Ceiling above the staircase is painted Sunday, 14-Apr-24 20:33:40 CEST

Sunday, 21-Apr-24 20:59:07 CEST

First layer done in staircase hall

This week, DW continued to paint the staircase hall.

Monday 15 April

That night, Merida had her 9th seizure. Here are the seizures on the list so far.

Seizure number	Date	Time	Days since last
1	11 December 2023	10:44	-
2	11 December 2023	21:45	0
3	19 December 2023	12:30	8
4	19 December 2023	21:19	0
5	27 January 2024	17:17	39
6	16 February 2024	18:29	20
7	16 March 2024	14:09	29
8	7 April 2024	05:20	22
9	15 April 2024	04:10	8

It was rough to wake up at that time of the night. Merida had her sweater on, so that was not helpful. I struggled to get it off while she still had her seizure. We continued sleeping and woke up at the regular time.

DW worked from the office today, and I worked from home. Today, Merida developed a friendship with Hannah.

Merida had a hiding place somewhere on the first floor. I searched for her a couple of times. Eventually, I found her near the solar panel transformer in the hall.

In the evening, I decided to remaster the song "Raining again and again" and publish it to streaming services. The song has been on my mind lately, so I decided it has to be appropriately released to Spotify and other services. Distrokid has an automatic remastering service. Obviously, you have to pay for it, but it lets you listen to the result. When I heard the result, I thought: I can do this myself!

This song was missing a genuinely proper end. I decided to let it en with a reverb effect. Then, I bumped up the intensity of the song. I slightly increased the mid frequencies and the stereo spread by a tiny bit.

The gossip is that you should publish your songs with much lower sound levels, but that does not hold. In the previous song, Build That House, I followed all suggestions for mastering as well as possible, and the sound levels were far too low. This time, I pumped it up right below the ceiling.

.

The first version is the original from Suno.ai. There is a lot of room to increase the sound levels. I took the bottom version too far. The whole song had become a sausage. The version I released is the middle version. It is louder, but there are still less loud sections.

I made an album illustration for the song. I made it with tensor art. Pasted the song text into the prompt. Good enough.

While in the DistroKid web environment, I noticed I earned 78 dollar cents on my previous song. That is not bad at all.

Tuesday 16 April

Today, we both went to the office. DW held a course at the work. It went fine. This was her finale of the course.

In the afternoon, I had a walk with two colleagues. We came across this disparate display of colors and shapes. The flowers had their best moment already, but it was nice nevertheless.

At the puzzle table, the entrance of the house is finished. I tried but could not find any piece to put in place. I think my strengths are debugging source code and not laying puzzle pieces.

We took off the sweater. Merida is now free! The operation left a stripe on her belly, and it had been shaved. When we removed the sweater, she started licking the wound fiercely. It was challenging to see her lick it, but it went well.

Wednesday 17 April

This morning, I got the message from DistroKid that "It is raining again and again" is live on streaming platforms:

• Apple Music
• Spotify
• iTunes
• Youtube Music
• Youtube

In the morning, I worked from home. DW almost had a day off except for a meeting.

After lunch, I had hoped DW would paint the staircase hall, but she did the paperwork for our house in Sweden. I did not want to be active in my workshop cleaning project. So I mastered "Sitting in my Skoda" and made an album art for the song. First, I took a photo of the car. Then, I transformed this into album art. It was Tensor Art that helped me with that. It nicely gobbled the logotype. The album art rules are stringent at Distro Kid, so this is good enough. So now I have my third single uploaded to Distro Kid. From now on, I will distribute my songs right away this way.

We had a walk this afternoon in between the showers. It was such a lovely moment. The light on the pavement was magical. I think the earlier rain acted as a reflector, so the projection of the leaves became brighter than I usually see here. While walking, we talked about DWs trip to Tallinn. DD and DW had a great time there. DD filmed for her school project. They had been to arts and crafts shops. They also walked a lot. I think my feet would have been ground if I had been on that trip.

