Weeknotes for week 9, 2023

The week of February 27th.

I sold stuff on Facebook Marketplace and I had forgotten how much work it is.

Trying to be fair to the first person in line, not hearing back for a day or two, repeat.

I sold something for £15 that I really should have just donated, but I saw it through out of perverse fascination.

Also listed something on eBay. Equal parts impressed and exhausted with the listing process. They've clearly put a lot of work into it, and there's a lot of it.

We rewatched Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Very much A Movie. Good attention to detail. A bit nothingy in the end, but I enjoyed the journey.

We also tried to watch The Abyss (1989) and did not finish. A bit dull, frankly, which probably contributed to it being hard to follow.

Sunday was a rare day of TV sports.

My partner watches one sporting event a year, the cross-country ski race Vasaloppet with roots in her corner of Sweden. That was Sunday morning.

I'd ordered the requisite bilberry soup weeks in advance, since you don't find it in UK supermarkets.

Then we went on a day trip, and I watched the F1 race when we got back.

I rarely watch sports, but I'd been told I might enjoy Formula 1. So like a lot of people, I tried Drive to Survive a few months ago and did indeed enjoy it. It's an intriguing combination of business, applied science, interpersonal (melo)­drama, strategy and action.

And it's fun to get a view into a world I hadn't paid any attention to previously.

The day trip was to Sizergh in the Lake District.

The Lakes are less than 2 hours away, but it feels like you're on holiday when you get there. We should go more often.

We walked around the lovely gardens, petted Charlie the castle cat, had a picnic and bought gifts.

We got a bag of vinegar crisps in the café to upgrade our brought sandwiches to crisp sandwiches. UK food gets a bad rap, but crisp sandwiches are a delight.

A quote I appreciated, about a grandfather and grandson:

They were so alike that Bashford says they can even be thought of as "one very long-lived man, 1825-1975."

– "How the Huxleys Electrified Evolution" in The New Yorker

We're probably done painting the dining room table. And I'm almost done painting a chair we got for it. More nooks and crannies than you can shake a brush at.

Upholstery fabric samples have been ordered for chair seats.

A frustrating thing about DIY is that I have perfectionist tastes, but not the skills.

Unlike work, where I've done it long enough that I feel like I can often see the way to subjective perfection, though it's often traded away, and rightly so.