Mostly lemon based

Category: Creative

  • Consumer

    Before I start, it’s the 23rd of May; get recording, peoples…

    So, this is kind of a whine brought about by reading off the map (which I’m still reading) – and thinking about my life, and the fact that despite plans to the contrary I start most days by spending an hour or two reading journals and news sites and browsing, and just generally consuming other people’s content. Despite big plans for zines, books, videos – I never seem to get around to producing any more, or creating any more than I ever have done.

    I don’t – in a way – mind that I’ve been sucked in to the whole capitalist dream of owning a house and a car and whatever – because I put my own very distinct spin on it. Those status symbols of capitalism that I have, the house, the car; they are my own works in progress. Now they are mine-and-Kathryn’s works in progress. While it may be furnished from ikea and John Lewis, the art is ours; or found on the streets of Toronto. The bookshelves contain the eclectic and bizzare, the selfpublished and the interesting. And much of what is in is recycled, second hand and home made. It is not your standard house (but then, perhaps, that’s what everyone thinks).

    But I find myself frustrated by my lack of creativity. By my ability to sit and suck-up though a straw that which I place in front of me. Yes, I hunt out journals and sites that match my interest and ideals; and I imagine that I’m better informed than the people who sit reading the daily mail cursing everyone who’s not english, white and middleclass; but I don’t give anything back. Some of that I blame on ‘lack of time’ – when I have the energy that could be used to create I’m trying to sort out the car, the bike, the house, the garden. Although the garden doth rock; and the house is more and more a home.

    And I make promises over and over again – “I shan’t spend today in front of the computer”. “I’ll fish out the bits for the zine”. That kind of thing. I ponder, over and over again, how I came up with “7 minutes into the future” – and the faint sadness that comes with the fact that I made that over 3 years ago and have yet to do anything even as good.

    And so, perhaps I can manage today – the day I’m recording random bits for A.M. – to make that committment and stick to it. This week off is, ironically, reserved for the house, the bike, the car and the garden… But perhaps Kathryn and I can slot into it some creative time.

  • Huge house / holiday / car update

    Oh lord alive, I’ve not updated for a while, and there is much to say… There follows:

    So, let’s start at the beginning (since that’s generally a good place to start). At the beginning of the week (the one before the one before this one), as we commenced our ‘week of tormenting the house’ we discovered the availability of one, free, DAF44. Now, to those who are unfamiliar with the DAF, it’s a car with a constantly variable transmission driven by big belts. It’s really awfully clever, and now, apparently, Mercedes do something similar.

    At any rate, I’d fancied one for a while and it seemed like the perfect (simple) vehicle to get Kathryn so as she had an automatic to drive to work. It does, however, need some floor.

    It’s also not a runner. Ignoring this, at the beginning of the week we headed down to see it, and decided that for the cost of transporting it, it was worth it. So, at the end of the week Joggernaught (not Juggernaught) arrived outside our house, somewhat reluctantly, and covered in a 3 year accumulation of tree-gunk. Some scrubbing by Kathryn (and a little light helpfulness from me) and she was kind of off white. Not exactly going to win Concourse, but presentable. Which probably relieved the neighbours. J-g needs a service, some fresh petrol, and I spent a lot of time persuading the passenger side door to shut. It’s in need of a little adjustment still, but it does shut, which is altogether goodness.

    Annoyingly, the idea was to get the car and decide later if it was salvagable, but it’s kinda cute and it’s burrowed into mine (and I think Kathryn’s) heart somewhat. But there’s a financial limit on what we can do, so we’ll have to see what we can sort. Kathryn’s devoid of driver’s licence at the moment anyhow, and we’ve not even got the Autodata manual to get it serviced, so it’s just sitting for the time being. Shots of the DAF are here…

    The week, however, was mostly spent gutting and redecorating the office and the bedroom. This did not entirely go to plan. Essentially, the idea was that we’d empty the bedroom and the office, sand and paint the office walls (which were already stripped), strip, fill, sand, paint the bedroom walls, paint both floors, varnish ’em and move back in. Oh, and construct a desk and a wardrobe at the same time.

