So, progress has been made, sort of. I finally got around to calculating the hours I’ve done each year since I qualified; and popped them on the form for the CRNBC. I also remembered to ring the university and ask them for my ‘transcript’ which is a bargain at ’75 pounds’. Geeze! The CRNBC form is over 200 $CDN too, which is a bit painful.
When I get my copy of my transcript (I’m slightly confused about this, so far as I know only CRNBC need a transcript – but they give you two copies and she seemed completely phased by the idea that I might want a copy sent to me. I think I need to have a bit more of a check about this before I fork out 75 quid and get it all sent to the wrong place; but they won’t tell me the information I need for my application for a job…
Ack.
It’s far too confusing for my simple brain!
Still, hopefully we’ll be getting it together a bit more and we can head to Canada in the not too distant future; which really means in the week off after the next set of nights I need to pull my finger out and actually do some work on the house. Including, but not exclusively, fixing the stairs, probably reattempting to seal the shower base against the wall (it’s started to leak a bit again – it doesn’t appear to move at all, the silicone just declines to stick). Replacing the tap in the kitchen that cracked and calling the carpenter in to do the cupboard.
I also need to ring an interior decorator to get the ceilings done, and such.
Some re-invigoration of the Kate is required – I’m fairly ‘done’ with trying to sort the house, it being mostly inhabitable is the problem. When it was a dump then it was easy to find motivation to work on it – now it’s more or less fine, with just some ‘niggly’ jobs it’s not so easy to find the energy to sort it.
In other news, my camera continues it’s rapid descent into what I suspect is terminal decline. Yet again it’s toasted a set of batteries – the last set it’s getting. The zoom lens no longer zooms the way it should and is hideously crunchy; a sad, sad death for a good camera. I’m thinking of dinking with film for a while until the Micro 4/3rds format gets cheaper.
My big problem with SLRs is that when I go up a mountain or out for a walk, my entire bag is filled with lenses, filters, etc. I know that modern SLRs are much lighter than my aged AE-1, but even still, they’re much more weighty than my dinky little Minolta’s been. And Kathryn would end up carrying lunch, because there’s never any space to put it in my bag, which is very unfair.
So, while I really rather fancy having a play with a ‘real’ camera again for a bit – and am thinking of getting myself a stack of just-expired film to toy with, my final aim is to end up with the near-SLR of the Micro 4/3rds format.
Keeping in track with the order in the title, I feel I should introduce Chester:
This is the ‘sensible’ car I’ve bought. It’s still a Variomatic, but has modern things (like, uh… a multi-speed fan, heated rear window, heated seats) while still having quirky and interesting engineering lurking underneath. As I said yesterday there’s a few little jobs to do, but overall he looks in pretty good shape and has been trundling me up and down the motorway since I got him Taxed.
It looks like someone’s reversed him into something a bit solid – the back of the car has a bit of a dent under the bumper, and there’s a little scrape on the passenger side door, and so far I’ve seen a couple of small scabs but otherwise he’s in very good shape on top. Given the 272 quid price I didn’t bother inspecting the underside – but while he was in having his wheels balanced I had a quick look underneath and it looked pretty good.
So, hopefully Kathryn can nab him either when Jejy returns. Or when I get the bike MOT’d.
I don’t think I mentioned on here, but I did something silly. I positioned the ignition module of the bike in what I thought was a fairly protected area – and then waited for the *one* bit I needed for the MOT. That arrived, and I fitted it, and went to check it worked and there were no ignition lights. Why? Because the battery had discharged to 3 volts.
Oh.
The brand new bike battery was giving 3 volts.
And the ignition module was full of water.
Bollocks.
So I’ve turned it so that it’ll drain out, I’ll position it ‘somewhere else’ if it’s working when I reconnect the battery this weekend – if the battery’s charged. I’m trying to work out what colour to repaint her. The neon pink paint is totally non-colourfast and the top of the tank is nearly grey. So before Kathryn does her logo for me on her ( :) ), I’m thinking she should go another colour. I’m tempted by purple. My first MZ was purple (when I resprayed her) and looked quite cool (in my eyes, which is all that matters). Not as cool as this:
But pretty darn cool. So maybe metallic purple; it’d go well with the pink frame – however long that lasts :-/
And finally, in my fleet downsizing today we say ‘Goodbye’ to a trusted ‘zed. Cherry (red ‘zed) is going off to join Nikki’s fleet. Her plan is to convert her into an EV – the lightness of the ‘zed should be good for this; and thus I spent a few hours digging in the shed to pull out the ‘spares’ that are of no use to me. The spare round headlamp, the old switchgear, the little bikini faring, the old style indicators…
I hope that Cherry red gets a new lease of life, she took a lot of abuse with me, and never did get properly repaired, so maybe this is a blessing for her :)
