After what felt like a couple of months of brain fog, I’m slowly starting to feel more like myself again.

We finished two major house TODOs: basement tiling and bathtub reglazing. W- spent a long time grinding the uneven basement into some semblance of plane. He wanted to keep the slope for drainage, so self-leveling cement wasn’t a good fit for us. Anyway, once that was sorted out, I helped W- tile the laundry area and bathroom in the basement. Between Youtube and various DIY/contractor forums, we figured out what to do with our floor. It feels really nice and solid now, and we’ve been able to move the laundry machines in. W- also painted and reinstalled the fixtures in the basement bathroom, and we managed to pull everything together a day before the deadline set by our bathtub reglazing appointment. The contractors for that one needed to block off the upstairs bathroom for two days, so it was good that we managed to get the backup bathroom online!

Anyway, it’s been great being able to do laundry at home again. We’d been taking must-wash items to a nearby laundromat, but the rest of the lower-priority things had been piling up. Not only did I go through quite a few loads, I was able to finally pre-wash the fabric I’d bought for some sewing experiments. Once I set up the sewing machine and serger on my desk downstairs, I got to work on converting a thrifted bedsheet into a long drawstring skirt, and on making various small necessities with the cotton flannelette that I’d bought a few weeks ago.

In other news, the recent Emacs Conf was tons of fun. I’ve downloaded the Twitch videos and will start splitting them up into individual presentations. If the on-site organizers figure out a good way to send me the backup videos they took, I’ll splice in some of those shots to help set the stage and compensate for technical difficulties.

We still have a bit more to do downstairs, such as figuring out how to transition between cut-slightly-too-short carpet on an uneven floor and the much more even tile. The carpet’s higher than the tile, and it looks like most carpet-to-tile transitions assume the opposite. The carpet doesn’t seem quite long enough to stretch, either. Ah well. It’s held down by duct tape at the moment, which is classic in its own way.

Once the basement and the bathroom are sorted out, we’ll finally get to clear out the stuff that we’d temporarily moved into the living room. It’ll be nice to let that space breathe again.

I’m also looking forward to organizing my fabric stash and turning some of them into projects. I’d like to pick up some more fabric for projects, too. I still find sewing frustrating from time to time – especially when I try to go faster than I can – but I feel it slowly becoming something enjoyable in its own right. I like exploring the patterns and textures. I love making simple, ordinary things, since that means I get to enjoy a little extra infusion of memory and satisfaction in my everyday life.

In terms of tech, I’m glad I’ve been able to continue consulting throughout this. I find programming easy to do when it’s more like a conversation with other people, figuring out what they want and adapting the tools to them. When I’m fuzzy-brained, it’s difficult to come up with something on my own. I look forward to dusting off my Emacs configuration and exploring the neat ideas I picked up from the conference, though, and writing more blog posts about what I find.

I’m also looking forward to blogging more often, and to moving my weekly review back to the weekends instead of letting it creep to the following Friday. =) I’m sure that as I get back into various interests, I’ll be overflowing with notes to write and share. Someday I might even respond to the e-mails languishing in my inbox.

So that’s what life has been like for the past couple of weeks or so. Onward!