Kates Journal

I thought to myself, it’s a while since I’ve updated; I’ve been reading but for the most part been too busy or too tired (or most commonly both) to get around to actually updating. Thing is, my life has become insanely normal. I go to work (knackering, but exactly what I want to do); I come home and do DIY and I talk to bluwyngz. I’ve got tons of work that needs doing, bills that need paying, forms that need to be sent off, and I struggle through doing them.

Brick continues to ferry me to and from work; although the oil leak does seem to be getting worse, which is faintly concerning. I shall soon be getting him steam cleaned so we can work out where the engine oil is leaking *from*; and from there hopefully work out how to fix it.

Kathryn came back from Romania and we had a fantastic time together; she was incredibly patient when the batteries in my mom’s EV died, and we had to come back on the back of a recovery truck. We went out and picked Raspberries; which I need to cook today; and we made it out to another bit of Slough area green space. We were also quite homey, and went to B&Q (think Home Depot) to choose the paint for the bathroom (and the lights for the kitchen).

But really, while my life has been mostly delightful; the busy hasn’t been that exciting :)

At least, unless you want to hear about my progress with taking blood, or with giving IVs….

Well, indirectly. So I went in to be a good little consumer today, and I spent the voucher that the nice patient gave (lots of staff) on my old ward; I now have two new bras which, unlike my other white bras, are actually white; and unlike all my other bras are not yet misshapen strange bits of rag. This was partially prompted by my ‘good’ black bras developing a strange quiff affair at the top of the cup, I’ve tried everything to get rid of this, but it seems permanent.

I also spent the 30 quid that my rather nice old ward gave me before I departed for the shiny Emergency Department. Frustratingly HMV Shoppe was more expensive than HMV Online – but amazingly they had one copy of the Lucky Soul album. Which I relieved them of; and which is sounding very good. I was going to buy Green Wing, but their Green Wing DVDs were also 4 quid more per disk than online. Having accepted the 3 quid extra for the CD I was a little loathe to do that; and it would have meant I couldn’t afford the whole series. But there, lurking on the sale shelf was Black Books, Series 1-3; which is now mine. Quite a haul really.

I then attempted, well, I’d attempted before without success, but I then attempted (after my purchases) to give my books which have been (hand) picked for disposal to a charity shop. Any charity shop (within limits). But I couldn’t find any that were reachable by car. Or more accurately after touring incessantly, I found one, which I couldn’t stop anywhere near.

So the books are still in the back of my car.

I’m hoping that when I go food shopping the shoppe will be less busy (a bit of a faint hope, really). This shopping however has put me in mind of what I watched yesterday; The End of Suburbia. It discusses what’ll happen to suburbia when we hit and pass ‘peak oil’; which either is soon or has happened, depending on who you ask.

At any rate, it’s fairly much a warning of what is coming. But one thing which interests me is that people don’t really get how much of a change will occur. And a lot of EV people seem not to have realised that plastic’s going to be hard to get hold of when the oil’s run out. It’s all very well saying we’ll build our EV’s out of lightweight plastic; but…. What when there’s no plastic. I do wonder about our society and what’ll happen when we no longer have cheap  plastic, cheap goods, when the medicines start to run out (how many of these things are derived from oil?). The End of Suburbia also raised various interesting questions about power generation. I’m intrigued to know who’s right though; they reckon biofuels are not likely to be a successful widespread solution, and I’d been kinda seduced by this Google techtalk on E85. So.. Mmm.

Anyway, makes you think. Or makes me think. I’d always intended that wherever I settle down would be more environmentally friendly than this place; if it’s a build it yourself place then all limecrete and such; and with wind/solar generation (solar water heating, particularly). But yes, anyway, so I’ve been left thoughtful.

So, the good news is that I’ve started making, albeit small, inroads into the chaos in my endeavour to make the house bearable when Kathryn comes back. It’s hardly be welcoming if it still had a Kate-sized hole on the sofa where I’ve been sitting surrounded by bills. I’ve even cleaned the stairs – it was quite horrendous how much shite there was on them. Seriously, it was revolting. Granted it was mostly sawdust and plasterdust, but still.

Obviously, in my posting frenzy you’ve had the ‘lookie, tiles’; but I have pictures (you’re all thrilled, I can tell)….

See, tiles!

I also have proof that there’s a shower door in my bathroom; or at least, a shower door in someone’s bathroom, but I maintain that this is mine and that I put it up. Believe me, no one else would want to claim that they put it up…

Anyhow, because I took it, and also because it slightly freaked me out when I realised how badly worn it really was, here’s the Viva’s clutch cable (I imagine you’re all barely able to contain your excitement at this point)…

Yes, it’s frayed. Really frayed. If that had snapped it could have lead to embarassing ‘crunch’ type noises; although I’ve been awfully careful the last week not to sit with my foot on the clutch, as I might be wont to do if I was expecting a light to change… I’m quite proud of that shot, actually, it’s a really nice bit of macro photography, if I do say so myself (and I do). And it stands out really rather well against the aluminium carpet strip. That, incidentally, is my pile of metal that’s waiting for me to make a run to the tip. That run is approaching with some enthusiasm now, as my entire front garden is full of woodworm eaten floorboards.

