Mostly lemon based

Category: Canada

  • Post follows tomorrow

    I just had a really good day. I’ve got some pictures, but I’m not awake enough to post anything. Just thought I’d say to all the ‘you should do stuff now you’re in Canada’ types, I’ve done stuff :-)

    Raaar.

    Now, I sleep.

  • I’m in Canada!

    I tried to think of a more ‘sensible’ title to this, but frankly, that expresses it all. I am in Canada… Specifically, right at this moment I’m sat in Rochelle’s lounge, at her dining table, eating some of the food she left for me…

    I’ve nipped out to the store once, but I’ll probably repeat it now I’m more aware of how to get back her place. And I now know that Rochelle’s not going to be back in time for dinner (which I thought) so I’ll be cooking for myself.

    Mostly though, today is set aside for Not-doing-much-at all. I’ve got a Toronto guidebook I picked up at the airport to nose through and that’s about it. I might nip out and take some photos too.

    Just to prove I’m here like.

    So yeah, Nikki drove me to Cardiff airport, which it turns out is a bit of a dive really. Bristol – imho – is small, but quite pleasant. It’s light and airy. Has a few shops and cafe’s and fast food places, and it’s clean. Cardiff felt small, cramped and dark. The toilets were largely broken or vandalised, or just plain grotty – and yeah, it just wasn’t very nice.

    Still, the massively cheaper flights made it worth it. Zoom – Sadly – does not provide a Flight/Auto socket in Super-basic-el-cheapo class, so all that work with the power adaptor was for naught. Still, the new battery meant I at least got to watch a couple of episodes of Life on Mars and read some Megatokyo before it all went a bit flat.

    What was odd was that I sat on the flight and an older woman sat down next to me… She… is an ex nurse. She trained in the UK and then moved to Canada and practiced there until she retired. How freaky is that? Didja want anymore in the way of coincidence?

    So, yeah, we had a good old natter on the plane. After landing I got interrogated. I think that’s the best word for it. Politely. Really politely (incidentally, what’s with all the cute dykey looking customs staff?) – yeah, so I stood there and answered what I can only call a *lot* of questions. Mostly about jobs, my life, what’s going on with my house / home life (‘cos it all got a bit complicated). Then as many questions as I could answer about Rochelle. Then about how long I was staying… it went on. The guy was really polite the whole time, friendly, cheerful. But incredibly thorough.

    It’s funny, ‘cos security wise – I had a relaxed trip. Not like visiting the USA where they only just stopped short of x-raying me – and then asked me a few questions. No, here the security was non-existant, but the questions… To give you an idea, by the time I got to the baggage reclaim my flight was no-longer listed. My case was stood, looking rather sorry for itself, half way down the hall. Still, I was just glad to get into the Taxi and then into Rochelles, and then into bed.

    Today I’ve not-quite been to Canadian tire. I did look at it, and I’ll probably wander in in-a-bit. I’m not obsessed, but their website just appears to contain *everything ever* – so I’m intrigued to see the store.

    One of the things thats struck me about Canada (apart from the large amount of dual language stuff) is how much like home it feels. Alaska felt very different, although I was comfortable there – and love it loads, it felt very different to the UK. Canada, it looks very different – and is very different, but there’s some subtle ways in which it *feels* quite similar. It’s hard to explain. Listening to CBC Radio 1 – reminded me of Radio 4; and the Commercials remind me more of British than US commercials. And the supermarket – although it looks like it has more in common with it’s US counterparts, the contents was much more like the stuff you see in Europe. It’s interesting. It’s interesting what it shares with it’s neighbour, what it shares with Europe, and what is entirely Canada alone. Mmm. I must explore more :-)

    That and my laptop’s batteries are starting to run out of umph…

  • MacOS – Revoltingly nice

    I’m becoming one of those ‘Mac’ people. Those irritating people who ‘love’ Macs. My hackintosh / macinhac is lush to use – it reminds me of the ease of using RISC OS from years ago. It is, I’m sure, not as much of a joy to program – and obviously booting takes a bit longer – but the thing as a whole fits together really nicely.

    I’m obviously biased, I never liked windows, but I never was that impressed with Mac OS – and my experience of Mac OS X on the G3 before was, well, yeah. Lets just say it wasn’t as fast or shiny as this is (to be fair, it was 10.0.1 or somesuch early version).

