operating on less than 5 hours of sleep, i woke up this morning at 8am to oil more of the backyard deck. the reason why i was doing this today was it was a rare day when the late october temperature would be 50° for much fo the day and into the night. australian timber oil requires a minimum of 48 hours to dry with temperature above 50°. also i was hoping i'd get the deck oiled and ready to use before ana came back from her 2 week vacation later this weekend.

i jumped right into work so fast i didn't even use the bathroom. in my mind i wanted to be finished by 9am. there was a patch of wet spot (dripping from above) that i dried with a blowdryer. i started with the floor boards of the landing (midway between the 2nd and 1st floor), figured i'd work my way down. but just that part took nearly 30 minutes, so i decided to skip the steps and go directly to the floor boards of my first story deck.

while i was oiling i met steve's friend andy, who came out onto the 2nd story deck. he was staying over a few days while my neighbors were gone on vacation in tuscany. andy's a friend from the vineyard who's here in town visiting another friend from vermont staying at a boston hospital. later i met his wife annie, who came into the backyard from the ground floor.

i started on the far end of my deck, working my way to my backyard door. i used the small paint roller my father delivered to me last night, working a few boards at a time, before rubbing in the oil with a rag. using a roller seems to be the fastest and best method to apply the oil quickly. i finally finished by 10am, 2 hours later. it definitely took longer than i expected, but still faster compared to if i used a staining brush or only with rags.

after cleaning up (i tossed the oil-soaked rags into a sealed bag into the garbage outside, afraid they might spontaneously combust if i left them indoors), i motorcycled to belmont where i had another day of painting. while i was out i noticed beacon street was barricaded; apparently they're finally repaving the street! temperature today would reach the 70's, although a few times in the morning and early afternoon the sky looked like it was threatening rain (at most we felt a drop or two), but it never did fall. it was actually warm, and the few instances when the sun did peek out, it felt downright summery.

my father and i worked the oil primer. the oil paint needs temperature of 50° or above, and a 4 hour drying time. the acrylic final coat only needs temperture of 40° or above and a 2 hour drying time. we were repriming a lot of the southern facing windows. last december we primed them already, but with old leftover off-brand primer that now a year later was starting to turn to film and disintegrate. he'd already reprimed the living room window and the fascia and soffit area by the backyard entrance. he continued repriming the sunroom windows, while i primed the trimming and windows of the southwestern side of the house.

i ate lunch around 2:30pm, some leftovers my father brought back from the cafe when he was there earlier this morning (about the same time i was at home oiling the deck). my sister came by to drop off hailey and to ask us for help removing a tick from hailey's ear.

afterwards my father continued painting (final coat, semi-gloss) the trimming in front of the house to the right of the front entrance, including the bedroom windows, and working his way to the western side of the house, painting the 2 windows there as well as the fascia (involving a lot of ladder climbing). i caulked the gap we discovered above the western sunroom windows, then cleaned the brushes we used for the oil (primer) painting. i prepped the 4 basement windows, a lot of scrapping and sanding and vacuuming.

our front door replacement awning finally came this morning. we waited until the late afternoon to take the pieces out of the box to inspect them. i thought it'd arrive as a fully-assembled awning but it makes sense that it'd come in parts instead. my father realized a problem right away: the awning was designed to be installed on a flat vertical surface, but the design of our house has a large overhang above the door. unbeknownst to us, our previous awning seemed to be a custom-job specially designed for houses with significant overhang. so we were trying to come up with a solution; most likely we'll just bridge the gap with short pieces of 2x4 cut to size and L-brackets to keep them in place.

when i returned to cambridge i noticed the smell immediately: coffee. could ana be home? i went into the kitchen but nothing seemed amiss, and there was no light behind her closed bedroom door. okay, just my imagination. but then i went into the bathroom and saw that the toilet seat cover was down. i never do this, this is something only ana does! so i went back into the kitchen and sure enough, there was a glass in the sink, and new dishes on the counter! so she was here! but where was she now? did she come back to drop off some stuff and then go out again? i thought she said she'd call me before returning! but hopefully she's gone to live with her friend for a few more days. god knows when she comes back, since she doesn't have classes anymore, she's going to be in the house ALL THE TIME. and that's going to make me crazy.

despite gluing back the arm of my glasses, it broke again. so i found my spare pair and am wearing them now. i think they look ugly but only because i'm not used to them yet. i need new glasses anyway, my current prescription seem a little off these days. or maybe i'm just getting older, because my eyes aren't what they used to be, and i'm having more trouble seeing things up close. bifocals here i come!