Week 53: Settling

A week of settling in nicely, some satisfying DIY, sampling a lot of champagne, even more super-fast internet, and a farewell at work.

Posted on by Rowan Manning.
Tagged with HouseDIYSleepChampagneMistakesWork

  • I’m feeling very settled already and excited to make the new flat homier. It’s so quiet, I’m sleeping like a baby (weird expression based on what I hear from my babied-up friends - they do not sleep well) now that I can’t hear constant train screeching.

  • I’m feeling very smug about the little bits of DIY I’ve been doing. I’ve never really bothered in rentals, but this week I learned how to fix threaded screw holes and rehang my kitchen door. Rowan B said that it looks like my walls are concrete based on the surface-mounted light switches and that I may need an SDS drill – I need to remember that our 1:1s are for line management first and DIY tips second 😁

  • I couldn’t admit it last week because it was still too raw, but within an hour of getting the keys to this flat I locked myself out. I’m ready to laugh about it now, but it’s a very expensive mistake which I won’t be repeating.

  • We ordered some desks and an armchair, and have decided that we’re making our home office the highest priority room to get right as it’s where we’ll probably spend the most time. I’m really excited about the desks: they’re beautiful, made from reclaimed wood, and have built-in monitor risers. I’m so excited to not be working at a very old IKEA table anymore.

  • Hyperoptic customer support is super helpful. I rang to question my internet speeds as in some areas of the flat we were getting a paltry 100MB/s. They sent me their better router (free of charge) to try out, and it’s fixed everything. It’s consistently 600–750MB/s download, and I once saw (in one of my many speed tests) an upload speed of 950MB/s!

  • A bright little lamp in the shape of a cute cat

    Euan and Gallal, our neighbours (weird), got us a cat lamp as a housewarming gift. It’s a board game in-joke, I love it.

  • We broke our drinking fast in style by going to a champagne event. There were more than 100 champagnes to sample, and I think we got through a pretty decent number of them. I was very merry by the end; ~50ml samples add up pretty quickly.

  • I was in the office on Thursday for Cait’s leaving afternoon tea. I’m sad to see her go, she started around the same time as me and has had an enormous impact on making the FT a great place to work. My next boss’s boss’s boss has some big shoes to fill!

  • I’m going to write year notes ASAP, probably for tomorrow as 1st November is the anniversary of starting this thing! I read Lee’s this morning, which brightened up my morning coffee. He did absolutely smash that presentation.