Kates Journal

So, it’s been a bit of a week, really. Well, couple of weeks.

What started as a one week kitchen renovation ended up taking 4 weeks and a day; and still isn’t actually finished; we’re missing two drawer/cupboard handles and there’s some filler that needs sanding, the walls, sadly, still need painting and the outside render also needs painting. I’m thinking spray gun for that :)

But, for all my complaints about their atrocious scheduling, having to almost shout at them to get the gas connected – a day late – rather than as they wanted to – two days late (and the day after Kathryn’s mom and her partner arrived). The experience as a whole was incredibly draining – but, and I have to keep saying but – the kitchen is great. For all the fact it’s cheap units and formica worktop, for all the fact the handles are plastic and the doors are veneered in plastic, not real wood; and for all the absence of silent closers and such. It’s pretty. It’s big. It’s a good space to cook in.  And after 2  years without a kitchen at all? It’s bloody awesome. The new doors add so much light, the new lights (while hideously energy inefficient – plan is that as they blow we’ll replace some of them with LED Faux-Halogens – although apparently they’re more decorative than ‘bright’) add so much more light to the previously dingey kitchen. There’s still lots to do in there. Painting, boxing in the pipework around the boiler (can’t afford to box in the whole boiler!); etc, etc. But. It’s come together and the room’s going to be gorgeous when it’s painted.

Despite us cutting costs on tiles (grey natural slate, not the nicer multicoloured stuff; ceramic tiles not stone on the walls) they still look the part. I am very pleased.

Also: Very nice people gave us very nice presents. We have a stand mixer, a pasta maker, a salad spinner, kitchen utensils, a gorgeous teapot (and a cookie sheet of awesome cookie proportions) ; and as I think I said before many other non-kitchen items. But our kitchen looks the part. In fact, our kitchen is a really damn nice place to be at the moment.

What was slightly unfortunate is that for reasons which I’m not quite clear on, the dishwasher blew the 30A fuse on which the entire house runs the first time we used it. Kathryn’s mom and partner were here, we were desperately clearing up to try and make the place habitable and suddenly it became aparent that there was no power… anywhere in the house (apart from the lights).

Unfortunately I’d not noticed that the previous owner had lost an important (ceramic) bit of the 30A fuse (why would I?!) and thus it toasted the fusebox a bit when it went. I’ve now got a replacement fuse, and surround but at the moment it’s currently back ‘together’ as best I can. I still don’t entirely know why it blew the fuse. I took the dishwasher out, and in a paranoid moment at B&Q ended up checking each and every socket in the kitchen (with a cheap and cheerful socket tester); I’m wondering if they managed to do what they did with the washer, and catch the cable somehow on the casing, which appeared to make the case live – but I couldn’t find any damage on it. I’ve now run the dishwasher twice without incident (with me going a little mad running around touching the fuse casing every five minutes).

So, the kitchen is more or less finished. I’m keeping a little money back for reparing the washing machine door they broke and to encourage them to turn up with the two missing handles… it’s also finally made me sort out networking on Ubuntu. The music (and actually, the video) is all shared out from the file-server in the lounge. This is fine, except that the laptop didn’t know about it. Now it does. I’ve spent the morning going “I don’t know what to listen to, there’s so much”… *grins happily*.

In other news I did the ATNC course. For once in my life I get to be quite smug. The pass mark in the exam (we no longer sit the same exam as the doctors, ours is short-answer and theirs is multiple choice) is 80%. I got 92.5%. Pleased? You betcha. I got to play at putting in chest drains, needle decompression (which I am actually allowed to do, in an emergency, apparently); intubation (which I’m not allowed to do ;) ), surgical airways (you guess), jet insufflation…. It’s useful to know what’s needed and what landmarks there are to do these things because sometimes you do get the new baby doctor who’s mind goes blank when faced with blood everywhere, and needs a little guidance (“it goes there… ideally now…”).

It was incredibly stressful, and not aided by me not having any annual leave so I essentially worked 5 long days (4 of which had 4 hours travel time) and 4 short shifts in 9 days. Knackered? Definately. Pleased? Very much. Of course it helps that I’ve something huge and fantastic to look forward to *grins*. Despite all the stress of the course I have to say I thoroughly recommend it; looking back I am incredibly pleased that I did it, and I can say I enjoyed it hugely. Really and truly it is a great course (at least, if you look after trauma patients).

