Kates Journal

400 words to go on the Dissertation; so I got up this morning and with every intention of not getting sucked into doing anything else dumped my Shredded Wheat in a bowl and my Coffee in the Cafetiere (isn’t it interesting what a few weeks in Alaska changes about a person ;-) ) and my Yoghurt in.. well, it comes in a little plastic bottle. I trailed upstairs and sat down to read LJ while I munched (yes, I am that sad). And I came across this post by inspector_81 on Robert Newman’s History of Oil (google video link, just clicky and watchy) – and was well, shocked. Not so much by what he said, although the newly aquired history of the First World War, well, I must chat to my sister’s husband about it (History Teacher)… it wasn’t something I’d encountered.

BUT – the commentary on society and oil, it’s basically largely what I thought about, with a huge helping of war thrown in; and the future isn’t bright for our society unless we do get off our collective arses and start doing something. I think when I’m done failing my course I’ll get out there and see about stuff I can do. I can’t exactly claim any fucking prize on this one, although much that I own is recycled I also
- Drive (although it’s required by my job)
- Keep my PC on all the time
- Use 2 monitors (when one did me fine before)
- Waste electricity and water something chronic
- Eat fruit and veg out of season, and non-locally produced foods
I think our society makes it easier to be irresponsible than it is to be responsible; it’s cheaper to buy food sourced from ‘wherever’, easier to buy new than to repair, difficult to travel by public transport. I’ve stripped out lots of the things I used to do, or that I would do if I could because it’s beyond my finances to be the ethical consumer I want to be. In some ways I’m good – I recycle loads, in fact I get quite annoyed at packaging that’s non-recyclable (particularly plastic. Trees coated in crud that means they won’t take it? That I can just about cope with, but plastic? How hard is it to put a number and a triangle on a fracking piece of plastic?!).

Aye. So. Hrm. Lots to think about. And now I must regain my day; shower, work, and prepare for interviews of interviewy doom.

So, let’s try that again.

It’s too hot here, and it’s only 1128 (now, it was 1045 when I first started).

We tried an experiment in visualisation; the second monitor calls to me when it’s not on and and it’s nice to be able to see more stuff on screen; if you know what I mean. However, experiements with getting visualisation to work on the second screen lead to my machine freezing, which is not good.

Anyway, so I spent the morning attempting to beat the civil service into submission. Let me give anyone a tip; telling someone who’s waited 6 months to be told what they should have been told, say, 2 weeks after applying that they get 98.7% of applications turned round in 7 weeks, that isn’t a good plan, that’s likely to annoy someone more. Claiming that there’s sufficient information when there isn’t, otherwise they’d've got the information the first time is also annoying; finally claiming you have no offical means of complaint; that’s likely to get someone’s goat. Specifically mine. It’s got my goat, taken it’s food, dumped ice cold water on it and then spent an hour insulting it; so now my goat is pretty angry.

On the plus side, they’ve now said that all they needed in the first place was a 6 year old letter, which I have a copy of. So I shall send them a copy of that. Fucking useless arseholes. If they’d've *said* then I’d've *sent it*. Gaaah. Not that I’m happy to send it, given that it contains an awful lot of confidential information about my life, and they have *no need* to see it. Voeyeruistic arseholes.

I’ve just discovered (everyone ready for a rant) that using public transport from Bristol, you can’t travel the 168 miles to Manchester and be there by for 9:30. I’ve just discovered that I can’t make it from my interview. I have to go up the night before, or spend several relaxing hours in the middle of the night in railway stations. I think I have to give up and use up my extra day worked, lose my weekend off and stay in either Manchester or Birmingham. Oh I’m *so* fucked off. Why does public transport have to be so utterly, utterly useless.

It’s hard to persuade myself to travel by train when they make it so fucking hard. I’m now completely *argh*, it probably makes more sense for me to go up to Manchester a day early and spend the day getting a feel for Manchester since I’ve never been there before. Oh balls. Really.

What was I going to say? No idea. I’ve done a letter for Trey; not that she can see this, but I’ll stick it in the post today or tomorrow. I’m gonna have some lunch, sling some laundry in and do more dissertation. I was going to do it this morning but civil service and  public transport’s kind of knocked it all on the head really. 2 nights in a hotel, vs: cost of driving and risk of not getting there on time. *sighs*

I need to do the editing of my Chapter 3 – but the sun’s out and although I’m not a sun creature (more a mountains, snow and rocks creature) I do just feel the urge to laze. Not made any better by the fact my hayfever’s been completely evil today – and I’m still an itchy eyes / blocked and runny nose type person. At least the anti-histamines have made me feel human.

I shall have to work after I get back from my appointment, but the enthusiasm for riding into the centre of Brizzy in all my bike gear for an appointment where he’ll tell me to get some blood taken, I’ll get it taken, he’ll make an appointment for me in a year’s time, and la, that’s it… well it’s not great. But I must go.

I just spent a little while crafting a post on Gingerbeer – who we stewarded between (them and dykes on bikes) a few years ago begging, nay pleading for 2 stewards (for Guy). Hopefully they’ll come through or we’ll be the world’s shortest float. Not that I mind, but people might think ‘that’s a bit odd’ :-)

Anyway, Dr’s Appt, then Dissertation, I promise.

’tis hot, and ’tis continuing to maliciously be hot without any good reason.

Yes. So.

Here I am, home again, my dissertation meeting went well, some suggested modifications (essentially, I need to link back more to my earlier critique, and there’s a couple of comments I made which he felt should have been referenced) which I can make and then on to the discussion. I didn’t realise that the copyright with my dissertation apparently lies with the university; I find this most odd. These days, the university is paid by me (in this case, by the NHS) to provide a service; unlike a job where *they* pay me to do work, I *pay* them to teach me. So why should I let them have the copyright on my work? Hrmph.
I picked up the ScanJet 3300C today, so I’m ‘with scanner’ again, which is good news. ‘cos I’ve missed having one. Of course, working out where *exactly* a scanner fits into the room is… challenging, to say the least.

Yeah, anyway, main point of this post; Aisling pointed me at Breakfast on Pluto, which she thought I’d enjoy – and it’s true I did. I really found it excellent; incredibly funny but also incredbly touching. Filled with brilliant music… It’s now on my to buy DVD list.

It does have a few continunity glitches but within their budget they’ve done an astounding job of recreating the right look.

For once I really did do stuff with the weekend.

Yesterday I got to the stage where I’d finished to first-draft stage chapter 3 of the dissertation; which meant that today I could tackle a few other jobs, namely cleaning the bathroom (done), tidying the garage (sort of done), small jobs on Cherry (speedo drive, new chain casing, greasing and adjusting the chain, etc). I also did a run to the supermarket. It doesn’t sound like that much, but really, it was. I’ve freecycled a bunch more stuff. And now I’m really *really* tired.

I have however remembered what it was like before I started my course, when I had a life. It was nice.