Author: peterb51

20th April 2026

A difficult night again, Kelli had an irregular heart beat that stopped her sleeping. There are certain exercises she does to correct it, but it didn’t seem to be working. 

We ended up sitting in the living area, me on the couch trying not to fall asleep, whilst she was thumping her chest trying to knock it back into rhythm.

It doesn’t happen that often, but with some foods that is the side effect.

We still had the shopping to do, what has become the norm is taking Winnie along. She sits on my lap watching everything, as she gets heavier, my legs fall asleep quicker, so getting out each time is a bit of a performance.

Once that was done, I worked outside raking the leaves and pulling the weeds at the top end of the garden. It was the first attempt at making the place looked lived in. The yard waste bin filled in no time. I see several weeks where those will be used extensively.

I also glued up my prototype curved leg, eight lamination of one eighth oak. It was a bit of a struggle, glue and wood strips everywhere, but it worked in the end.

19th April 2016

Kelli had a difficult night, not getting to sleep for a couple of hours always makes her anxious, hence hindering falling asleep. So she wasn’t in the best of moods in the morning. 

We had been invited to celebrate her distant cousin’s birthday, so she wasn’t looking forward to that.

So despite feeling like crap she managed to finish the painting of the long dresser leaving me to seal the top, which looked like cherry.

I found my tin of poly which was in the back or the truck, but it must have got hot on the warm day we had, because when I opened it there was a thick skin on the top. I pulled most of that out,  but the rest was a bit thick and sticky. I had no alternative but to use it. Brushing it on and then rubbing it with a cloth, the benefit was that it dried very quickly.

By the time I had done that it was party time at Scott and Karen’s.

Kelli only found out recently that her and Karen were related, their Great, Great Grandfathers were brothers, and as they only lived just up the road from us, it was a weird coincidence.

The party was fun, Kelli worked at it, Scott had made all the food, and I was able to entertain the guests, as I alway seem to do, mainly by insulting the Americans, but in a nice way.

18th April 2026

It was cold, stark contrast from yesterday. I took a walk to the corner store to buy some coconut milk. Kelli was planning to make a coconut cake, a new adventure in her healthy cooking plan.

It had been raining overnight, there were the usual large puddles at most of the road junction, I guess the city hasn’t solved that problem yet.

I had to almost adopt a power walk to avoid freezing, of course the return journey meant I had to walk even faster, at that rate even the electric bikes had trouble keeping up.

I was expecting Chris to come round for a recording session, but according to his schedule I couldn’t see he had the time, and I was proved right.

We finished painting the dresser, I painted the handles.

I was working on a separate project to laminate ten layers of thinly cut oak into a curved leg prototype. I stick the strips down the toilet to get them soaking wet. I wasn’t sure oak was the best timber for this, but it was all I had.

My plan was to clamp them to the former and leave to dry for a couple of days before doing the glue up.

The first one was the tightest bend, luckily that went well, no sudden crack. I proceeded to do all the other pieces with no damage to any of them, that did surprise me. 

17th April 2026

A new family has moved into a house on our road. The familiar U-haul truck arrived, stuff was then unloaded, and disappeared inside the house. It’s strange because a year ago Wayne lived there, a quiet man who used to wave at us driving past in his white truck. He went in to hospital one day and never came out.

The place was bought by people who just wanted to do it up and sell it on. It isn’t a big place, in fact it’s smaller than ours, but it was priced at over three hundred thousand dollars, extortionate in my book.

It will be interesting to get to know them, where they’ll from, and how they can afford it. Kelli will want to know what time they will leave for work.

It was a glorious day, I moved everything outside, I cut up some timber I have been wanting to do all winter. We painted the long dresser, hopefully it won’t take long to finish it.

16th April 2026

Stop the presses! Kelli had a lunchtime meeting with a new friend she met on facebook.

Well actually she was a customer who had purchased a lot of clothes that Kelli was selling.

They found they had a lot of things in common, and meeting up was a good way of exploring them in more detail.

I was then in charge of keeping Winnie under control, and preparing the large dresser ready for painting.

Luckily there was a break in the rain, after two nights of storms most flat land was waterlogged.

We kept ourselves occupied by playing ball. Time after time I would kick them and she would dive left or right often catching them in her mouth. There is one soft spiky ball that she likes to play tug of war, a great exercise to loosen those baby teeth, but a misplaced hand gets to feel the sharpness of her real fangs.

15th April 2026

I started sanding the drawer fronts on the long dark dresser, ten in total.

The lady who had bought the two side tables turned up to collect them. Like always there is slight trepidation because they were paid for without seeing them in person, but she love them , so breathing a sigh of relief( silently) I helped her load them into her van.

Kelli had found a small desk in Zeeland, it was blue and the pedestals had legs which make them ideal for bedroom side tables. 