And so we come on to the truly massive event of the weeks… Kathryn and I are to be wed. Well, civilised. Again, I’m mixed – there’s an awful lot of excitement and wanting to bounce around the place but it’s tempered with nerves. It’s a simple ceremony and a simple event, we’re not expecting launches of 1000s of balloons, or 50 doves to descend at the appropriate moment. We’re going to basically walk in, say vows, walk out. Then we do photos, then we eat. That’s the day. But we’ve put a lot of effort into getting the day sorted – well, more into asking our friends to do things. We’ve got a poem we want Lauren or Chrissy to read, we’ve not typed it up; hell I’ve no idea where it is apart from I think I know which book it’s in. We’ve not printed out our vows yet. We’ve got our wedding favours to make.

But lots has been done. It’s all more or less ready. Although I’m confused as to what we have left to do – apart from packing and so on. Anyhow, I’ve got a few Wedding related tasks to do now; so I shall be off to see if I can organise such things. For example, it turns out we’re entitled to free dinner at the hotel every night we’re there; and my mum was hoping that we could all eat together tomorrow – at the hotel – because she’s staying there with her hubbie too. So, plan of action is to ring them and see how late they serve food and whether Kathryn’s Mom and Partner can eat there with us (which they should be able to!). Anyhow. I shall be offski.

Having buggered off home at mid day, because working from 9 ’til 12 is a tough day’s work for these guys [/sarcasm] I found, as I mentioned before that they’d cut off the water supply because (our poll says) they’re idiots.

Their supervisor finally locates them and drags them back.

I go down and go through the whole, you’ve disconnected the water and not reconnected it, thing. After we play the game of ‘no, it’s not that the boiler’s off you stupid git, it’s that you’ve cut the water main’ and him not getting it, I resort to pointing and simple words.

“this is the water supply to the house. This pipe used to feed the sink, the boiler and the rest of the house. You’ve cut it *here*. NO, that pipe with the stop-cock on that comes up through the floor is NOT just for the dishwasher”.*

And the final result….

“Oh. Oh yeah. *sigh*”.

Like it’s my fracking fault that they’ve had to come back when they want to be fucking off on holiday leaving our house an uninhabitable shithole.

ARGH.

I *wish* I had the time to put the kitchen together myself because I would kick this fucking company into touch so fucking fast right now.

* Phrase not said: Did you think the water magically materialised inside the pipes? Did you not think it odd that the only other pipes to come out from the floor are the central heating ones and the gas main? Perhaps you thought little water pixies with their little buckets would carry the water mysteriously across the huge gaping gap you’ve put in the fucking pipework.**

** ’scuse the swearing, but I’m really, really annoyed. I had a plan for today which involved leaving the house. I’ve not eaten because I couldn’t go and get food because I look a state and can’t shower, and because I then had to spend an hour chasing their sorry asses around trying to find out where they’d buggered off to at mid day.

I am definately ill today. Not, thankfully, deeply sick type ill. Just ‘unwell’. My throat and ear definately hurt and I probably should have skipped work yesterday. I’m off sick tonight.

What’s less good is that the builders, who work at a pace that’d make a sloth seem quick, have informed me that the kitchen will be finished on Thursday. That’s 6 days to fit a kitchen. I could do it quicker. By myself. Blindfolded. With one hand tied behind my back. I’ve spoken to their supervisor who’s told me that it will, without fail, be in, finished, the house cleaned and sorted by Thursday. That’s the best he can do, apparently. No, I won’t be recommending these people to anyone else – I might get money back for recommending them but this is just a joke – and I wouldn’t inflict them on anyone else. Yes, I will be naming them once they’re done and out-of-here.

It’s not like it’s a deeply complex or difficult kitchen fit. It’s an L shaped kitchen and a pseudo-island. What also leaves me unimpressed is that they removed the U bend from the waste pipe where the dishwasher sits, which is fine; it was the wrong part, but the only part I could get; but they’ve replaced it with…stuffing the end of the waste water pipe from the dishwasher into the waste water pipe. They’ve also disappeared for 3 hours having turned the water off and removed the pipework for it. Annoyed? Yes I am.

I rang them this morning to find out what on earth they’re playing at; it’s a long time since I’ve felt that annoyed speaking to someone.

Having fuzzily woken up to use the loo at roughly mid-day and had a wander round and not seen them, and then woken up properly at 1300 and since then not seen them… well. I am hungry, but can’t go out because I’m a state (having worked a night and then spent the morning in bed); I can’t shower, I can’t drink any more water, because, well, all I’ve got is 1/5th of a glass left and then I’m out of water. I can’t flush the loo, I can’t wash my hands. And where are they? Well, one of ‘em has apparently gone to Scotland, and the other? Lord knows where. I’ve rung them again and am waiting to find out where, exactly they are. I am meant to be studying and am sat here fuming angrilly instead and waiting for the phonecall to tell me either when I’m going to get water back, or that I might as well do it myself and subtract my time and parts from the fitting fee for the kitchen.

