Glyderau hike

Some two months ago, Neil and I did a substantial hike, which was preparation for his Welsh 3000s hike in September. I don't seem to have mentioned anything like that since, but that doesn't mean he has stopped training; it only means that I have not joined him. He does a long hike almost every week. And I can go with him, but I don't want to do a long hike like that the day before a race, and I have had a bunch of Sunday races. Now I had one weekend with no race in between two that feature one, so I suggested I go with him. He was up for that.

We didn't have a particularly strong plan; the night before he thought we might climb Pen yr Ole Wen and then head east from there. And he was reluctant to be reliant on the bus, so his idea was to drive. When we had done our little anniversary hike and swim, we hadn't really pushed an early start, but there was plenty of parking. He hoped this time it would be the same.

It was not the same. That had been a Wednesday, and now we were going on a Sunday. In the middle of the school holidays. In the whole of the Ogwen Valley, there wasn't a parking space to be had. We had to come up with Plan B. And that was: drive to Nant Peris, where there is a big P&R, and from there go up Elidir Fawr, and then go east. We weren't quite sure how far.

It was warm on the ascent. Halfway up the slope we paused for a bit because I wanted to take a layer off, and figured it was a good idea to have some coffee as well. Shortly afterwards it actually started raining. It was only a brief shower, but it was a rare occurrence this summer, and it cooled us off. And when we got to the top we had another break. 

View from the first break

From there we had a rather smooth, but quite cool, walk to the bottom of y Garn. There as well we had a little break. And we decided to bypass Llyn y Cwn, and go up to Glyder Fawr. From there we could either descend straight away, or continue past Glyder Fach, and then down over the Miners' path. And then we could get a bus back to the car. 

Where the terrain gets smooth

The descent to Llyn a Cŵn was a doddle, and the ascent to Glyder Fawr is always a bit of a struggle, but at least not as bad as descending it. And you get rewarded by the crazy landscape at the top. The Glyderau are something else!

Glyderau views

Summit selfie

We had some more food there, and decided to go down the long way. So that meant continuing for a bit in the surreal Glyderau landscape. Always nice! And then we took the miners’ track back to the road. I think I have done that once, in the opposite direction. This is really not very frequently trodden terrain for me!

More Glyder views

And more

On the way down

If we would have been at the road really early, we could have gone for a little drink in Pen y Gwrid hotel, but we only had some 25 minutes, so we went straight to the bus stop. A lovely hike! 16.4 km, and 1260m of ascent. A fraction of the Welsh 3000s, but a good score for me!

All fronts painted

The kitchen looks so smart now! I did a final push and that meant that now all the cabinet doors and drawer fronts have been painted, and given new handles. I am really pleased with the result.

Does that mean I am entirely finished? No! I want to have a little break now, but on the slightly longer term I want to paint the kickboards green, like the skirting board by the radiator, and the door. The skirting board by the cupboard has a different colour; that was the house painter taking unwanted initiatives. When I am at it anyway, I might rectify that. 

I am also emptying out all of the cabinets and giving them a good clean. I hadn’t done that for a while.

I think my kitchen is a heck of a lot better than it was, and it is getting better still!

Like new! 

Making more rubrics

What I should be working on these days is my application for senior fellow of the HEA. Unsurprisingly, I got sidetracked. I had been working on the forms we have to fill out after the module evaluations have come in. In one of my modules, there is an assessment the students always want more guidance on. And I have to stop somewhere, otherwise you are doing the assignment for them, and they learn nothing. So I never give them as much as they want, but I do honestly try to help them in ways that I think are not detrimental. 

One thing I thought I could do was make a rubric. Maybe that would help them a bit. I had done it for the dissertation module. And our external examiners like them. So I started making one. But then I figured I should make them for all three assessments. That is a fair amount of work. 

I did it, but it did mean I wasn’t working on my SF HEA application. I would have to get my ass in gear afterwards! Because I really want to get it done this summer. I’m not doing myself any favours not having this accreditation! 

