I’m over 1,000 blog posts now. I probably should’ve celebrated that. Life has been a lot for awhile though, so it slipped by me 87 posts ago. Oops!

As I mentioned last week, I have been really down about my sink snafu. That’s a word I don’t use often enough. Yes, I had asked the company I bought the sink from about a replacement, but it was highly unlikely that they would get back to me anytime soon, let alone ship anything to me. Anyway, I had taken a gander at Home Depot and found only regular width drains. This didn’t bode well for me. I thought I had found what I needed at IKEA, but it wasn’t so.

A troublesome thing otherwise was that I didn’t get enough of the grout off of my tiles the day I grouted, so I was having to work hard to clean them off for later sealing. The instructions were weird on the pre-mixed stuff. It stated not to touch it for 4 hours. But you’re supposed to clean as much as possible off the surface of the tiles in 20-30 minutes after grouting. Apparently. Something I forgot, but won’t ever again. Also, it’s always good to seal the tiles before grouting because of tiny nooks the grout will find. Lessons learned and some relearned for the other side of the kitchen.

It was a spicy day as I transferred my spices into jars that will fit in my racks. I will need to get more spice jars. I’m fine with this as I have extra space on the racks to fit the six I need to transfer still. I cut myself in the process, but it was my pinky finger and I thankfully didn’t need that for other tasks.

I threw some caution to the wind and ordered an instrument this week to work on goals. I’ve needed a change that will bring more happiness into my days as just working on the renovation and watching TV/playing video games has been negatively affecting my mental health. More on this in the future once I have the instrument and can really begin working on it. I know I’ve tried a few over the years, but I have a good feeling about this one. It’ll be less chord-focused and I think that’s a good thing for me.

Something I’ve been spending some time on learning about is menopause. I’m likely in perimenopause, so it’s time to learn what I can about it. It seems many of the supplements that help are all antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. This makes me wonder if the best diet for this time in a woman’s life is the Mediterranean Diet with some help from the Anti-Inflammatory Protocol. Perhaps lowering the inflammation in the body will reduce the symptoms and make this life change less awful.

I spent Tuesday evening mostly in traffic or at IKEA. It took an hour to drive what normally takes about 15-20 minutes. I don’t know why it was such a mess, but I suspect there was an LRT related reason because we’re almost at the time of year for more students to come to Ottawa and I live near two of the stations for two different lines. One of those is the existing one and the other is the line that goes East into Orleans. Anyway, it was OK after IKEA for me to go East. It was still a mess for anyone going West via the highway though. At IKEA, I got some new cutlery. I had previously gotten the cheap stuff there and it looks all scratched up, so I got a nicer set. I will leave my old set for crafting and out of home lunches.

Wednesday was a boring day for work. My main application was down, so I didn’t get anything done but the start of a contract. A lot of it was spent awaiting my new instrument as it was on a truck for delivery! I hoped it would get to me before I had an appointment in the afternoon. Or after. That would be fine too. I’d like to say I was shocked that my package didn’t arrive because of a dumb reason, but it was coming via Purolator and they are one of the worst delivery companies in Ottawa for my building. They won’t call the receiver to ask how to get in the building. They just leave and you get an email. But you can’t update any information. They will only accept the shipper updating it. And I get that it’s an attempt to ensure the package goes to the right person, but when they have my phone number and could just have me present ID and sign for it, it’s ridiculous. I asked the shipper to have them let me pick it up rather than going through multiple days of shenanigans.

My massage was quite the experience this month. We’re trying to get at the last bit of range restriction I’m having and she did a bunch of muscle twisting on both sides of my spine, pushed on my spine in areas that were locked up, and worked on my teres minor and basically everything under the scapula, as well as, some points on the chest bone, and near my ribs on the front side. I was pretty tired after all of that, but I eventually felt looser.

Thursday came and I was worried about my delivery. I got an email saying it was on the way again. After a brief hang up call, I felt like I needed to be downstairs. When I got there, this was going on:

Now, this was a momentous occasion in the building because we’ve been waiting for the air flow to be fixed since before I even moved here. But. I was so worried that my delivery was doomed. You can’t see the full gamut in the picture, but there were other trucks and basically the entire front of the building was inaccessible to anyone. And it’s totally my usual luck to have that be the exact moment when something like a delivery is to happen!

Thankfully, I found the delivery guy sneaking into the elevator from the back door and was able to get my new Fender Squier Mini P Bass!

I’m super excited and have some courses I’m taking to get the fundamentals down. I think the first pedal I’ll need may involve a tuner unless I get good at doing it without one. The strap is old. I stole it from my acoustic.

Potential disaster for karate though. My foot found some lingering glass and I didn’t know if I was going to make it that night. Since I would be walking a lot on the weekend likely and because my back hurt from the intensive massage I had the day before, I opted to let it heal. I did get an errand done and it wasn’t fun. Per my massage therapist, the time had arrived for change in bra size. It took an hour to find any in the size the Internet said I need. I bought a melon at the same time partly for the joke and for the taste.

After playing around with my bass for a bit, I watched the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. It was the 33rd anniversary on July 31st. I’m a Buffy fan and recently finished a rewatch of the television series and the Angel spin-off series. I’m looking forward to the reboot or late continuation of the slayer story that Sarah Michelle Prinze-Gellar is producing and acting in.

Friday was OK. Nothing too eventful happened at work or outside of it.

Saturday was a big day. It was the Glengarry Highland Games. A friend and I spent the day there and we took in much of the activities. There were events happening in the track area, a petting zoo in the children’s area, highland dancing inside the arena, many food and merch vendors, pipe and drum bands marching, and even concerts though we didn’t get to those as we only found that area near the end of our time there. We watched a friend play rugby though it was hard to see much from where we were sitting. There was a lot of sand, sun, and grass, so I wasn’t feeling great the next day. I was also exhausted from all the people. This itty bitty baby goat was a highlight as it was smaller than the little wooden box that it eventually climbed up on and got comfy.

I plan to do more of the music related things next year.

I was entirely burnt out Sunday. I felt like I somehow got sun burned on areas covered by my clothing. I was itchy and my throat was sore. I suppose part of it was that I’m allergic to grass pollen. I did take allergy medicine and put on sunscreen, but I guess it wasn’t enough.