There was this great tweet – which I think ended up being a meme – that I saw a while back:
I love how being an adult is just saying "But after this week things will slow down a bit again" to yourself until you die
— Kramski (@kramski) July 8, 2019
And that feels a lot like it’s been here the last few weeks.
I mean, it feels like that a lot of the time anyhow, but moreso the last few weeks. Kathryn and I made the decision to clear the storage unit completely, which meant going through every box that we had in there and deciding what stays and what goes.
Y’all know how amazing I am at getting rid of things. I totally don’t have piles of semi-sorted crap that I should have got rid of years ago… and lots of things that have emotional attachment to my dad or mum, that because my dad died I have a lot of weirdness about getting rid of things.
Also, my dad worked for companies that have vaporised – digital and CTL/ITL – companies who had some awesome achievements. One of which people give a fig about, one of which no-one remembers.
Anyhow, so it was kinda stressful, and also there’s a bunch of stuff related to my childhood that brings back not great feelings, but that I kinda want to keep, bits of my history. Things that may or may not bring back the pre-out angst, but that also bring back some of the moments I had joy. Because I may have been struggling with my identity back then, but I had/have awesome parents and I felt loved and safe at home. Not everyone gets that.
So. Yeah, it was kinda vaguely stressful and also long. There were a lot of boxes. And trying to decide what should stay and what should go… Some things I left to the gods. Like, my oscilloscope – that I said “if it sells, it goes, if it doesn’t, it’s mine”. It’s now sat on my bench :)
Some things I thought would go didn’t and I was okay with them just leaving my life – so they ended up in the free pile at the end of the day. It’s kind of a relief though, letting some things go. Some things I couldn’t quite let go. The AA Book of the Car! I mean, why didn’t that go? It’s awesome. So I kept it.
Anyhow, at the same time you may have noticed it’s July. Gardens do some growing in July – and that’s been horribly neglected as we organized the yard sale. The tomatoes are horribly overgrown, the grass around the will-be-pond and will-be-rain-garden has got to about a meter tall. And had the yard sale. And then slowly are working on getting rid of the last few things (which really need to be listed).
The house also feels pretty… in need of a clean. I mean, it’s not terrible, but it’s cluttered and in need of a hoover and a dust. The bath got a quick going over yesterday, but the rest of the bathroom needs a clean. It’s getting a lot better – Kathryn spent a lot of time when I was at work making it more habitable.
Anyhow. There’s also been more socialising than we’ve had for nearly two years – because we have sensible / privileged friends who are all vaccinated. Which means we feel safe to actually *go* to see them. I mean, going anywhere else is a bit of a toss-up. Going to get coffee? Well that’s still going to be masked… eating or drinking outside though, that’s a possibility.
So we’ve seen family here, and chosen-family in Oregon. Of course, the UK is still a hot-mess of Delta variant and that fucking idiot Boris trying to make Britain lead the world in variants of COVID. So that’s still out – although their half-arsed middle path of quarantining all those who don’t live in the UK makes it financially and vacation leave availablly impossible anyway.
So I’m still missing my mum, dreadfully.
At least we can talk on the phone.
Anyhow.
Then there’s the usual adulting along with all of that. We’ve decided that we’re going to sell the BMW – it just has the potential to eat too much money when something inevitably goes wrong. That and we really don’t need the range extender. So it’s just consuming petrol for no good reason now . That means finding a replacement – which would have been easy – we would have had a Bolt. But now bolts are periodically catching fire, that has put the kibosh on that. We’re contemplating other options — maybe a Chevy Spark? Or a not-too-ancient Soul EV?
But then, EA just announced they’ll no longer be installing CHAdeMO chargers – so a CHAdeMO car doesn’t seem like such a hot idea. Kathryn mentioned that if we can get a classic EV with modern batteries that’d work – and then I found out about the Mars II! I’d never heard of the Mars II!
And there was one for sale just 3 hours away.
Only…
It was for sale in March, and I don’t know if it’s still for sale. The Craigslist listing has gone. I managed to find out the street I think it was on – but given that it’s 3 hours away that’s a bit much to ‘just drop past and see if it’s still on the street’. Kind of somewhat far into the creeping mode.
Which is a shame – because putting some LEAF cells in that would be enough to get it mobile, and much lighter, for the same capacity battery. Or Spark cells from a deaded Spark. Really anything modern with a modern rapid charging connector.
I’d love to get it working *as it was meant to be*, but the number of lead-cobolt batteries handily available is probably quite small. And getting people to service the silver coated contactors might be tricky.
In other, other news I’ve been working on the Mycroft – trying to get that project working enough to take it off my workbench and for it to live inside. It’s looking much closer today… I’m just trying to coax it all into at least more or less working, although the audio is very noisy.