Ceiling update

I was so distracted by all the other things that needed doing that I really neglected work on the ceiling. All the scars that the installers of the infrared panels had created were still there. In late winter and early spring they had at least stopped being holes, but they were still quite conspicuous. Focusing my attention on the kitchen wasn't helping that at all.

That changed when for the first time, a kitchen cabinet door didn't want to give up it plastic lining. When I pulled it off, with difficulty, little bits of MDF came with it. That stopped the originally very smooth surface from remain so smooth. All the doors I had done previously had given up their plastic without a fight, so they still very smooth. What to do? I was trying to give them all a comparable look.

I decided to make a bit of filler, and keep it quite liquid. I had done most of my other filler-related work with ready-made stuff, but I still had a remnant of filler in powder form lying around. And once you make that, you have to use it up. So after I had put a little skim on the damaged parts of the kitchen cabinet door, I used the rest on the ceiling. And that worked quite well.

I had another round like that, with another door that held on to its plastic. So that was two rounds of additional filler; by then the scars were becoming inconspicuous. And after some light sanding, you would hardly notice the scars were there!

Ghostlike outline of the biggest hole in the bedroom ceiling 

Spot the two small ones! 

After that I had run out of powder filler. And I figured it needed one last round of touching up; then I could to the final sanding, and potentially paint it. I already bought a new box. I am glad there is some progress in this work too!

Car update

I figured that a man who runs a garage/second hand car place can get a car sorted out with some battery power and a valid MOT pretty quickly. And maybe they can, but might have different priorities. I decided weeks ago to buy the Nissan Leaf. It took the garage holder more than a week to charge it. And then I hoped the MOT would be a doddle. Apparently, it wasn’t. 

I figured that he would want to get rid of that car as fast as possible, as his forecourt was pretty busy. Surely he would want to make space for cars he can actually sell? Rather than providing free storage space for me? 

I also had no way of knowing if he was bullshitting me. I started to think he was. You can check online what the MOT status of a car is. When it became clear it had its MOT, I hadn't been contacted by the man. When I phoned him he said he had only found out five minutes previously that that was the case. I figured I could pick it up now. He said I couldn't; he suggested Saturday. I wasn't sure why. He then seemed to make up a family event that afternoon. It would go a bit far to call him a liar, but I suggested I pick it up the day after then. He agreed.

I didn't know why he wanted to hang on to this car! It wasn't taxed. You can't legally drive it. What was he doing with it? I was getting suspicious. But what could I do? I could pull out, but then I was back at square one. Would he really be doing something awful to the car that would make me regret my choice?

On the day he had said I could pick it up I phoned him again. He was still hesitant. And I suppose he figured he couldn't fob me off anymore. He said it had an intermittent warning on the dashboard. That needed to be sorted first. It was the "motor power limited" error. After we terminated the call I had a bit of a Google. It looked like that meant there was a problem with the battery.

This issue is absolutely solvable, but it could take a lot of time and money. And I was very tired of waiting for this car that never materialised. So I phoned him back and I told him I wanted the bail out of the purchase. He was clearly disappointed, but he agreed.

What I now have to do is keep an eye on my bank account. I hope he refunds me soon! And start the search again. I hope my next try will be more successful!

Eclipse

I suppose I have been lucky with solar eclipses. I got the best possible experience in 1999, when part of Europe had a full eclipse. Me and my boyfriend at the time just decided to go on holiday in the country where you could see it the best, which turned out to be Romania. We were right at the centre of the event, and there was a completely cloudless sky, while most of the rest of Europe was not that lucky. It was very impressive!

The eclipse in ‘99

Only two years later, while on a scientific cruise, I ended up seeing an unexpected partial eclipse. This happened just before sunset, so you could just look at the sun with your naked eyes.

