It’s been a busy weekend. I was working from home on Friday, getting contracts out, soliciting stories and so on. That took up the morning, then Marianne and I had a very pleasant lunch together before picking up the girls from school. Friday evening we went to an open air concert at the Maylands Golf Course, where Marianne’s band swing band played for a couple hours. It was surprisingly chilly for the time of year, but the girls enjoyed dancing at sunset.
Saturday was slightly less productive. Up early-ish, do some puttering around the house, off to do some shopping, home again to get ready to go out, then off for Bec’s birthday in Mt Lawley which proved highly enjoyable. Home late, watched Rock Wiz, then off to bed. And then up stupidly early this morning, hence this post. Truthfully, I’m not especially looking forward to today or the next ten days. The house has been cluttered since the ceiling collapse of January 2 (a month ago!), but we’re moving into the final phases of the recovery now.
Today the family come over and we move the book cases from the front room and stack them in the family room (making it mostly dysfunctional). Then we move the large couch into the hallway. Tomorrow at 7.00am tradesfolk come to sand and polish the floors in the front room. It’ll take Monday and Tuesday, and must then be left empty for a week. The following Monday the painter comes to repaint the entire room, strip back the remaining woodwork and revarnish it and so on. We estimate three days for that, but more realistically four. That means most likely on Saturday 20 February we can put the furniture and bookcases back into the front room, put the curtains back up and begin to get back to normal. In renovation terms this has been a fairly mild disruption, I guess, but living in the clutter, shuffling around things and so on for a month has been less than fun. I can’t wait to get the house back to normal, and then to begin to attach my office.
And reading?, you ask. Well, I don’t think I’ve read much of anything except for anthology submissions since the ceiling collapsed. Can’t seem to get settled enough, for some reason. I suspect that’s going get worse not better over the next two weeks, but we’ll see. I’ll then have some significant catch up to do.
