Post 232 Messes

First up today I emptied the dishwasher. This included a baking dish that fits on its side in a cupboard beside my oven inside another dish. In removing that dish, without a light in the cupboard, I knocked over the full 1 litre bottle of olive oil I had stored in front of the dishes. Of course, the glass bottle smashed on the floor, and all the oil leaked out. It took a while, and a lot of paper towel, to clean it up.

By this afternoon I had replaced the oil. Back to a tin. I had chosen a bottle on Monday because it was smaller and took up less room in the cupboard. Mistake.

 I had Pilates today at 1pm. I also had a technician coming to service my air conditioner before Summer sets in. This had been arranged for 8am last Monday - before our partially-blocked off street gets parked out by workers on the building site next door, but the company reorganised the time to 11am today. At 10 past 11 I got a message that the technician was running late. He arrived at 11.50 - carrying his tools and ladder from his park some distance away. 

The good news is that he did a thorough and competent job of servicing, and located, and addressed, the cause of the frequent blasts of cold air I had in the last month or so of Winter. We worked out that I would be better off having an annual service before Winter rather than before Summer. 

The downside of this, of course, was that I couldn't rush the process and my travel time to Pilates was being eroded. I phoned and explained, agreeing I'd come as soon as I could. I got there about 15 minutes into a 50 minute session. Martine is terrific. Fortunately for me there were only two of us in the class today, so I got plenty of attention and a productive session. 

I went on to North Adelaide to replace the oil and get some cooking salt. The receptionist at Pilates, who previously worked in hospitality, tells me that throwing salt on the spilled oil helps to absorb it before using paper towel to mop it up. I needed salt anyway.

Back home I finished adding the hunter to the Inuit applique. I'm going to add more fur to the bear. I don't, however want to over-embellish it. 

I then spent half an hour or so trying to buy a subscription to Office 365. I opted to download the app which is supposed to mean no password but the purchase requires scanning a QR code and the app doesn't give me that option. I'm caught in a loop. Another mess to sort out!

Jennifer was the one who introduced the term 'mess' today. After discussion, much thinking and rethinking, she went for a Covid test today after having very brief hay fever symptoms. It means, of course, that she has to isolate until she has the result. It's a hard call, when she has no symptoms anything like her long experience of the virus and there is no community transmission in South Australia. It seems so unlikely that she has a return of the virus. Yet...there are so many twists and turns in this virus evolution.

I spent a couple of hours sorting another mess I got myself into a few days ago. I have been trying to create a book from the first 50 posts on this blog. There are not many companies that do this - only two that I know of. One of these, Blog2Print, recently had a discount offer, so I gave it a go. I spent a number of hours working on it but received an error message at the end. Eventually I contacted their technical advice and this morning they had a suggestion that I delete and start again. This is what I did this afternoon - it took time, but it worked! I finally ordered a print and a pdf copy. I was elated. Unfortunately, in my elation, I completely forgot to apply the 40% discount code they had offered me! Damn! I'm not sure if I will want to print the whole blog ( It would take, I think, 7 volumes around 190 pages each) but I have asked if I can use the discount on a future book.

It won't be lost on some readers that I have managed to get the layout of this blog out of the mess it was in a week or so ago from the transition to the new interface. Success has come partly through improvements to the layout by developer, and partly by my learning the 'tricks'. 

I actually feel encouraged at the end of a day of messes. For much of my working life, I spent a good proportion of my time either sorting out messes or anticipating and avoiding them. There's a lot of relief in knowing I can still clean up messes.

I left the bear and hunter aside this evening and worked on the Adelaide Rosella feather. It's not quite finished but gives an idea of what it will look like. 

Rain is forecast for tomorrow and our Sit'n Stitch has been cancelled while Jennifer waits for her test results.

Should be a good day to stitch and read.