So, continuing the good news; the hoover survived. The builders used my Aquavac/Goblin (with my permission), however they neglected to mention that they’d run it ’til the bag split and the entire filter inside gummed up. I’m hoping it’s not toast in motor terms, but it doesn’t smell of burned motor. The filter at least saved it from sucking an entire base full of crappy builder’s rubble through its motor. And in other good news, with substantial effort I managed to retrieve the box-of-filing from the pile of crap. Having cleaned the filing cabinet (it’s still somewhat oily inside), I then spent a “cheerful” hour transferring stuff from the box into the cabinet. The box contained everything that *was* in the cabinet from a looong time ago. I have become aware that I need a shredder, again. I can theoretically shred up to 2002, now; and I can dispose of lots of old utility bills. And looking at how much paperwork I’ve got, that would be really quite useful.

Anyhow, I’ve not yet started making inroads into the evil that is the ‘to file pile’ (which is in two parts):

It’s amazing how much paperwork I’ve accrued in 6 months. Obviously there’s buying a house, two jobs, moving, purchasing endless appliances and bits for the house…. Lexx is out, incidentally, because I did the tinyest bit of sorting while I was shifting boxes – and found Lexx 1.0,  which means I now have all the Lexx videos. I think I’m going to sell them because, quite frankly, I can’t be arsed with video anymore. I loved the first season of Lexx, but never really loved it as much after that first season; the original actress (Eva Habermann) was fantastic…and not that the second actress wasn’t good, she just wasn’t Zev.

Anyhow, so, that’s the good news.

There is however some bad news.

The house has woodworm, live doing stuff woodworm. I’d kinda disregarded the woodworm upstairs on the basis of my monitoring station downstairs being, well, unaffected. See, I’d read (somewhere) in my research that the lifecycle was around 3 months – having repeated my check I now find ‘a year’ is more accurate. But anyhow, I’d assumed after 6 months of staring at my masking tape that there wasn’t any activity and I was now safe. Unfortunately, I’ve now found two dinky little round holes in it, so I shall be calling in a woodworm company forthwith to see about fumigating the house. This is, how shall we put it, rather upsetting. At least the joists upstairs were doubled, because I know some of them floorboards that came out were completely rotten, so one must presume some of the joists are infested badly too… Ach.

And finally, on a rather smaller scale, things continue not to improve on the laptop front… it’s still doing pretty well, given that it’s 8 years old, but at some point I fear it is going to have to be replaced…

With a substantial amount of effort there is now about 50% coverage of tiles. I remain terrified that they will crack and disintegrate as soon as I walk on ‘em. But that won’t be ’til tomorrow.

However, the result is that my back wants to kill me.

It really does.

I think it may have teamed up with my knees to take out a contract on my brain. When I’m a little less sore, I’m thinking I’ll start work on the tidying.

But first, some news. Wow, those US lesbians with their gangs, and their guns… soon there’ll be no men left…. what do you mean it’s entirely made up?

Anyhow, on to the topic de jour, prevarication. I got Brick serviced by a very nice garage who I’m actually planning to use again to sort out the oil leak *and* sort out the wheel bearing, because, frankly I’m done doing car maintenance for a while. I have the house, the job and the bike all calling for more time than I have; so the car, the car can be done by someone now I’ve got a garage I trust. And I trust them more now.

See, on the list of advisories it had ‘heavy oil leak’ (which is true), and ‘rear brakes low’ which is probably true, and ‘Clutch cable needs replacement – badly frayed’ (along with the wheel bearing being ’slightly noisy’). So I ordered a wheel bearing and a clutch cable… And they sat in the lounge, then they sat in the corridor. And I prevaricated. Did I book it in *now* or next week? Should I do it myself? I prodded at the do it myself option and didn’t like it, so I left it…

Today I finally decided I would do it myself. Remarkably there was no swearing, even when the circlip disappeared down behind the ‘carpet’ on the driver’s side. There were several utterances about how insane Vauxhall are. But 2.5 hours after I started the car has a new clutch cable. And not a moment too soon; I see now that they weren’t joking when they said ‘badly frayed’. Of what appear to be 8 or 9 strands (each made up of many smaller strands) only two were intact, and the cable looked terrifyingly thin. Next time they tell me something’s in need of replacement real soon now, then I shall believe them :-)

So, maybe I should order some brake shoes, but that really *is* a job I could and should do myself. *sigh*.

Not today though, because once I’ve had this cup of tea over here, I shall be commencing the tile-a-thon in earnest, brand spanking new RCD in hand (or at least, plugged in). And roll of kitchen paper for my nose which has either taken offence to the dust (I suspect, ‘cos it was lousy yesterday), or has rediscovered hayfever because today it’s hot-like-woah. Actually, that’s not *strictly* true, because it is in fact bearable outside. And inside almost pleasant. But the weather is being it’s usual inimitable and unpredictable self; having gone from cold-wet-torrential rain over the past few days to tarmac-meltingly-hot sun today.

I’m hoping it’s dust, because new filters are en-route for the dyson (and actually looking at them, that might explain it’s lack of suck, but I still feel I should give it a once over) and a pack, an entire pack of bags for the Aquavac/Goblin. I never had this problem when I used the Hoover Junior all the time; it just worked… ‘cept when it needed a new belt… ‘course it did cover the room in dust, but hey.