    Anyway, it’s all pretty much working; the soundcard has some problems – the video card isn’t fast enough (as it’s not using much in the way of acceleration) to play video full screen, but the ntfs disk mounted and the files have been copied. If everything remains dandy and lovely the NTFS disk will be becoming an HFS+ disk (is that right oh mac-ey people?) and the conversion will be complete.  At the moment I’ve imported my mail, my bookmarks, and started work on dumping my docs on here. I need to get Office installed, and FCP, and a few other things. I’m even trying iTunes.

    I know. Easily swayed by Th3 Pr33ty.

    I’m preparing to get a firewall installed – courtesy of e-bay and Lauren, Queen of Networks. Although installing hardware that I can’t work on my network is somewhat antithetical to my normal beliefs, having a firewall that makes sticking anything onto the network and not having to stress completely about it; it’s a good idea and probably worth the sum of money it’ll cost. I’ll also need to sort out a Wireless router – but that shouldn’t be to complex. And some file-sharing ‘twixt windows on the lounge PC (DVD / CD player) and my Macinhack. Now I just need to get my RISC PC on the network and we’ll have a truly hetrogenous network. Oh, and my printer.

    Anyway, enough of that. The job: Well, I’ve finally got my occy health form sent, I hope. I got a letter from the Drs saying “please come visit, we need you to check the form”; so I went over, they couldn’t find any record of the form, of having the request, anything. So I went home, grabbed the letter, and went back. They couldn’t find the form. They rang the sender of the letter who said where it should be, but it wasn’t, the form now being missing.

    They then rang and said they’d found the scanned copy of the form on the computer and couldn’t be certain whether they’d sent it or not. So I went over, the form was fine, and I didn’t push the fact that they’d potentially broken the law by sending it. *sigh*.

    Anyway, they said they’d send it yesterday – so hopefully it should get there today or tomorrow. I’ll ring them tomorrow to check, but we can but hope. If that’s the case, then by the end of the week I should be able to start putting in mortgage pre-qualification stuff, as I’ll know how much I’m paid and so on, and then I can start looking for a house. It is, of course, getting ‘rather tight’ now.

    I’m also continuing to try and clear out crap. The old PC bits have been put on Freecycle and the new cases are much smaller (and prettier. Look, it’s a pseudo mac ;-) ). I’ve got a bunch of stuff to go to the tip, the Videocorder went to a new home (shockingly) – and yeah, all is good on that front. There’s so much packing to do though, I still have far too much crap.

    It’s just now – working out what I want to keep and what can go, well, it’s all a bit much. Right at this moment I’m trying to sort out backing up some CDs and DVDs for Lauren. Friends of mine will realise quite what a trial this is for me and her *g*.

    Anyway, today is a work day – although I’ve come over all tired from eating lunch (hrm, nap time?) so I best start meandering in that direction. It’s weird around here though. Lauren’s moving from Bristol, I’m moving from Bristol, I’ve been here 5 years and kinda thought I’d stay here – then the whole Canada thing happened and this is a kind of dry run for that – staying in the safety of England but still moving away from all my friends. The house is filled with boxes, both hers and mine. In a few days time most of the furniture in the house will be gone. There will be no bookcases, bar my two crappy ones. Half of the house won’t be being used at all. Although I may do more packing and thus fill that. I’m going to have to dig my stereo out of retirement – to save me going insane. And I need to come up with something to stand the TV on!

    It’s all a bit weird. Exciting, but scary too.

    Uh hu.

    So, there y’go.

  • ohmygod

    Oh my god

    Oh my god

    Oh my god

    Oh my god
    Oh my god

    I’m going to Canada. I. That is me. I, myself, am going to Canada. Thanks to Rochelle who’s offered to let me stay and the discovery of much cheaper flights, I can go.

    So I’ve decided to take 2 weeks out of being completely broke to go and be broke in Canada.
    RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

    *bounce*

  • Arrogant Worms…

    So, yesterday we headed down to Dorset (Bournmouth, specifically) to watch the Arrogant Worms. Unless you’re an avid watcher of the LJ ‘what music am I listening to’ thing, know me personally and thus have had it inflicted on you, or are Canadian, then you quite possibly haven’t heard of the Arrogant Worms. They are fantastic, okay, and you should get some stuff and listen and uh, yeah. I’m a bit tired right now, incidentally (yeah, yeah, shut up) for reasons that’ll become apparent.

