Day 3 of the decorator being here, and hopefully the last day. Not that he’s been a problem. In fact, he’s quietly got on with his job, not caring at all that he had to keep the doors closed if they were closed and the gate shut while he went backwards and forwards. In fact, he’s done such a good job and been such a good egg, it’s likely he’s coming back to do more work in the near future.
The poet seemed to feeling a little better after a rough night, so the pills must have been kicking in. And he was able to herd the dog and keep him contained in one room, something he just wasn’t up to the day before.
I headed into the office to do some work, starting with yesterday’s blog post. I’m not catching up with getting that done the day before, am I? I wrote it up, chose the image, and shared it everywhere. And then it was back to the proofreading. All Day.
I estimated I’d need 7 hours to finish this proofreading job. Seven hours solid on the trot. That’s not very easy to maintain, especially when other stuff is going on all around you. But I set my Pomodoro off anyway and I worked for pretty much all of the day. Just not very solidly.
At midday the decorator came to say cheerio. He’d finished his work and was off to another job he’d had to put off earlier due to family circumstances. He’ll definitely be coming back, though. We had something to eat and then I was back at my desk. Then the plumber turned up to take some more measurements in the bathroom.
I really wanted to have this proofreading job off my desk by end of play, but when it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen (again! Sigh!), I finished early. I was still really, really tired due to lack of sleep earlier in the week, so I went for a nap.
At about 6pm we got ready to watch the eclipse on telly. It had already started in Iceland and would be nudging parts of the UK in less than 15 minutes. We didn’t have any special glasses, and we didn’t take any selfies or use a colander. We were just going to watch it on the telly and maybe see how the light changed outside.
This is the first time in a long time that we’ve had weather anywhere decent enough to watch anything solar. It’s usually raining or cloudy or foggy or something. With today forecast to be the hottest day since records began, the weather wasn’t too shabby yesterday either. We felt sorry for some places where they’d had their first clouds in days, weeks. But even then the clouds parted at just the right time for them to watch.
The poet had a bit of a brainwave while we were watching and went to get a couple of his camera filters. Apparently, two together would form the lowest possible recommended filter to watch it through. It worked really well and for the first time in my life I witnessed a true solar eclipse. The moon went a bit low across the sun in our neck of the woods, but we had something like a 95% eclipse. It didn’t get dark at all, but we did get an eerie orange glow. Definitely a treat.
When it was all over, the dog had a mad ten minutes, zooming around the house and garden. We don’t know if that’s a result of the eclipse or just his daily zoomies, but it was funny. And he wore himself out, which is always a happy outcome. Then the poet admitted he’d had his thought about his filters a week or so ago and had been researching it. He’d just forgotten because he’s been ill this week.
I didn’t have much of a tea before I was taking the dog around the block. And then we had an early night. The poet was actually feeling a lot better, but he was still in a lot of pain.
Today, then, we have no one coming…well, apart from a delivery driver who’ll be bringing me some tops, one of which I hope to wear at our family soiree at the weekend. But other than that…proofreading all the way!
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So glad you got to enjoy the eclipse! Sounds like a solid day, and I hope everything is finished in the time you want it to be today!
The eclipse was very special.