Well, now it's a sprint.

Long time, no chat.
Things have changed a bit in the world since the last time I posted.

Early last week, we were made aware that someone on my floor at work had contact with someone who had contact with someone who was at the Biogen Meeting in Boston, now famous for it's  Covid19 load. (That's me being 4x removed, if you follow.) I appreciated the transparency.
Last Thursday (3/12) my employer sent out an email encouraging us to work from home until further notice. My direct boss followed it up telling us that we were more than encouraged; please take home anything we needed in order to do our jobs.
I packed up, hoofed my big monitor out to the car, and after a quick stop at the market, came home.
I have been pretty much home ever since, except for one early morning run to the hardware store, and on a different day, an early morning run to the grocery store. I've been in pretty restricted isolation mode for a week now. (Which, funny, isn't so terribly different than a normal week, except for the working from home part.)
I did go check on my two sets of neighbors who are of a dignified age (from a safe distance) and let them know if they needed anything, just call.

I'm pretty much set - I have enough food for the cat, the fish, the snail and myself for probably about a month, more if I had to. (Heck, I've got enough food for the fish for years, he only eats 3 pellets a day, and shares the pellets with the snail.) I tend to keep a well appointed paper product closet, so that was not a concern.
I started some lettuce and tomato seeds, we'll see where those go. The lettuce seed was store bought, but the tomato seeds were saved from last year. It's kind of an experiment - I fermented one batch of tomato seeds, cleaned and dried them, but the other batch was just cleaned and dried. Science!
I have some Long Island Cheese Pumpkin seeds I saved, and some zuchini I bought that I should start soon. But then I will have to figure out where exactly to plant them.
Anyway.

A tangelo seed I started on a whim from a store bought fruit.
I now have 7 perky little tangelo seedlings.
More science!

Because I was bounced home and have to work here for quite a while now, I've been trying to situate an office of some flavor. I had been plodding through the bedrooms upstairs one at a time, fixing the walls and painting.
Now the room that I currently use on the first floor as a bedroom has to become the office. It's one of the few places with more than one outlet and it's the easiest place to run a hard wire internet connection to that *isn't* my living room.
Working from the couch isn't sustainable - one week was enough.

The run to the hardware store was for paint. I hit the point of the spackle in that back bedroom being good enough for government work, (it is far from perfect, please don't judge me on this room.) I got the same shade of green as I did the other two small rooms, Benjamin Moore's "Silken Pine". I had considered picking out another color, but now being under the gun (and not wanting to linger around the paint swatches everyone else has touched) I got what I know I like, and we'll see how it looks in room #3.
Primed the room, 2 coats of B.M's Muresco ceiling paint, 2 coats of Silken Pine on the walls, and a dollop of High Gloss Super White on the ceiling trim.
Put all the electrical back up and on, and the room, save for dealing with the chimney and the dragging doors, is done.

Before.

Before. The whole room really did deserve to get skim coated.
I got about 70%.

After. That far wall was the one the insulators blew through.

After. The furniture still needs to move around.

Chimney still needs attention.
Considering seeing what the brick work looks like underneith the plaster.
(All I have to do is keep vacuuming it and I'm going to find out!)

The view back out into the hall. The next room on the left is Windy's Room, then the stairs,
and then no-outlets Harry Potter Room at the end (which would be a perfect office except for that no outlets and no wired internet part.)
After the window, the "master" bedroom is on the right.

Once I get the furniture from the soon-to-be-office upstairs, I'm going to do a quick scrape and spackle of that room, slap some paint on it, run the ethernet cable and call it functional.
I'm hopeful Ian can come out this weekend and help me move furniture. I can do most of it except the floppy mattress and the steamer trunk (which might have to stay down here.)


In other news, spring is starting to do it's thing. The lilac buds are getting fat, the forsythia is going to burst any day now. Bulbs that I had peppered around the place are starting to surprise me.

Tiny little dwarf Daffy. I think I got one of those $3 pots at the supermarket and stuck the bulbs in,
not expecting them to come back. Surprise!

The Poppy I moved from the (now gravel) Not-A-Flowerbed in the fall came back!
I had heard they are super fussy, I didn't have much hope.

The cat has been regularly worshiping the stronger rays of sun.
This was a surprisingly candid moment I was able to catch.
Shortly after, she fell off.

I had a bunch of work done in the mudroom. If Ian can, (after wrestling furniture) he's going to come out this weekend and help me drywall it (so I can mud it and paint it and maybe finally get some appliances!)

Be safe, stay healthy, (wash your hands!) and I'll see you all soon.