    So, we took the scenic route to Bournemouth, me, Chrissy and Lauren in the Mog and John, Kate and Nikki in the Honda, them leading, me following, Me, Nikki and Kate in my design of teeshirt, and with my little GPS going ‘WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING?!’. The route TomTom 5 had was somewhat different to the route that TomTom 3 believed in, not aided by us traveling through ‘The Void’ for a while (new roads built since my GPS’s map data was created…).  We stopped off in an exLittle Thief for lunch (better than a little thief) and finally rolled into Bournemouth around 1530. We mooched, making it to ‘ShakeAway’ (see Liz, I’ve tried them both now, and you’re right, it is better) – who do an absolutely stunning Strawberry Cheesecake / Oreo / Flake / Marshmallow milkshake that is just so unhealthy as to warrant an entire new foodgroup.

    (I’m getting to the gig, okay?). Then we mooched, definately mooched, down to the seashore / beach (incidentally, what’s with Bournemouth; where’s the faded glory? British beach town == Faded glory. It was all ‘nice’ and ‘clean’ and ‘pleasant’. It’s not right); where John / Lauren / Chrissy headed down the pier and Kate / Nikki / Me went seashell hunting on the beach, Nikki discovered that she’d not brought a spare film for her camera and I discovered that my rechargable batteries were flat.

    Woot.

    So a quick run to a beachfront store and we headed up to the pub next to the club where they were performing. Me with a new pack of Duracell and Nikki with a roll of film. Pubsnacks, chatting to other Arrogant Worms fans, and generally chilling out. We nipped out to check, the doors were open at the club so we headed in and got the best table ever ever ever ever. We weren’t just close to the stage, we were virtually on it. Right in the centre. Rarrrrr.

    Then they came out to do a soundcheck, complimented us on our teeshirts (or were they scared? It’s hard to say), we chatted to a nice lass from Canada (Halifax, Nova Scotia – see, I do have a memory) and I set my camera to pretend it had extremely fast film in it. We kicked back and relaxed, the room filled and Lauren and Chrissy arrived (having visited the oceanarium). Before the Arrogant Worms the were the front-people of a group called Djambo; who were excellent. Sadly they don’t make it over Brizzle way, but I shall be buying their CD.

    Anyway, I’m not going to talk about them, ‘cos though they were very good it’s late and I need to get ready for work, and I shouldn’t be writing this now, I should be doing my dissertation. Ha.

    So, then the Arrogant Worms came on. I’ve never seen them live (what with this being their first UK tour) and I have no words for how excellent they are live. I’m sure the small venue / intimate atmosphere helped, but they were wickedly funny, and the whole evening was spent laughing and doing Rippy the Alligator actions, and singing along with the Mounted Animal Nature Trail.

    It was so good I squee’d. I don’t often Squee and bounce around like an overexhuberant 6 year old, but I did. I Arr’d and clapped and cheered and… just had a truly *awesome* time. Now, I know, I suck at writing up gigs, I suck at reviewing things, that’s because all the excitement and fun just washes over me and I want to say *IT WAS FUCKING EXCELLENT*. And that’s all I have to say, generally.

    So I got their new CD (Beige) (I was wearing Beige, specially); I got the Christmas Turkey album too; got beige signed, took (blurry, very red tinted) photos of the gig and the band (discovered what my camera thinks of normal Alkaline batteries (not a lot; the ones that ended up working through the whole night, apart from brief breaks were the NiMH ones which said they were flat)), generally had an awesome time and then came out to find my car wouldn’t start. Half an hour later the AA came, bashed the startermotor (which’d stuck, which is what I thought, but I’d not considered bashing it) and we headed home – using Lauren navigation as for about 70% of the route my GPS was going ‘all the satellites are in a line. I cannot calculate my position. Damn them’.

    All in all I had an *excellent* evening….

  • Progressing

    So, I rang BSA Regal and ordered the bits for my bikes; on the basis that I’d rather know that the Charlie’s brake calliper is fixed (and the iffy master cylinder is okay) rather than leave dodgy brake bits in a box where they can shock me later. Fracknuts, I should have got some brakepads too. Although, that said, the ones on Charlie aren’t that worn and could be slapped onto Cherry. Yes. Hrm. We’ll ignore that problem for now.

    That’s 50 quid spent, 30 on Cherry and 20 on Charlie. Not too bad really. Just hope it all works, although given the ultimate bizarreness of the weather recently motorbikes look less fun, especially since my gear is about as waterproof as a paper bag, it’s all up for renewal when I get paid, but hey.

