Kates Journal

So, ‘becca’s covered a full 3000 miles since her rebuild and it’s service time. While the newly rebuilt A+ engine has somewhat longer service intervals than the A-series, the suspension, gearbox and back-axle are all original mog and need servicing every 3000 miles. It’s a clear blue sky out there and I’m going to shower and head to the store to get some oil and oil-fiter and bits and bobs (I’m not going to do the valve clearances, but I will ring Southam Metro Centre to see if they can fit me in any day before Xmas to get the 500 mile check over done; because they said just carry on driving and come back when you’ve got enough time free).

I’m planning to take the fan-heater outside with me (the one with switches) so I can warm my toes and my hands as I need to – because despite the sun being ‘out’ it’s still frosty outside. I’m also planning a quick trip to the bank to deposit Kathryn’s half of the mortgage and such – and then I will get the stuff ordered for the DAF. I’m already going to have to move ‘er today, which is less than ideal, but I need the driveway space. My lax approach to asking about the garage on the corner means today’s service has to be conducted on the driveway. In the cold. Lying on a sheet of cardboard.

I also need to sort out some means of getting music outside or I will, and I say this quite honestly, go nuts. I hate working on the car in silence, and I’ve done it often enough. I’ll probably run the cable round from the back of the house and dump the laptop on the wall. But I must admit to being slow about getting outside because it’s fucking freezing. It was cold *in* the house (this morning, it’s not now :) ). Outside it’s going to be even colder.

Work continues to be incredibly short staffed, virtually every day they’ve offered me extra shifts – I’ve covered 2 this week and been offered another 2 – and we’ve been working with more agency staff in the department than I’ve ever seen before. We have had some truly excellent Thornbury nurses, which is not entirely surprising, but it’s good when you see how agency should be. People with plenty of A&E experience coming in, which makes it far easier to deal with than when you have lots of non-A&E staff.

I’ve accidentally accepted a shift I shouldn’t have though. I’d meant to keep the day open for Agency, but forgot to put that on the Calendar. Ah well, at least I know I’ve got a shift.

I need to send my agency my Plaster form and Suture form and Cannulation form too. Get that sorted this week, maybe.

Sorry, this is emensely dull for you. Today’s journal post comes from the ‘Post it note of things to do’ genre. ;)

Yeah, so anyhow, on other topics. Canada’s been lurking in my consciousness a lot recently. Contemplating logistics, and timings, and considering posting on the vancouver community (and possibly canadian lesbians) to get some input on ideas. Propsects for Kathryn’s job-interests, good hospitals, should we consider living in Richmond – or would it be like living in a giant Slough. Also wondered if there’s some kind of equivalent to housing auctions here – there – just because I’d like to look at Reno possibilities (not yet talked to Kathryn about that) – with the idea that we could live in place A, reno place B (or even get people in to do it) – and thus be able to land up in a house of our own (again) – ‘cos I like having a place which is ours. I like painting and decorating and the fact that we picked the decor, and we can change it when we want.

I keep having this sort of pseudo-dream that I’m coming home from work and we’re living in Canada. It doesn’t get as far as ‘and I’m not working 3 jobs’, but I suspect that all the extra shifts I’ve been doing are factoring in to it.

The unnerving thing is that to earn enough to pay off the credit card I’ll almost certainly earn over the threshold of starting to pay my student loan. Which I’ve been carefully avoiding for the last 6 years. In fact, I was hoping to make it, in some cunning way, to the point when they write the loan off (which iirc is around 50 years old). Unfortunately I’d like to earn enough to eat and go out – the two don’t necessarily coincide.

One quick question though – I read this post in the Vancouver community – I can’t find anything about this new show (‘Paradox’) anywhere online – has anyone heard of it? Only it sounds quite cool – and I’m intrigued ‘n want to find out more about it…

So – anyway – I need to go shower and get on with getting oily and dirty. Have fun with your days, y’all. Think of me, frozen to the floor outside.

