A cold morning this morning, the coldest we’ve had since we moved into our little mountain retreat: the rain woke us, hammering on the tin-roof with unrelenting percusive insistence, even before the Lucy-pup nosed under the covers to tell us, yes, she would like to go out for a pee now please. Cold enough to warrant a fire in the hearth, for the first morning ever — “I should’ve put another log on when I woke up,” lamented Dee, whose bladder-pressing passenger neccessitates many a night-time trip to the bathroom, “kept it going from last night.” It is a day for snuggling up on the couch (now we’ve bought one!), watching an old black-and-white movie, eating hot soup and drinking even hotter chocolate; shame, then, that I’ve got to work instead.
Never mind: the reverse-cycle unit on the wall (and now-roaring fire) has brought the room temperature up to a balmy (ha!) 16.6 degrees, and I can always turn on the radiator downstairs — or put on more clothes. What, you don’t code in your underpants? Amateurs!
Our renovations are coming along slowly but steadily. After tearing down the separating wall in what is to be our room there was a lot of work to patch the holes — plasterboard, cornice cement and even a little carpentry — but that is just about finished and ready for painting now. We also took the opportunity to build a little hidden media closet in the wall under the wall-mounted flat-screen, which looks really good now (Dee wasn’t convinced initially, but loves the results). Yes, I love the geekery of home-“techorating”: we’ve bought an Acer Aspire Revo from a Taiwainese eBay shop and will be configuring it as a full-HD media player and MythTV client (the TV server lives in the lab; it needs configuring too).
We still need to paint, and lay some floor-boards, but then our bedroom will be basically structurally done, with only small “features” left (interior doors rejuventated, door handles for the French doors and a surround-sound system of some kind). We’re hoping to get it done before “junior” arrives, which could be as soon as 7 weeks!
Slowly, slowly.