🎉🎉🎉🎉 It’s Friday!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉
The topic of this discussion is: anything.
Anything exciting going on in your life? Things got you down? Did you try a new recipe that you’d like to share? etc.
Two exciting things from this week. First, we booked flights to go back to Southern California in January for a combined birthday celebration for our niece and nephew.
Second, we found out my wife needs to go to a work conference in The Netherlands at the end of February. We plan to take advantage of her free flight and combine it with some flight credits we have from last summer to turn it into a mini vacation.
Unsure where we’ll go exactly, probably London and Paris. Still tbd. It’ll be cold as hell, but I’m looking forward to it.
I’m still readjusting after BBS November. I get to the end of the day and start convincing myself that I’m feeling scruffy when I’m most definitely not…
Have you considered Brussels? You can get there quickly by train from Amsterdam.
We haven’t yet, but I’ll look into it. I replied above about why London/Paris are on the table, but we haven’t made any final decisions yet.
Brussels also has a fantastic brick and mortar Wetshaving hardware store, Au Grand Rasoir, fyi
Oh very cool. This would be dangerous for my wallet! ;)
Hope you’ll have a fun vacation, regardless of where you decide to go. I only saw the Netherlands from a bus window during a trip to Scotland in 2019. We had to get on a ferry there to travel over to England. I quite liked the beautiful windmills though…
London and Paris are fun, but so are Amsterdam and Bruges. If you have only a few days, might as well take advantage of where you are
Edit: I meant Brussles, but the automiscorrect was fortunate because Bruges is adorable too
I’d love to go to Brussels and/or Bruges. We’re currently leaning toward London because my wife has a couple friends and colleagues who live there that she wants to see.
I’ve also never been to France, but she’s spent a good chunk of time there over the years.
We’ll see what we land on, I’m just looking forward to spending some more time in Europe next year. :)
I’m still congested, coming up on day 6. I can’t do my job when I’m congested, so I’ve been enjoying some paid sick time the past week.
I’ve been able to take advantage of the extra time by doing a bunch of stuff around the house.
I removed the mower deck from the lawn tractor and put the snowblower attachment on (just in time for 2 inches of snow yesterday).
I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know our oil boiler, which is used for heat and hot water. I heard some air bubbles in the baseboard heaters, so watched some YouTube on how to bleed the system. It went exactly like this. Even after bleeding everything (multiple times) I could still hear air in the baseboards.
I did some more research and it turns out the system has automatic air bleeders (they let air out but not water), and I found mine to be closed! They probably started leaking at some point so someone disabled them instead of replacing them (they cost $20 each, after all). I also read that a failed expansion tank can introduce air into the system, so I got a new one of those ($75USD). I’m glad I did, because the old one was completely failed and full of water (it should be half air/half water).
I also replaced one of the valves which started leaking while I was messing around with everything.
It has been a fun learning experience, and somehow the heat still works! Wife approved!
The boiler is 30+ years old, and we plan on getting it replaced after this winter. Now that I have some sweat equity in it, I’ll be sad to see it go.
Get well soon! Being congested is the most awful thing about a cold.
That’s some mighty productive sick time! I tend to laze around and play video games when I take sick days.
Good on you for debugging your boiler system. You never know when that knowledge will prove useful, even if you ultimately replace the boiler.
Christmas season is here and it’s notoriously difficult for me, as always. Since my early teenage years, I’ve come to dread the holiday season. Normally, I sign up for late shifts every year to feel at least a little bit useful. I usually am a person who adores the cold seasons, but I surely prefer autumn over winter since I drive. Winter also kinda lost its magic over here in Germany due to climate change - we used to have such beautiful snow covered forests, but nowadays it’s mostly just cold and rainy. Today’s yet another stormy December day with heavy wind gusts, it seems like these are more frequent in the last few years.
Pros are that I should have all the Christmas presents for my parents ready by Monday - since my 20s, I enjoy making thoughtful gifts much more than receiving any. Since I have the day off, I can spend my time to wrap everything up nicely after I finished one appointment: my new glasses are already done and I can pick them up after the weekend. It’s a nice tobacco-coloured acetate model by mexx.
New prescription or just new frames? Either way, sounds fun.
The way it works over here is that we can get our eyesight checked every year for free and most opticians will do such a free test when you want to get new glasses, just to check if your sight has worsened. Mine got a tiny bit worse, just a minuscule amount, but I am glad that I’ll get completely new glasses adjusted perfectly to balance it out. Basically, I only needed a prescription for the first time I ever got glasses at age 15 - everything else is taken care of by my optician of choice. I’ve found a new one last month thanks to a flyer for a sale and so I will also save a good amount on my new glasses. 😄