The eclipse in ‘01

I only found out about a week and a half beforehand there was going to be an almost complete one here in the UK. Way too late to get eclipse glasses! But I figured I had already seen all there was to see. But I still wanted to get a bit of the experience.

On the day, I improvised an eclipse viewer from a little cardboard box and some tinfoil. And after it was reported to have started I left my house to go up the little mound nearby. From my house, you can’t really see the west. There are trees in the way.

My homemade viewer

My pinhole construction worked! I could see that the eclipse had indeed started. And the mound had a fair number of people on it, clearly there for the same purpose. Quite a lot of them were facing the other way and let the cameras of their phones do the work. With my phone, that didn't work, but I had my viewer.

Eclipse watchers on the parched mound

I texted Chris to say that we were quite some people watching the eclipse on this field, which is only a few minutes from my house, I was only a few seconds from his. He responded that he was watching it in the street. And I figured it is nicer to share experiences like that, so I decided to leave the mound to see him.

The first thing I saw was the tail of a black cat, and shortly afterwards Chris's head. That makes sense; he has got a black cat. But when I got closer I saw it wasn't his cat. This was an unidentified tiny specimen. 

Chris was trying to use a cheese grater as a pinhole camera, but that wasn't much of a success. My little cardboard box did a much better job, and he was appreciative of it. And the little cat was just appreciative of an additional person who could deliver snuggles.

The partially eclipsed sun, and me and my new friend 

We took turns with the viewer, and we slowly saw the world get a bit darker. It really felt dusky when the eclipse was at its maximum. I enjoyed the strange atmosphere. And in between the staring at the sun and snuggling the cat, we gossiped up on running and painting jobs and jury service and cars and whatnot.

When the eclipse was already waning, a lady came out of a nearby house. It turned out she had parked right in front of Chris's house, and was quite apologetic about that. Chris didn't mind at all. But she saw us with my viewer, and said that some more people about to come out of that same house had eclipse glasses, and if we fancied a look. We did! And we could still see the side bite out of the sun. With these glasses it was so much more impressive than it had been with the viewer. What a nice surprise!

After we had given the glasses back and the people disappeared it was mainly over. The day had its original brightness back, and I said goodbye to both Chris and the little cat and went home. I had just seen my third eclipse. I am a lucky bastard!

Called up for jury service

A few years ago, Jaco was called up for jury service. Until that time, I thought foreign nationals would not be eligible. Clearly, we are. And you could be called up any time.

One day I found some junk mail and a serious-looking envelope on the doormat. I had a look, saw the word ‘tribiwnlysoedd’ and realised what was happening. I was summoned for jury duty! I had a bit of a look at the documents inside. They were a mess; I had all the paperwork in both Welsh in English, but they were not sorted by language. And they had page numbers, but each set of documents started counting three times. I had six pages one! That is hardly practical. But the information was clear: unless I was incapable of understanding what was going on, I was expected to show up at the court in Caernarfon shortly after the start of term. The duration was supposed to be two weeks, but it could overrun. Postponing was an option, but I figured I might want to get it over with. There is no time in the year when this is convenient. My employer was expected to cooperate. And I had to respond quite quickly.

My summons

The first thing I did was have a look at my teaching in the designated two week period they had indicated. They said it could overrun, but I figured I might cross that bridge when I reached it. And I came up with a possible solution for everything that was timetabled in that period. There were two days in the field; these are really difficult to reschedule, so I hoped the people I normally go with could do it without me. And then there were lectures. I figured I could probably swap most of them with my colleagues who were timetabled later in the year. For two of them I didn't see that happen; I hoped Jaco was willing to deliver one, and I figured the other one might have to just be a recording.

I then sent a message to the Head of School to bring him the bad news, and tell him how I thought we could deal with it. He agreed and hoped I could make it happen.

So far the responses have been positive. It looks like this is going to go ahead. And I have also heard that it is possible you don't need to serve the full two weeks. I hope I will be lucky! But there is only one way to find out. In early October, I am going to see the British justice system from up close and personal!