Okay, so I shouldn’t be looking at e-bay. I can’t afford anything anyhow, and I’ve no space for one, but sometimes it’s nice just to windowshop. In this case, I was
looking at DKW Junior’s (I just wondered how much they sell for, and how common they are). Being as it’s a german car I stuck it into ebay.de and lo, I found 2.

The 61’s cuter than the 62. But it being ebay.de the text was all in german – and so translate.google.com was hit upon, and lo the following text did spue forth:

"Small crack in the sky. The cars in front of potential purchase should be viewed! No guarantee / warranty. The stain on the passenger is only a shadow. Fun bidders will be prosecuted!"

I suspect it’s not accurate. Either that or the description’s certainly odder than most of the ones on Ebay uk.

I am, I conclude, sick. Not hideously so, but enough that I’m off sick again tonight. My throat feels awful and I suspect I’ve been spiking temps on and off. I’ve sucked my way though a bunch of USian throat sweets, drunk a surprising amount of water for a night shift and still feel fairly awful. Since I’ve got ATNC on Monday, I think it’s best to take the night (and the weekend which I have off) off and be better by monday.

It also means that enduring the builder* working on the kitchen (there better be plural builders present today, and it better be fitted today, otherwise words shall be had) shouldn’t be too bad, ‘cos I can doze and look at ATNC. I’ve not managed to do the pre-test test yet, because, well, I feel underprepared.

Although, really I ought to just sit down and do it. Nor have I made flash cards, which I wanted to do, and was hoping to do… So I might try and do them this morning…

On the bad front, I managed to unintentionally cancel our booking for dancing after the wedding.

The conversation (a couple of weeks ago) went thus:
"Hi, this is the Whatever** hotel; you enquired about booking a room for a venue
after a wedding"
"Oh, ah, we’ve already booked a place, but thank you for ringing"
"Okay, bye!"

Now, we – as I understood it – had booked a place and were waiting for a confirmation letter from them to say it was booked. At no point did they mention that we’d booked it, that they might be known by more than one name… Oh no.

It’s only when we rang to confirm today that we found out that the Lamp-Lighter Bar has an alter ego, a pseudonym it uses to evade detection. And thus it was that we discovered we’d cancelled our own booking. You’d think that she might have mentioned that we’d actually *booked* it, not just enquired… but apparently not.

* Distressingly back to singular yesterday – and only present for 2 hours.
** This is, apparently, the other name of the dual identitied bar which we’d book.
It’s their secret identity.

So, let’s list the automobilia I like:

Classic cars
Small cars
Quirky vehicles
Two stroke engines
East german stuff
Simplicity
Insanity.

Oddly, the Minor fulfills very few of these, but is my favourite. Perhaps because minor’s are my first automotive love. MZs fulfill a lot of these, and trabants (which I don’t own any of) also meet the criteria pretty well. Our little DAF (44) meets the criteria being small and strange, but something else has caught my eye:

Apparently this is a DKW Junior dating from 1967. It also meets another criteria which I didn’t mention – it looks all sad. Look at it sat there on flat tyres, it *wants* to come be with me. It sports (and this is awesome) a three cylinder (this starts well) 750cc (awesome, a ridiculously small capacity!) two stroke (score!) engine. Woot.

A car which is almost certainly without any merit at all. It’s German, not East German, sadly. Which detracts slightly from it’s incredible Kate-attracting powers. Fortuately I have neither money nor space for a vehicle which almost certainly requires a raft of skills I don’t posess. If anyone wants to buy it, shipt it and gift it to me in Canada then you’re very welcome to :)

I note they’ve got a couple of sad little enfields and also sad little DAFs, and frankly a whole great bundle of sad little cars going at their auction (the Linconshire Bubble and Micro car museum are having a clearout) – sometimes it’s fortunate we have neither money nor space :)

In other news, the Kitchen should start being fitted today. Time of arrival depends on time of delivery to the company doing the fitting.

And I actually took last night off sick. I’d been feeling a bit off, and on a whim (and because I felt like I was going to either faint or hurl on the floor of Lloyds while I was out getting money to pay for the kitchen) I stuck a thermometer in my gob. Scoring a not-bad 37.7 degrees C (99.9F) I thought ‘hrm, perhaps I am unwell’ and unilaterally opted for a day of being at home. As it happened apart from a faint nausea and general vague unwellness (frustratingly non-specific) I probably could have gone to work, but I might have made myself iller.

In good news, I spent this morning ploughing through ATNC and am now at a stage where I can safely say ‘Hah’. I don’t know any of it, but I’ve read it all, and that’s surely got to be worth something ;-/