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bugshaw at 10:04am on 01/05/2006
bugshaw at 10:04am on 01/05/2006It's the 1st of the month, and I recite "white rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits" as the first thing I say that day to ensure good luck for the coming month. But what do we get for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
major_clanger's following it with "brown capybaras, brown capybaras, brown capybaras" and my response of "blue guinea pigs, blue guinea pigs, blue guinea pigs", aside from a snippet of content for my LiveJournal, and practice at typing "capybaras" and "guinea pigs"?
I played with my Humbrol glass etch spray yesterday. This is intended to give a frosted glass effect, and can be used with stencils. We are hoping to frost our front window (into the dining room), to reduce casual peering by passers-by - it would be nice to incorporate a design into the frosting, possibly even the house number. For reasons best known to the builders, our house number is camouflaged very effectively: the numbers are silver, and attached to the grey front door at around hip height. A few feet in front of the door is a railing, also painted grey, also at hip height - which corresponds to eye level if you are driving along, trying to peer through the row of scraggy hawthorns to see our front door. "Opposite Number 88", I tell people when they call plaintively to say that they can't find us.
The hamster has destroyed a glass tank through TMI, so I have some glass to play around with and test how stencils work, and how many thin coats are needed to get a decent level of opacity, and what happens if you get impatient with the instructions and spray too close, for too long [Answer: a dribbly mess]. It was fun, but very time-consuming and messy; if we were to spray an inside window it would take a day to build up enough coats, it would stink, and we would need to cover everything in newspaper first. I'm not confident in my ability to get even coverage, and I'd need a better way of fixing stencils so the spray doesn't diffuse underneath. On the plus side, it is fairly easy to remove the etch with a fingernail if you make a mistake - on the minus side, it is fairly easy to remove the etch with a fingernail so a spot of casual poking would necessitate the entire job doing again. Grrr. So I think we'll go for this ready-made stick-on sheeting, and I'll leave the spray etch for (much) smaller craft projects.
Money: Looking at my pay statement I see April 1st has passed, and I have automatically gone up a level with corresponding pay increment. £20 a month. Cor! I'm not used to working somewhere with a graded structure, where you move to the next slot automatically each year you stay on. Partly this is because I have moved jobs every 1.5-2 years, but mostly I have worked for more ad-hoc companies.
Things To Do Today:
major_clanger's following it with "brown capybaras, brown capybaras, brown capybaras" and my response of "blue guinea pigs, blue guinea pigs, blue guinea pigs", aside from a snippet of content for my LiveJournal, and practice at typing "capybaras" and "guinea pigs"?I played with my Humbrol glass etch spray yesterday. This is intended to give a frosted glass effect, and can be used with stencils. We are hoping to frost our front window (into the dining room), to reduce casual peering by passers-by - it would be nice to incorporate a design into the frosting, possibly even the house number. For reasons best known to the builders, our house number is camouflaged very effectively: the numbers are silver, and attached to the grey front door at around hip height. A few feet in front of the door is a railing, also painted grey, also at hip height - which corresponds to eye level if you are driving along, trying to peer through the row of scraggy hawthorns to see our front door. "Opposite Number 88", I tell people when they call plaintively to say that they can't find us.
The hamster has destroyed a glass tank through TMI, so I have some glass to play around with and test how stencils work, and how many thin coats are needed to get a decent level of opacity, and what happens if you get impatient with the instructions and spray too close, for too long [Answer: a dribbly mess]. It was fun, but very time-consuming and messy; if we were to spray an inside window it would take a day to build up enough coats, it would stink, and we would need to cover everything in newspaper first. I'm not confident in my ability to get even coverage, and I'd need a better way of fixing stencils so the spray doesn't diffuse underneath. On the plus side, it is fairly easy to remove the etch with a fingernail if you make a mistake - on the minus side, it is fairly easy to remove the etch with a fingernail so a spot of casual poking would necessitate the entire job doing again. Grrr. So I think we'll go for this ready-made stick-on sheeting, and I'll leave the spray etch for (much) smaller craft projects.
Money: Looking at my pay statement I see April 1st has passed, and I have automatically gone up a level with corresponding pay increment. £20 a month. Cor! I'm not used to working somewhere with a graded structure, where you move to the next slot automatically each year you stay on. Partly this is because I have moved jobs every 1.5-2 years, but mostly I have worked for more ad-hoc companies.
Things To Do Today:
- Keep catching up with work
- Go to the gym
- Try to remember how to do Tai Chi, as class starts again tomorrow
- Play with LJ Scrapbook/Flickr/something
- Invite local friends to social/theatre events
- TAFF: finish some stuff for fanzine
- Write about the letter 'N'
- Clean hamster
- More last bits of post-Eastercon admin
- Start reviewing the various projects I'm working on and planning where to take them in the next few months
- Get an early night, ready for work on Tuesday!
(no subject)
The window film seems like a much, much better idea.
(no subject)
For My Information, the windows are approx 48x160cm (cost £43-ish) and 37x150cm (cost £37). So, about the same as 20 cans of spray etch ;-)