The temperature has tipped from “nice and warm” to “too hot”. It’s 24 degrees and I am grumpy 
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24°C would be preferable to 33°C… I expect we’re going to get to 40°C sometime this summer. Not fun. At all. Especially since my migraines seem to get more frequent with hotter temperature this year.
Also: this morning I discovered that I’ve managed to chew a hole in my grinding protection in less than a year. Guess where all the migraines are coming from? 
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We’re spending time in the mid-thirties (°C) hereabouts. I have the air conditioner set to a pleasantly cool 22°C.
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Today we (read: the contractors) started the Kitchen Renovation™ that was originally scheduled for November… 2019.
The original contractor injured his shoulder and after waiting for a couple months bowed out of the work. No problem, we thought back in February 2020, won’t be too hard to find somebody who can come in, maybe in the summer, to get this started.
Ha.
HA.
HAHAHAhahahahaaaaaahhhhhhhrrrrgh.
Anyway. Second contractor was contacted late last year, and after some initial positive interactions, also bowed out (just couldn’t keep a firm schedule, refused to communicate via email and neither my partner nor I are very phone-capable people). Third contractor contacted early this year, and after Lockdown Number Three (“Too Lockdown, Too Furious”), we have finally, FINALLY gotten to start.
I look forward to reclaiming all the space in our house that is currently filled with cabinets and flooring that has been waiting since November 2019. A year and a half? There’s abouts? Yeah. It’ll be nice to not feel cramped in every room.
(Cabinets currently live in the bedroom, the guest room, the game/work room downstairs, and the downstairs hallway).
Fun side note: the dedicated electrical wire for the dishwasher also apparently powers our internet. Because the guy that owned the house before us was a firefighter, and so obviously did all his own electrical wiring throughout the house. The discovered an auxiliary junction box(?) drywalled into a wall, and there are power cables that are running into a wall that was hidden by a cabinet… not through a nicely cut hole or anything, just a hammer-smash covered by plastic. Whee!
sigh
ANYway, electrical guy is coming tomorrow to start working on that nonsense. Fingers crossed the ceiling potlights aren’t a terror (they’re going to be a terror).
Last note: our 3 cats are very unimpressed with being confined to the bedrooms and office… and will continue to be unimpressed, because we love our kitties and therefore they are not allowed anywhere NEAR this mess for the next 5 weeks when “it’s all done”.
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Following on that pain:
Two nights ago: Man this storm is HUGE.
One morning ago: Huh. I’ve never noticed I can see the neighbor’s roof from my couch.
One morning ago: Where is my fence.
Also one morning ago: WHERE IS MY TREE.
Still one morning ago: Ah. There it is. Down the hill knocking on my neighbor’s window.
Yesterday afternoon: Can you explain to me why the quote to remove this tree is more than the quote to take it down while it was still standing last week? (spoiler: no)
This morning: God bless West Virginians with woodchippers.
Now: This pile of firewood and chipped stump smells amazing.
Been a bit of a stressful 36 hours but $350, a West Virginian, and a kind neighbor later we are at some approximation of squared away.
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That had me laughing out loud.
Luckily, it is all over.
On the job side of things, I am considering a change (after 2’5 years). We just went over our busiest time of the year (Nov-April) and after my holidays at the end of April, my boss keeps dumping more and more work on me. I am feeling more buried in paperwork now that when we were full on three months ago. Time to hit the search engine.
It’s inconvenient because the company car is handy, changing jobs will not help our mortgage/house hunting, but I don’t think the understaffing we are suffering from in the office is going to be tackled at all. “It has always been 4 people in the office” and why would it change even though we are producing nearly twice as much as 3 years ago. So I think the honeymoon period is well over, and I don’t want it to get to me in a way that my mental health will be affected badly.
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I got rained over while going home during one of the hottest days of the year. This is why you check the weather!
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Be glad you bought material in 2019. Be prepared from serious sticker shock for stuff you have to buy now…
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You people are ridiculous! 24 C is not hot, it is “just one degree warmer and I will be able to take my jumper off”.
Around here we are experiencing the Stygian depths of winter (and a month or two early — I dread the coming August). Nights have been getting down to 1 C, and only the calmest and sunniest days reach twenty. One day last week had a maximum of only 11 C, and there were blizzards in Victoria only 1,000 km from here. brr! I went shopping on line for a really warm ribbed or cable knit cardigan jacket with a shawl collar, but all the vendors of warm clothes in my size are sold out.
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For instance, I read in The Economist that the price of used cars in the USA has nearly doubled in the last twelve months.
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It’s 29C in my room at 11.30pm, and I’m waiting for this thunder and lightning I’ve been promised…
AAAAH best smell 
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I am well. Actually well. I think this is the first time I’ve been truly free from depression since I went to the USA in August 2017.
You owe me a beer.
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If we end up in the same place I will gladly buy you many beer.
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The San Diego Zoo is the single thing I miss most about moving out of California.
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The Topeka, Kansas City, and Omaha zoos are, to some degree, all relatively accessible from Lawrence and all worth a visit.
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Mumbleteen years ago some friends of mine treated me to an after-hours behind-the-scenes tour of the Canberra zoo, during which we got to feed the animals. The brown bears licked a mixture of honey and yoghurt from our fingers. The ligers and cougars we fed by standing at arms length from the steel mesh and poking chicken wings through the gaps, holding them with barbecue tongs. And the tiger? We looked down into his enclosure from a viewing platform nine metres high.
As for the deadly Australian wildlife — we went into the dingo enclosure; the animals came and leaned our legs begging to be scratched. Then they got let out and came for a walk with us while we called on the other animals.
Cutest exhibit: small-clawed otters. ☆☆☆☆☆ — would d’aww again!
Scariest exhibit: cougars. ❢ Holy Dooley!
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I was referring to building materials, which have seen some crazy price increases. (A sheet of OSB that was $8 18 months ago was $35 a couple months ago.) Prices are starting to come down, as supply returns to normal levels, but it’s going to takes some time.
I have a car, a 2018 model I bought new in 2019, after it had sat on the dealer’s lot for over a year. (Because the manufacturer had no idea how to sell them.) I got a pretty good deal on it, because of that. Recently, I checked what carmax (a big chain of used car dealers, who will give a pretty firm offer based on make, model, year, mileage, sight unseen) would pay for it. They offered about $1000 less than I paid for it, two years and 18,0000 miles ago. (actually, they offered more than I paid the dealer, but $1000 less than my total cost including taxes and license plates etc). Someone else on the web forum for the car sold his (a '19, with <10K miles) for $5K more than he paid for it.
This is, I am sure, a pretty short lived bubble. There are large numbers of people in american cities who are not taking public transit, ride hail, have moved to the suburbs, or are otherwise driving more. That’s created a bump in demand, some of which I think will not last. There’s a shortage of new cars for various pandemic supply chain reasons. These will sort themselves out pretty quickly.
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My partner and I were minivan shopping back in November and December. The “used car shopping experience” was completely turned on its head at that time, at least for the market of minivan we were looking at. Normally, you give your name and phone number to a used car dealer and you can’t get them to leave you alone. I talked to a couple of different salespersons who literally wouldn’t return my call, because they knew what I wanted to spend (because I told them) and they knew they could probably sell any minivans they might get into their inventory to a different couple with, perhaps, a more desperate or less metered approach to car buying.
We did end up buying a certified pre-owned minivan for a good price sometime in December, but likely just because the dealership had just undergone a change of ownership and the new owners were eager to build a reputation (they failed, but at least I got the minivan I wanted).
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