Today I have:
- Found out that Nurse Vancouver are at the Practice Nurse doojit in London. I shall go.
- Sorted out the Nursing Agency problem which meant that I was no longer registered. I shall be registered again as of later today.
- Read lots of the ATNC course.
- Checked and found out how Kathryn gets more time here after we’re civilised. Another £395 quid! This gets us 2 years residence, which is more than we need, but means that Kathryn doesn’t get permanent residence (which only comes after 2 years). I’m not sure why she’d want it here, but hey, it’s useful to know these things.
- Put out the recycling
- Worked out from where the water that’s taken to appearing on the floor by the shower is coming from. It is, as I suspected the silicone sealant which has failed at that end of the shower, which is good in that I know where it’s coming from, but ups the need for me to fix that. I still don’t know why it won’t stick to the shower base.
- Confirmed that UK Civil Partnerships are recognised by Canada.
- Moved my motorbike so as to allow Kathryn to get her bike in the shed.
- Uploaded an enormous number of photos to Flickr
- Listened to the ‘new’ Radiohead album, and a few other new albums we acquired in the USA.
- Put my somewhat more mangled suitcase away, thus saving me debating it’s future anymore.

I’ve not rung builders yet.
I’ve not decided whether to switch the Denon amp which does work (but with a knackered and awful CD changer and no phono input) for the amp in the lounge which needs it’s volume control slider switched.
I’ve not done anything on the house.

I don’t mind tho’, ‘cos frankly, we spend 18 hours travelling yesterday and I’ve swung my body clock through 8 hours, so I think I’m doing pretty well to not be feeling like death microwaved.

:)

So, yesterday was a good day (apart from the transient death of a laptop. It seems the power connector’s gone now (in addition to the cable and the case, the screen’s occasionally flickering too. I think it might be time to take it apart); tiring but everything went remarkably well. Despite the 6 miles travelled in the last year, Rebecca aquitted herself beautifully; carrying me the 120 miles (with the brief stop at my mum’s to collect new wings) without any untoward experiences (apart from a petrol leak, which I was faintly aware of, but only actually checked up on once I’d got up there).

It was a gorgeous day, and oddly, for someone who’s lived in the UK all their lives, the sunny-but-cold air reminded me very strongly of Canada. I guess, doing Rebecca is largely a step towards Canadification, and having thought about it getting Canada out of my head was hard. Poor old Rebecca though, her engine sounded so sick by the time we got there – running essentially on 3 cylinders except at higher revs…

Anyhow, Jonathon of JLH is very friendly – and we chatted for a while and looked around at the Zetec engine’d minors, and the minors undergoing major structural rehabilitation, and chatted of rebuilds topping £50,000… And I looked at my poor tired Rebecca, her subsistence motoring existence having taken it’s toll; rusty wings, rusty doors, knackered engine and such, she won’t be getting one tenth of that; but she her reliability is something which has left me with no small measure of respect for the engineering behind her.

Anyhow, at the end of the day we headed to Leamington Spa; unfortunately getting stuck behind a learner driver – my train ticket was for 1800, and as he suggested 2 sets of (red) traffic lights from the station, I sprinted from the car and made it to the station at 1803, fortunately, my train was delayed and came in at 1806, just as I scrabbled up the stairs to the platform. I probably had about a minute to spare – and y’know what, I felt sick as a dog as I sat on that train. I sat there reading Scott Pilgrim (vol 1, I needed to start again at the beginning); and drifted off to Canada in my head again.

I was back, sitting on the GO heading back to Mississauga, new copies of Scott Pilgrim in hand, from a day in Toronto. As the train pulled into Oxford (where I changed) I was thoroughly in that headspace. Finally got back to home just after 8, stopping at the Kebab van for dinner…

Today, theoretically hasn’t gone badly. I’ve paid the council tax bill (after some argument with the home hub and the hub phone). Internet Exploiter didn’t want to start today, and Firefox is still doing it’s “i think I’ll stop and rest for a bit” at random moments. The laptop is however working after some wiggling of cables and connectors, so I guess reparing that is something I can look forward to. I may well switch it for a standard power connector, since then I can ditch my mini-adaptor. I just really don’t want *more* jobs to do. The fan heater in the lounge also needs stripping down and repairing, and this time I’m peeved with I&A car services.