Off we went to collect, and, on the way back we were picking up three rolls of wire fencing.

The desk was outside waiting for us, there was an angry German shepherd attacking the front door, I was certainly glad that was between us.

With the desk safety in the back of the truck we headed off to West Olive to collect the fencing.

The road to the address we needed was blocked by a train. Well there were a row of gravel or coal trucks as far as the eye could see in both directions.

Kelli messaged the seller who explained that it had been there since yesterday. However we were given an alternative route.

Pulling into the drive, we could see the train from the other side. With a bit of effort I managed to squeeze the rolls of fencing into the truck. This type of stuff is not easy to slide together, all those sticking out bits interfere, so progress was slow. Anyone looking would have seen me move from back door to one side door then the other trying to grab every precious inch. I was messing about for fifteen minutes until I was confident that the back door could close. 

Unloading it was a lot easier as the whole three rolls came out as one, now this will be another project on the list, building a cage around the vegetables to stop unwanted pests and Winnie destroying them.

14th April 2026

Guess what day it is? Yes you’re correct, it’s John the wood’s barn day.

The sun was shining, it was a hot day and I was sweating in my flannel shirt. Reminder to self, store them away.

Today was assembly day. Joining all the separate parts together for the first time.

Considering the weight of the separate pieces, the final build was significant.

It was exciting, getting all the joints to fit together was rewarding. John’s job, as usual was final sanding. He really enjoys doing that, and he can’t really do any harm to himself.

There were storms forecast for the late evening, and when they hit it was impressive. Just imagine the power released, if only it can be stored, there would be enough energy to power a small town. I stood outside watching the display, a mixture of fork and sheet lightening gave a display many would pay to watch. 

There was a tornado alert, only the second since I’ve been here, the sirens are wailing and Kelli gets nervous, but it soon passes, and it seems like a big anticlimax.

13th April 2026

I had a 10.00am phone call from a technical person from Waves, the software company from which I had bought two programs many years ago. I wanted to reclaim my licenses and add them to my new computer. 

I have had dialogue with Aviv for a few months, but getting the zip files had been a problem, but once that had been sorted out I was ready to install them.

That is where I needed assistance. I had followed the instructions to the letter, but I still couldn’t install them, hence the assistance that I needed.

First we went through the instructions he had sent me, but there was a level of communication that we didn’t share, so in the end Aviv took over and finally the installation happened.

That was a relief, but I was actually so close to doing it myself, but the install button was hidden at the bottom of the page, that only became visible once it became full size, and there it was.

That made me feel a little less dense, but it’s done now.

My chesty cough is still with me, it’s been a couple of weeks, and it’s getting on my nerves.

Having a dark brown voice can have its advantages, but for now I prefer my normal one.

However it didn’t hamper the shopping expedition, Winnie came along to share the wondrous experience.

12th April 2026

Americans are obsessed with gambling, or so you would gather by the amount of advertising that is on the TV and social media. It is made so enticing with flashy commercials that make you feel you are already a winner. They even give you free money to start.

This is pure evil, draining the last crumbs from the people that have little to start with. 

It is a habit that shouldn’t be encouraged, it destroys lives all hanging on the dream of being the one who wins.

Poor old Larry, was addicted to scratch cards, having won once he spent what little he had on them, of course coming up with nothing.

He would hold garage sales several times a year, and we wondered why he would drive off after he sold something, well it turned out that he rushed out to get a scratch card from the store down the road. 

This is the typical customer who craves a win.

The biggest enticer is the lottery itself, with the promise of untold wealth, it brings misery to those fortunate enough to get the winning numbers.

In my day it was the football pools, a simple enough game where you had to predict eight wins from ten games, with people huddled around the TV on a Saturday afternoon to hear the results. Dreams were shattered by five thirty.

11th April 2026

I had a video call with Tim Wallace concerning a recording project that he wanted me to get involved with. A friend of his has a band and they made a recording that they weren’t happy with. Having spent money on the initial recording the could afford to have it remixed. They couldn’t afford to get the separate tracks back, all the had was a badly mix master.

When I was back in the UK, Tim first mentioned it, I say I would be interested in taking a listen and making any suggestions for improvement.

So during the week Tim sent me the song, and so started an interesting project.

What I heard was a guitar heavy piece that dominated the whole song, somewhere inside was a decent song fight to get out.

I was then sent an mp3 copy that I could load into my computer, but that wouldn’t help reimagine the song. What I needed was software that would separate all the different instruments allowing me to remix them. Thanks to AI I found just that.

Now with everything separated I could make a start.

Winnie was busy demolishing a stuffed rabbit. It was old, and had seen rough treatment by Kelli’s previous dogs, but now it came under more severe ravaging. I was singing “Bright eyes” as the stuffing was being torn out, making this more like a horror film, than Watership Down, it certainly would scare the children, it was scary for me.