Kates Journal

I just have to share the Rototron Cornbobber with you all.

So, the Viva continues to be a nightmare to start. Well, to be entirely honest we didn’t reach ’starting’ today. Today we got as far as flattening the battery (which to be fair wasn’t very well charged) and starting to flatten the battery on Rebecca. After a full half hour of starting attempts I took Rebecca to the recycling place instead.

I’m managing to maintain the pretence that Brick is running by cunningly moving him (by a process of pushing) – so he’s now on that central island at the end of my street. And the battery is back in the house being charged… again. The most frustrating thing is it’s almost certainly something very simple. I suspect that I need to clean a few earth points, change the distributor cap, points, rotorarm and all that. Basically do a service – and I suspect he’ll be sorted. But it’s annoying. I wanted to get the tyre changed, so that when I *do* get ‘im started I can treck straight down to my mum’s and do the service in the garage there. Only, I can’t. But now I’m so unsure of the starting situation that I fear going anywhere except straight down there.

So, yeah. Homehub, not arrived. BT again promise that it will be here. Each department blames the previous one. I’m really fed up though, of having non-working wireless. I can’t watch stuff on my TV because it all goes through the PC. The PC has just been reinstalled, and needs to connect to the internet to download the graphics card drivers – otherwise I get to endure black and white on the TV output. Which obviously makes watching things less fun – even were I able to watch them.

The damn thing also randomly loses the Mac now, which is wired to it. It’s incredibly annoying. It’s not getting better after resets either, before the wireless problems’d go away if you rebooted it, but now no.

In other news, hooking up my CD player has reminded me that my amplifier doesn’t really do ‘quiet’ – on it’s minimum setting it’s ‘a bit loud’ for the evenings… I can’t really afford another one, so I guess I just better get the PC working soon, because that you can adjust the level of the output on it, so it ends up being quiet enough. Mmm. I think that’s the news. Life on Mars tonight, so let’s pray it’s a nice day at work so I get out on time. Yeah. So. Anyway, the house should be okay for Kathryn’s visit, if I get off my arse and sort various things out. I think actually, I’ve worked out how to make the stone on the fireplace sit better. Unfortunately it means I’ll have to remove all the sealant that I did do. But hey. It’ll be a better finished product :-)

Lordy lordy, this is a boring entry. I’ll stop now :-)

So, having performed a surgical mould extraction on Brick, well, some of a surgical mould extraction I came in and was confronted by Nikki, who complained that there was only one photo of the new car online.

Anyway, so I found the rust that I suspected was lurking. It’ll need fixing before the MOT, and is slightly annoying because it is just a few inches further along than I got as far as checking when I bought ‘im.

It’s probably about a 6″ square area that *needs* replacement, and maybe 6″x8″ that it’s desireable to do. The non-surface rust seems fairly localised – and it’s clearly been damaged by some twonk allowing water to get in through the failed windscreen rubbers – and to sit in the soundproofing – keeping that metalwork wet. I’ve yanked a load of sodden soundproofing and slung it. I suspect I should really get the seat out and have a look there for wetness, but I’ve checked the rear footwells, and they’re dry (thankfully).

So, yeah. It’ll have to be in the not too distant future, and it’s kinda something I expected to find. I’m not even deeply peeved, just slightly tired, and frustrated at losing more money that should be going on Rebecca.

I also discovered that the other wing mirror which I presumed was complete isn’t. So I’ve got a very low bid on a pair of replacement ones from e-bay, because having only one wing mirror does drive me nuts. Anyway, here’s the (many and unexciting) shots of Brick.

In other news, my mum headed off to Switzerland today – I ran her down to the airport this morning; I’m really nervous about her going – she’s not been abroad on her own for, well, a long time. We got to the airport and it was all automated check-ins, which I think unnerved her a little. She’s not good with IT. Anyway, that navigated I took her suitcases and she checked her baggage – I’m also worried about her having to move those heavy cases.

:-/

But she is insanely independent – I guess I know something about that! Anyway, she’s over there for ages; she wanted me to sign her Life Insurance before going (!), but kind of thankfully we couldn’t really get it witnessed, what with it being 10pm. Somehow, it makes me feel less worried about her which is silly I know, but it freaks me out when she does stuff like that. I worry that she might do something silly, or uncaring. I dunno.

So yes, that trip to the airport though, after driving so much yesterday in vibrato-mog left me feeling somewhat drained. So I slept. And then got very confused about what day it was and which day I’d been up to see Kathryn and when I was next in work, and what I was meant to do today.

After an exceptionally slow morning, a large chunk of which I slept through I got out and did Brick, the washing up, and sorted out a bit of recycling – and I finally got around to connecting up the CD player (waves thanks for CD at Kathryn). It appears that I’m down one socket – or more accurately I need another extension lead (!). It’s the lights that did it, they’ve taken up two sockets…
In other news, my homehub still isn’t working properly. I’ve not heard from BT. They have ’til the end of the day to reply to the official complaint I sent them (that’ll be 2 working days) and then I start hunting for a different supplier.

Apparently, I’ve been keeping quiet about some news in my life, which I have, because I wasn’t sure where it was going. Or whether it was going anywhere. It seemed good, but my anti-chicken-counting was making me careful.

That and the faint insanity which surrounds it. See, I talked to this girl, a few weeks ago in an event that was phenominally random; the sheer amount of random sticks in my head, as do the infiniately small probability of me and my random clicking ending up with us in conversation.

Anyway, it seems that she liked me, and I liked her, and thus a few weeks ago I headed to London, as did she, and we spent a really rather nice evening discovering that we were quite good at talking in person, and apparently very bad at reading the other person’s body language.

And eventually we came to Saturday, where it finally became apparent that this interesting, beautiful, intelligent, fun, articulate girl likes me. Something which makes me smile.

So, yes; in summary, I met a girl and she rocks my little world…

So, today I ended up getting the Viva. It’s tatty, but looks sound and mechanically seems to be okay. The journey back was nearly trouble free – we had a little electrical issue – the rotor arm looks sorely in need of replacement but a good clean seems to have temporarily solved the issue.

Sadly that wasn’t the *only* issue. No, I got to tesco after a 120 mile jaunt and nipped round doing my shopping. Probably took me less than 20 minutes. Came back out and Brick (as I’ve decided he (I think) is called) wouldn’t start. Fiddling with the rotor arm didn’t help. There just seemed to be no desire at all to even try.

Lots of turning – enough that the oil pressure light’d go out. But no, not a hope. And just as I was about to declare failure and ring the AA – it started. Smooth as butter and no churning of the starter – it just *started*. Thinking that it was maybe a technique issue, I headed off to Halfords (It needs two new wiperblades; sadly I didn’t realise the cheeky bastards sell them as singles in *big* boxes; so I only bought one. Still, being able to see out of half the windscreen is still a big improvement). And lo, she’d not start. Starts fine when cold. Not too bad when hot, but warm? Warm is a complete dog.

Still, hopefully we’ll get it all sussed.

Anyway, here’s Brick, after a long journey home:

Incidentally, if anyone has a spare car radio kicking around, and some speakers, that’d be quite handy.