The one that came with the house is old, and was in bad shape when we got it. Keldor fixed it by bolting the legs back on, but the feet are a little too close together, making it not exactly stable when loaded. I knew this, and still managed to knock it over. oops.
By the time I finished, got inside, and found breakfast, it was already 07:20, so the project took more than an hour and a half, including set up and clean up. I understand why we do so few each time we do them. I also see that I really need to scrape away the grass that is covering the stones on the other side. But not today.
I also see from the photo that the neighbour’s house, which had been peeling green paint for years, with a small bit of a dark grey test patch in one corner, has finally been painted sometime this summer or autumn, on a day we weren’t home. Gee, it looks much better!
I should have worked directly, but I couldn’t resist copying notes for the Paving stones for the parking area, etc. project from Trello, which meant it was after 08:00 before my workday began. Oops.
Luckily, the rest of the work day went reasonably productivly. I had a meeting with Bruno, who wanted to practice for the Swedigarch Inspirational Lecture next week. I think it is going to be a very good talk.
After work I went into Skellefteå to an optometrist, to find out if it will work to get contact lenses for fighting. It turns out that my right eye has such a small astigmatism that it isn’t really possible to correct for it with contacts, but the left eye is bad enough that they can. So we decided to test a solution with a contact lense only in the left eye, and only correcting for the astigmatism.
Oh my goodness! Normally I hate to go without my glasses as it gives a headache instantly, which has been part of the reason I haven’t fought much. But with the one contact lens in, suddenly it doesn’t hurt. I can’t read, of course, because farsighted, but any normal over the counter pair of reading glasses solves that problem.
He had me test one, looked at how it sits, decided that it was off center, so we threw that one away and tried a slightly different one, and that one sits much better. So he gave me a packet of four more, to test and see if they will work, and if they do, I can order a 30 pack of daily wear lenses for that eye for just under 500 sek.
I wore the first test lens out, and promptly went to buy a cheap pair of over the counter reading glasses. Keldor has many in the house, but his are always dirty and scratched, as he is hard on them.
More than an hour later, as I type this paragraph, I still have no headache from wearing one contact lense and nothing on the other side.
We have been to collect my car, which had its annual service today. My assessment of driving with one contact lens is that it is doable, but I would rather drive wearing my normal glasses.
After we got home, we got out his weighted training swords, and did a little slow work. That seems to work well with a single contact, too. Now we just need to find time to finish my helmet, so I can try really fighting…
Then I did a longer yoga and HIT session (40 minutes), before chasing Keldor out of the bathtub so I could get a shower and get ready for bed.
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