    I also rang the govt. dept that’s been failing to sort out paperwork for me; they’ve extended the deadline again, but are getting a bit difficult about extending it. Given that it’s *their* fault that the paperwork wasn’t sent to the NHS in the first place; well; it feels a bit pot-kettle-black for them to say that the NHS is taking too long. Yes, it is, but if they’d’ve sent it when they said they had, then this’d’ve been sorted by now. I can’t ring the NHS again, not yet anyhow.

    I’m trying to get the nerve together to ring the hospital I want to work at. It’s scary. I’ve half filled in their application form, I just want to have a chat with them about the jobs, and so on. I hate selling myself, I’m not good at it. Yesterday I managed to pay the house money bankers draft back into my account, and the money I withdrew from my credit card (yeah, I know) back into that (which was to pay auction fees).

    It is again scary. I think moving up to B’ham or M’chester will be a good thing. It’ll save me money, it’s like a dry run for Canada – new place, new people, all that crap. Well, b’hams not a new place (it is, in a way, it’s changed so much since I was there). I just like having certainty in my future; and that ain’t what’s there at the moment. I should get on, I’ve got my dissertation to write too.

  • And pause.

    So, I went to see my mom (deliberate) this weekend; I’ve not been down for a while and consequently the list of things that needed doing was quite long. I did start to wonder about how my dad kept up.

    (skip past this bit for the wittery kate talk)
    I… bought fencing material and fenced off with barbed wire both ends of the river (after 6 years of people trespassing and damaging my mum’s garden the fight just got a bit nastier; incidentally, while Nikki I’m sure (being a farm-lass) would have had no problems dealing with barbed wire, I found it almost as much fun as it looked like it’d be); put up the new washing line; repaired the gate; removed the excess fencing from the gate post; ‘repaired’ my mum’s car door lock (it jams, locked, irritatingly); cleaned up mouse crap from high up where my mum couldn’t reach; put up a shelf and hangy things in the shed (well, technically, my mum, in a disturbing character change has decided to become much more independent (she’s perhaps fed up of having broken things around the house waiting for me to visit) so I drilled holes and she screwed the bits of wood up); I also prepared but didn’t put the edging up on the bridge (I think we need some ‘nicer’ wood). This took up the large majority of the weekend and when I left, just before lunch today I was knackered.

    I also checked and found out why the speaker in my car was working intermittently, the ‘quality’ soldering I’d done when I put it in (like a lot of other jobs) was rather botched, so it’d snapped. I put that on my ‘when I get home’ list. However, when I got home I did the supermarket shopping (Woot, I have food!); finally fixed the frying pan that’s been broken for months (now it has a screw made from some high-quality-metal or other which will I’m sure soon add the daily requirement of rust to my diet); the saucepan that’s had a loose handle and thus sat on the table for weeks; the broken wire to the speaker in my car (‘cos I couldn’t go to work without it working!) and now I am… knackered.

    Oh, I also watched Jean de Florette, with my mum, which turned out to be excellent and added to the strangeness (my mum had been excitedly showing me screwdrivers earlier in the day, a quality I presumed I’d inhereted from my dad…) when my mum professed a need for a widescreen telly. I tried and tried to persuade them when my dad was alive, but no need for a widescreen telly ever existed before… suddenly now, I’d given up hope and watching stuff on the ex-rental telly with the poor colour rendition and the flickering from bright to dark had become kind of normal. And then, suddenly, she’s all ‘I need a widescreen telly’. The world is going odd.

    (and stop skipping) 

    Anyway, I had a long chat with my mom about moving. About not being able to afford to stay in Bristol and thinking about moving Northward… I kind of expected a flurry of ‘no’ – me being further away will almost certainly mean less of me seeing my mum. But there was none. My mum basically said ‘for god’s sake, get on with it’. So, now I’m thinking about it more meaningfully. I’ve even got a Birmingham Univeristy Hospital application form sat on my desktop waiting for me to fill it in.

    I guess I’m starting to step outside my comfort zone again. Which is kinda scary. I was talking (I do a lot of that) to Trey about it; and it came down to the fact that I want to leave this country in 2 years. Either I can struggle in Bristol, probably not be able to get the kind of house I want, and so on; or I can move up North, get paid the same, live in a cheaper area, almost certainly find a house I actually want, or at least that’s appropriate and in my price range (and has a garage, hell, I’ve seen a few on Fish4 just scanning the listings). This will hopefully also allow me to save up a bit, and having a garage will mean that left-hooking Rebecca and getting her all prepped for the journey shouldn’t be so hard. So I’m going to give a couple of places a ring on Monday afternoon, see if I can’t scare up some jobs.

