Tending toward rest

My apologies for the light posting.
I was winding down after my exam period. Just got the results in today. My grades are even better than expected.
Double plus good! Quite chuffed with myself as usual.
On top of that I have a case of very bad tendonitus in the elbows. -s. Yes. That's right. Both of them. And I haven't been near a tennis racket since last summer.
The only thing tennis related I've been doing was watching Henin and Clijsters during the Australian Open.
It looks like I may have been doing a little bit too much of weight pulling at the gym. Bleh.
So typing is very painful at the moment. I've been saving all I have for my classes which started again today.

Blocked Drain Inc.

Blocked drains. We haz them.
Well, not any more.
We already found very shoddy workmanship a while back and now was the time to replace them (temporarily) until we can hook up the rain water tank.
One side has completely been done.

The second picture is the crane digging away some earth about 2 meters from the house to make a nice, broad path for walking and putting some benches in so we can sit in the shade in the afternoon.

Underneath, but not as deep as we expected are the drains from our bathroom, kitchen and the septic tank.
We replaced all of them (except the septic tank), added an extra entry for the drainage that is going in around the house and an extra entry that gives us access in future to clean the drains. Those can be seen where the white plastic bags are covering the holes.

Of course Mouser had to help and had to see if we had sloped the drains 1 cm per meter.

The worst bit is still to come. We still have to put the water tank in and remove the temp drains. We had to dig the most bit by hand because the guys with the digger couldn't be bothered any more. The first thing I insisted on was putting up a tent so we could work in the shade.

But with soaring temperatures and our bad backs Dr Livingstone called up the guy with the tractor who did the corral a while back and he had time to dig another trench to find yet another semi-blocked drain.
The people who lived here never put any filters in the pipes on the roof so for years on end all kinds of leaves and stuff have been building up inside, clogging the drain and obstructing the evacuation of water. Mind you, while Dr Livingstone was flushing out the rain pipes, a tennis ball popped out!!
Just fancy that!

Although Mouser did look very skeptical at what we were doing.
Poor puzzled kitteh!

Cushion the impact

My first semester at university started last week. One of the auditoria where we have classes on the history of the Middle Ages has these awful wooden seats. The kind that used to adorn trams primarily in the first half of the twentieth century. Sitting on them for an hour is very much like sitting on a miséricorde. Or, in keeping with the course matter, a Medieval torture rack.
So I decided to give my derrière the benefit of the painful doubt and bought one of these. In turquoise! Yesrday I used it the entire day and still could get out of my seat like a spring chicken! Well, not quite but nearly as fast as all those fresh faced eighteen somethings.
The Dynair ball cushion (to give it its proper name) is made out of some kind of thick, durable, floppy rubber filled with air. It works like a normal cushion but it also exercises your muscles, even the tiniest movements make your back compensate the wobble motion. I'd recommended to everyone who has to sit down for hours on end at a desk. It's not expensive (I paid 40€) and you can claim it back tax wise (ergonomic back strengthening office stuff). I've got the 33cm version, I was taken aback a little because of the size (I thought it would fit into my hangbag, but it's slightly bigger than the entire bag). I have one of those Avolites 'From Rock to Opera' messenger bags and it fits handsomely in there. And I still have some room left for an A4 binder and my box of sandwiches.
So I'm taking this Togu thing everywhere I go from now on. (And yes it does sound like something a vegetarian might eat).There is one little snag. I feel like I'm wearing the hat with the tall feathers in the Muppet sketch. Those who come and sit behind will know what I am talking about.
And if people inquire why on earth I'm sitting on a frisbee I usually have to mention in passing it is not for hemorrhoids.
I've also discovered an advantage, though it might only be me. Sometimes the chairs are too low to adopt a good hight for typing. I get shoulder aches and tennis elbow from having to work in that strained position. I can adopt a more relaxed stance now, even when I'm just at our kitchen table having dinner.
And I just like to stand out from the crowd too. I like to feel special.

Flag this

Today Belgium celebrates its version of Independance Day.
A patriotist nature is not inherently ingrained in Belgian genes. I don't think anyone can sing the country's anthem in at least one official language, let alone know all the words to the tune. The majority might just be able to hum it.


Flags only appear in the street here for very special reasons:
-the national team qualified for some football tournament
-a Belgian player has reached finals of some tennis tournament
-an athlete has reached the finals of some Golden League tournament
-flags need to be aired once in a while

I don't own a Belgian tricolore.
I do however own a pirate flag. It is now up our balcony and is visible from the street. It's there for some very special reasons:
I want to get people to start thinking about the sense or reason for putting up a flag on a special day.
And I want to protest against the way this country is being run by those bumbling nincompoops that make the country I live in the biggest enigma in Europe since the Rubic's cube first hit the shelves.

Easy peasy

Date, compare, discuss. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. And there was another similar question about statuettes.
All those nightmares, all those worries. What for?
So I know if I get stalked in my dreams again by historic artefacts, I will most certainly NOT be quizzed about them.

-holds breath-

How's that for anecdotal superstitious mumbo jumbo?
My sceptic mind does not give in to silly little fantasies. I wonder how many students fail exams because of those kinds of 'educated guesses'. Could that be ranked among some superstitious beliefs held by many athletes? Professional tennis players are famed for being very superstitious. To read up on some: try this article for some bullshit anecdotal evidence. Apparently it is called inductive reasoning.