My FitBit used to do a great job of guessing how many stairs I’d climbed during the day, and I think the best I did was something like 45 floors on a Sunday when I was going up and down from the bathroom to the basement to use the table saw or retrieve a tool or some scrap wood. I haven’t figured out how to get the Apple Watch to give me the same estimates—it’s buried within one of the associated apps and I can’t be assed enough to bother right now—but I’d guess I beat 45 flights getting the windows in place on Sunday. After fixing the power switch on the table saw in the basement, I used that to rip a bunch of boards down to get sash stops the right size. I then measured and cut a stool the proper size and shape for the inside to clean up the casing. The miter saw is up in the bathroom so I had to run up there to trim things to size and come back down to fit them in place. By 9:30 that evening I was exhausted and went to bed early. Monday morning my knees were sore and my legs didn’t want to climb the stairs at the train station.

The other big event was delivery of our cabinets on Friday. The original time been scheduled for Wednesday but when they said ‘delivery’ they failed to mention it’s just curbside, so you have to get the stuff in your house yourself. On Wednesday a driver stopped at the house, spent an hour moving the boxes out of, and then back into the truck, and left. I got a couple of calls from the company, and we rescheduled for Friday. The five smaller boxes were reasonably easy to carry inside but the big linen cabinet is huge, and the guy on the truck took pity on me and helped me get it up the front stairs and into the front hallway, after which I handed him a $20 and thanked him profusely. I’m clearly going to have to open the box and break it down to its base parts—it came completely assembled so I have to pull the shelves and drawers out of it—and enlist a couple of friends to help me get it up the stairs and into the bathroom. I hope we can get it to stand up correctly…