    Of course, this is in addition to writing my dissertation; and I’ve realised I really need to start preparing Rebecca for Pride. The call is still out, incidentally for Stewards. We just need two shiny people who’d like to be stewards around a shiny, shiny black Minor. Go look at (last years, okay, I know) the Pride of Minors website. The car that needs stewards is Fifi, the shiny black one, driven by our mate Guy. Go’wan, y’know you want to be a star…

    Anyway, I seem to have stopped, and I want to go play with this form, so I can get it sent off nice and sharpish like. So. Yes. I’m also very tired, and quite hungry (all I ate for lunch today was a slice of plum and chocolate cake).

  • And today I’m exhausted.

    I did nothing useful last night. I watched Due South and Northern Exposure. Got very introspective (which is not uncommon for me) and generally sat around wondering what I’m doing. Looked at Vancouver and Toronto again. The actual availability of jobs *before* I move, in Vancouver is very appealing. Hrm. Lots of thoughts. I think it’s the whole ‘going to visit’ thing, and actually looking at flights and seriously considering things which means that I need / want to make more of a decision. Bleh.

    Both have advantages, both have disadvantages, both are pretty equally appealing. Nyurk. Thinky thinky.

    Heh.

    Of course, I’m probably still thinking like a Brit. But then I don’t know any other way to think. I was meant to work this morning, on my dissertation, so that I had more to present to my dissertation supervisor. I’m so tired though. I’m trying to get some enthusiasm for lunch, but I suspect that what I’ll take’ll ve exactly the same as yesterday (block of cheese, salad, pitta, funyuns (*waves at Rachel*)). And dinner may well be the 8p packet of instant noodles (chicken curry flavour) and some toast.

    Why two meals? Because my dissertation meeting is at the time I’d normally drive to work. And having my lunch before I leave at 10:45 doesn’t appeal.

    I finally watched the end of Kasimashi yesterday; it’s very sweet. It actually *is* very sweet, and I kinda liked it.

    Frustratingly, Ais invited me to watch the Presidents of the USA; who are in Nodnol on May 20th. I’ve not been out to a gig for years, I’m going to the theatre and to a gig. Two weekends in May. In the entire fracking year I’m busy in the evening with something I can’t move, and they put their gig on one of those nights! Swine people. *meh*. I think I need to clone myself so I can do more things.

  • Lacking in title

    I’m in the weirdest mood. I should be working, I’m aware of that, but I just feel vaguely distracted and; well; not entirely 100% there. I want to do *something* but I’ve no idea what, I’m kinda tired, I’ve got about 1000 words of Dissertation done which isn’t really enough. I ended up watching Dr Who (that is such a sweet episode) and then flumping through my music video collection watching things almost at random.

    I kinda want to listen to music, but I’m just… blah, really. I’d like to listen to music and lie downstairs reading a good book, but I’m slightly too tense to do that. The house auction is this week, and I want to know the result. To quote talking heads, I feel tense and nervous and I can’t relax (although, I’m not, as far as I know, a psycho killer).

    I think I’ve just got a lot on my mind (do I ever not have?); the LHD bits arrived for Rebecca (not entirely helpful in some ways, ‘cos I can’t *do* anything with them but look at them and go ‘ah’). I’ll probably ask Lauren if I can use her yellow paint to mark it as an LHD part.  But that – and the stuff I was saying after the weekend – has left me very thoughtful. My future lies before me, but at the moment it’s all slightly unattainable. Worse than that, there’s nothing I can really actually *do* about it.

    I also found, if I book direct with KLM or Air Canada then the flight to Toronto is actually *cheaper* than paying a chunk with Nectar points. Even more frustrating; the cost of flights from Toronto to Anchorage, which I was kinda hoping to do to visit Kara, Kaisa and Trey (et al.) adds 700+ dollars! Err, which is 350 extra quid. So it’ll cost me 300 quid to fly from the UK to Toronto and 350 quid to fly from Toronto to Anchorage? (Although it is *actually* about the same distance. Meh). Anyway. Yes. Hrm. I was thinking, well, hell, I’ve got 10,000 points on this Nectar card for me to just ‘spend’ then (although we’ll save that thought until we get the flights booked) – and y’know what? I discovered that 7,600 points gets you a 30 quid dvd. *sigh*.

    I think something may have changed in the Nectar points system.

  • Protected: The weekend

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