Thursday 18 April

Today, DW worked from home, and I went to the office. It was a busy day. We are finishing a major release based on things I have worked on since May last year. It will be grand.

At the puzzle table, there was significant progress made.

I figured out that my latest song was a bit too aggressive. In the evening, I decided to make it more humble. In the process, I lost a bit of the musical quality of the first version. I decided to go for the newer, humble version anyway. I edited last week's blog to reflect the new song text, and I mastered the song and uploaded it to Distro Kid.

Friday 19 April

This was another day when DW was working from home while I went to the office. It was a rainy day, the way we got used to this winter. I still think of it as winter, although the spring is in full swing. It is raining a lot, and it feels like winter.

I had much to do at work, so I did not lay any piece of the puzzle. The sky started to fill.

In the evening, I sat scrolling through YouTube. It was rather useless, really.

Saturday 20 April

The last night, Merida slept in my armpit three times. She purred loudly. Really cosy.

I got the news that "Get up and dance" had been released, and to my surprise, it had two likes on YouTube already!

• Spotify
• iTunes
• Apple Music
• YouTube
• YouTube Music

The plan for today is to give the sheep an area to graze along the west side of the property.

After breakfast, we started on our mission. We set up one net along the outer north side of the property. We had this running out between the two west-side neighbors. We had to clean the area because there were toys, plastic garbage, tarp. This is the first time we extended the area between these two neighbors.

We also set up more nets to protect brushes along the fence. When all this hard work was done, we let the sheep out in the newly prepared area, and they were unhappy about it. It felt insecure to go to this new place. They would rather stay at the winter place and complain loudly about the changes enforced upon them.

After lunch, I ordered a pneumatic Slair impact wrench. This beast is suitable for our air compressor. The compressor produces 199 liters of air per minute at eight bars. The impact wrench I ordered requires 113 liters of air per minute at 6.3 bars. It produces power of a maximum of 680 newton meters. This wrench had three levels of strength in both directions. I don't know if this last part is enough. Other impact wrenches produce over a thousand Newton meters but don't work on our air compressor. It is worth a try, anyhow. I think it will work very well with the car tires. I am a bit worried that it is not sufficient for the tires on the tiny house, but I will find out.

Then, we went to the city to get a new paint bucket grid at the hardware store. On the way, we went to the upcycling center and picked up more compost bags. Now, we have eight in total.

Sometimes, I tried to open the garden doors to let out Merida, but she did not like being alone in the garden. Especially not when it is a little windy and not sunny.

Sunday 21 April

The last night, it rained again and again. This morning, it was sunny, although a little chilly. I tried to open the garden door in the living room. Merida roamed around in the garden near the door. She dashed in sometimes when she got scared of something. The living room was chilly, but we kept the doors open. We put on thicker sweaters to stand it, but Merida had a lovely time in the garden.

After breakfast, DW started painting the staircase hall. She now painted the first layer over the whole hall. She must order another bucket of Auro paint to finish the job. I worked on cleaning the workshop.

We had lunch, and after lunch, we went to the PILs. On the way there, we could enjoy many blossoming tulip fields. MIL celebrated her 95th birthday. It was great to see the family. DW and I gave MIL a package of Estonian chocolate and a ceramic bowl DW had bought in Tallinn. It had a bird decoration. It was nice.

On the way home, I stopped and photographed a tulip field. I concluded that if you want to make lovely images from tulip fields, you should do it with a drone. This was good enough. The sky was beautiful as well. At some point, I will get my camera back from DD. Until then I have to use my mobile phone camera.

When we came home, DW ordered another bucket of Auro paint. It will arrive next week.

While we were at PILs, a neighbor returned the earth auger. Another neighbor returned the wheelbarrow.

I feel that both DW and I are working hard at our respective daytime jobs. We both have taken a significant part in big projects that are soon reaching the final stages. We both need to watch out for becoming overworked. I am pleased that the paint project in the stair case hall has progressed nicely. We got the sheep an area to graze, and I ordered a pneumatic impact wrench. I love good tools! This week, I published three songs.

Here ends this week's blog. See you again next week!