#349
Jun 8, 2025
Work
I took this week off work.
Books
No books this week!
Roleplaying Games
No game this week!
Akkadian
On Monday I attended a lecture at the British Museum by Irving Finkel about the Babylonian map of the world. I’d seen a version of this lecture previously on youtube, but it seems research has progressed since then (which is very cool, considering this tablet is thousands of years old and we’re still learning interesting new things from it), and also he has a book coming out soon with the current state of the art! I really enjoyed his two previous books, The First Ghosts and The Ark Before Noah, so I’ll definitely get this one too.
Miscellaneous
House Buying
I’ve now moved into the new house! This has been a very busy week.
On Monday I returned to the house to see a painter for a quote to redo the bedrooms, office, and living room. I got a reasonable figure, and am now waiting for some paint samples to arrive next week before booking in the work.
On Tuesday I finished the packing, which involved disassembling the dining table I use as a desk, which was a pretty tough one-man job. Thankfully no crushed toes this time…
On Wednesday I came back to Peterborough to visit a carpet showroom. I found one I really liked and booked in a home visit to take all the measurements, which happened on Saturday.
On Thursday I moved! There was a bit of a crisis, as I locked myself out of my flat for the first time ever just after the movers had finished loading up. The front door was on the latch, and I shut it from the outside with the keys still in the lock on the inside: meaning you couldn’t fully insert a key from the outside. So I had to wait at the flat for 2 hours until the letting agency’s locksmith could show up and break in (which he did amazingly efficiently). Thankfully my mum had offered to be at the house on moving day to help out, so she was able to manage things until I showed up later that afternoon. It could have been really difficult if she hadn’t been there though.
On Friday I unpacked some things (but not much, because there’s the painting and carpet to get done: don’t want to unpack stuff that’ll just need to be moved), organised the boxes to make the full unpack easier, and received some deliveries: new bedframes and some shelving from IKEA, a washing machine from Bosch (I call it my bosching machine); and then the carpet guy showed up around 4pm to measure everything and book in the fitting.
On Saturday I got new mattresses delivered from Simba, did a bit of food shopping, and made a start on organising the kitchen. The mattresses are incredibly comfortable.
Finally on Sunday, today, I returned to the flat to give it a thorough clean, take final electricity and gas meter readings, and drop off the keys.
Next week I’m back at work. I won’t get internet until towards the end of the week (likely Friday as I need a CityFibre engineer to come around and install a new fibre modem as the previous owners took the one that was here), so I’d planned to just tether to my phone—but the phone signal is kind of spotty and it’s not a good experience, so I’ll just go into the office Mon to Thu. That’s one way to learn the commute, I suppose.