Greenhouse cabinet delayed in processing

Yesterday Wax and I thought we had the energy to put together the little glass cupboard we bought about six months ago, which is going to be the dwelling for her tropical plants.

However, we might have been a little ahead of ourselves, because for the first time ever in assembling Ikea furniture (having lived in the same greater urban area with one for 15 years or so), we missed a step - 8/24 or something like that - and will have to remove the little shelf supports that hold the glass panels in place, then the roof and glass panels, in order to fit this bracing piece into the bottom.

We are not ready to use the cabinet yet anyway, because we need to go to the hardware store and get a bunch of wire frameworks and plant lights and stuff like that to hold all the little plants.

A few more fun bits of The Antiquary by Walter Scott (setting: Scotland, 1790s)

• [Shopkeeper and postmistress speaking:] "When he gets a frank he fills it up exact to the weight of an unce, that a carvy-seed would sink the scale—but he’s neer a grain abune it. Weel I wot I wad be broken if I were to gie sic weight to the folk that come to buy our pepper and brimstone, and suchlike sweetmeats."



• "You may observe that he never has any advantage of me in dispute, unless when he avails himself of a sort of pettifogging intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact—a tiresome and frivolous accuracy of memory, which is entirely owing to his mechanical descent."



• He who is bent upon a journey is usually easily to be distinguished from his fellow-citizens. The boots, the great-coat, the umbrella, the little bundle in his hand, the hat pulled over his resolved brows, the determined importance of his pace, his brief answers to the salutations of lounging acquaintances, are all marks by which the experienced traveller in mail-coach or diligence can distinguish, at a distance, the companion of his future journey, as he pushes onward to the place of rendezvous.



• He hated greetings in the market-place; and there were generally loiterers in the streets to persecute him, either about the news of the day, or about some petty pieces of business.



• "What say you?—in the language of the world and worldlings base, if you can condescend to so mean a sphere, shall we stay or go?"
  
  "In the language of selfishness, then, which is of course the language of the world—let us go by all means."
  

Other fun things that happened in our house recently that I forgot to mention, aka wife updates

1. Last weekend Wax spent about 20 hours watching videos about Scania trucks (a make of semi trucks made in Sweden). She has never had any special interest in trucks, shipping, or even cars before, but Youtube suggested one video and she watched it, and then watched the rest of the guy's channel for two days. The Youtuber was an American truck fan who was just obsessed with Scanias and had imported several from Europe at great expense and his videos were about taking them to truck shows, talking about them with other truck fans, and tuning them.



2. We got a notification from the city that they've rezoned the opposite side of the street from us and are going to knock down two of the abandoned houses they (the city) have owned and kept standing there as a public hazard for the last few decades, and put a new fire station there. Obviously this is a bit of a long-term plan. I guess it will increase the noise level on our street. And they will probably fix the potholes! And even better, they're going to close the outlet where the street opens onto the highway, and semi trucks won't be able to illegally go down our street and access the back of the parking lot of the shopping center down the hill anymore! So no more waking up to all the china in the house vibrating because of some asshole illegally driving down our residential street. Uh, whenever that actually happens. Probably a few years away.



3. Wax's union was on strike a few weeks ago for two days but it didn't work so they might have to go on strike again in the next month or two. Yay! Extra weekend in the middle of the week!



4. Uhhhh Sweden is sending a Finnish band to Eurovision this year (they won Sweden's Melodifestivalen and are a favorite for the whole thing according to waxjism, but don't ask me about it, because I hate Eurovision and I don't know. NM, though... I guess you can talk about it in the comments if you want and she'll see it since she has writer's block and can't update her journal anymore). These guys are a band from the Western hick coast of Swedish-speaking Finland who have been making humorous pastiche/parody songs for years and have like fifteen albums and have even had songs chart before, she says. Their dialect/accent is so dense that I can only casually pick up like one word per song in some of them. Anyway, they worked with a Swedish songwriter and that apparently made them eligible? LOL.



5. Wax's current shipping OTP looks like... about 90% plausibly going to go canon really soon? She's watching this cheesy dumb primetime soap called 911 about emergency responders in the LA area and shipping a melodramatic guy named Buck whom she calls a "crazy girl" with his BFF, Eddie, who has a teenaged son with CP. Anyway, the show made Buck come out as bi and date a horrible guy played by an alarmingly bulging chunk of beefsteak actor who is apparently... the son of Hulk Hogan a guy who played the Hulk, WHAT???... and a character who previously appeared on the show just to be a racist and bully everyone, and they brought him back to date one of the leads? Uh, but he broke up with him and now the last episode was clearly deliberately written like they are Going There probably in the next few episodes. Mazel tov, I guess.