They’re great, in-so-far as being a garage I actually trust. But they’re slow. Or at least, when I booked my car in before they had it for several days and didn’t do anything, none of the service was done. This time, they collected the car (although it was no longer booked in), have had it for 3 days, and now want it for another 3. 6 days is a hell of a long time to have a car.

Colour me unimpressed.

Come the spring it’ll be back to car servicing I fear. It’s cheaper and it’s quicker. I’m down a car for a few hours, rather than days. Le *sigh*.

I guess I should get on with the house, but I’m just somehow feeling really fed up. Poot.

So… it’s cold here. Not really Canadian cold, but cold. Bitter, is the way that Naomi described it. I travelled to work listening to AM’s Underground (aaah, those TTC Chimes); I’ve got home (it’s cold, really bloody cold), read Torontoist and now I’m watching Holmes on Homes. It’s still really good…

I’ve also been watching The L Word Season 4. So yet again I’m waaaay ahead of everyone I know. Not that anyone at work watches the L word anyway. It’s such a good season, and I really really want someone to talk to about it. TREEEEYYYYY – Can I ring you?!

It seems everyone’s doing a ‘2006′ summary post; I’m debating jumping on that bandwagon. It’s something I’ve done every year (well, not a 2006 summary; but a ‘my year in a few words’ (or at least, less words) thing) since I started journaling; way back…when the web was new and shiny. Well, actually, the web wasn’t; nor was my website; it was more a case of using up the space of one of my vanity domains :-)

So; at any rate, my New Year’s visit to my mum’s little holiday chalet was fantastic, kinda, although it got off to kind of a shakey start; fundamentally due to my lack of bothering to copy down all the directions; and my failure to realise that the place was much further down the road than I’d assumed. So, after half an hour of cruising up and down the streets, ringing my sister, swearing copiously (to be fair, it’d been a bitch of a drive – hugely wet and windy – and I was tired (tired enough to have slept for an entire hour on the front seats of my car in a service station)) I had almost hit the point of saying ’stuff it’ and heading home. Fortunately at that point I decided to just drive down the road I was on until I ran out of houses; and then I carried on… and then eventually found the place.

Chalet is a rather generous term. My mum describes it, on occasion, as her holiday cottage. A more accurate term would be ‘big shed’. It’s very basic, but warm, dry, and pleasant enough. But the view from the window is gorgeous. Uninterrupted fields leading down to the sea. My mum spent a lot of time talking about my dad; and we walked down to see some of the places he’d spent time at while they’d holiday’d there. My dad was very sick by the time that they started going to Devon; and I think for the first time I started to feel – as opposed to merely be aware of – the depth of my mum’s pain.

It was very odd, very sad, but at the same time such a beautiful place. And I actually enjoyed the time I spent there.

So, anyway, we did some walking, lots of sitting, lots of talking. And yes; I had an excellent new year. Today, I think I’ve managed to do most of the things that I want to do through the rest of the year; I’ve worked on my house, I’ve spent time with my mum, and I spent time (albeit not much) with my friends. I listened to new music; I listened to the radio; I read stuff on the web…

So, really, it’s been a good day :-)

I hope this is a good omen for me.

2006 was a tough year; but in many ways I’ve had a good one; I finished my degree – I didn’t do as well as I hoped, or indeed expected, but I did get a decent pass – and frankly, the 3 years of my degree course have been the hardest and most challenging years of my life so far. I got a new job, I moved house (again (sorry James)), I experienced new things, I had my bike on the road, I’ve started to get back into music, I met some great new friends and I finally got to see Canada. Now I know what I want longer term from my life; I’ve got a direction… And I’m quite looking forward to 2k7.