    Unfortunately, although it mostly went pretty well, we had two disasterous walls in the bedroom (which now await my attention to replaster), and some lazy sod had applied wallpaper over old wallpaper. This doesn’t come off unless you attempt to apply filler over it, at which point it leaps from the wall with reckless abandon. And the wall that used to have a fireplace in is also a complete state – one which requires us to attack it either with cloth or wallpaper, as it’s also a strip-and-replaster job otherwise.

    But we achieved an astonishing amount (with some assistance from my Mum and Parmito, who popped down for the day and opted to spend the day sugar-soaping the walls in the office); the bedroom is so-much-nicer…

    Before:

    Bedroom, before decorating

    After:

    After decoration, or at least part way through

    A bit of a change, I hope you’ll agree.

    To be fair, we’ve not spent the last year sleeping on the camp bed, but it does let you see how hideous the carpet was.

    So yes, the office now looks like an office, too. This is awesome…[House reno photo sets]

    Anyhow, because of the disasters we were a day late heading from there to Brizzy to see Nikki and Kate. But we piled in the car and headed down to see them having spent some time making the house liveable. Having got down there we headed down to Weston giving Pepper and Eddie a chance to run around like maniacs, and Kathryn, Nikki and I a chance to take photos of them running around like maniacs (and a few of each other). Despite the sun-shine the wind was cold, April this year feeling a lot like, say, November.

    Anyhow, ‘cos I’m lazy, the photoset from Weston is here.

    We then spent a few hours the next day (monday) mooching around Bristol. I love Bristol, it’s a great city, and were I staying in the UK it’s one of the places I’d be happy to live (and could actually afford to live). Oxford is beautiful, but way too expensive to stay; Brighton (the last place we visited) is another I’d happily live in… Anyhow, I wanted to show Kathryn what I mostly feel is ‘my city’, so we took a bit of a wander. Mostly around the St. Nicholas market area; we were going to head up into Clifton but unfortunately, no one warned us that Fopp has reopened. Sucked in as we were by the sound of cheap music and cheap books calling us, we ended up spending far too much time and money in there… and thus Clifton and the Camera Obscura and such shall have to wait for another day.

    So the photoset from Bristol is here… (see, really blindingly lazy, but you’re getting an update, what more do you want?!).

    Anyhow, we then headed up to the Lakes, this was for somewhat of a working holiday in that we had 7 hotels to visit to check out as wedding venues. In the end, what we thought might be a hard decision turned out to be astonishingly easy; in that one hotel really stood out as being just the most gorgeous views, the nicest staff, and just really the hands-down winner. After some trecking we did come up with a second, but it’s not really in the area of the lakes I love. It’s a beautiful place, and quite definately a fantastic venue. Had we not have seen the one we’ve fallen for then it’d’ve been first. But yes. So I rang the Registrar today; there’s not many times available, so when I get home from work today we’ll have to sort it, hopefully.

    Because my birthday fell while we were in the Lakes, we did take a day off from venue hunting, and wandered up to Easedale tarn. Kathryn got me a shiny shiny book (and it turns out a Suzanne Vega single, and something that’s not arrived yet…). It was wonderful to be up in the fresh air, on a mountain, in the quiet again. Just looking out over the vista was beautiful. Being as we’d not done lots of walking to build up to it, we just went up to the Tarn and back down – but that alone was a fair walk – and the weather though cold was clear and sunny most of the day. It rained for literally a couple of minutes (really lightly) just after we got back, and while we were preparing to head out for Dinner. Kathryn also took me to dinner at an italian restaurant in Grassmere which was just lovely. The food wasn’t anything to write home about (it was fine, not unpleasant or anything, but definately itallian as cooked by the english), but the company was excellent :)

    The next day was back on the road, touring more venues. Poor old Brick’s exhaust’s temporary repair started to give up; I suspect the road up to the hostel was to blame, but he soldiered on; slightly more throaty and distinctly more rattly than is ideal… and we headed, after touring venues, down to Manchester.

    The lakes photos are here.

    Kathryn’s friend Helen lives in Manchester, and she showed us the city a little (We toured Ontario basin in Salford before heading in to the city); we spent lots of time chatting to her and her housemates, and had a very good chinese takeaway. I had a thoroughly nice time – and it was really really nice to sleep in a proper bed. It was also fantastic to meet one of Kathryn’s friends. I’m not very good at being not-shy, but I tried… No photos from Manchester because, well, most of the things I wanted to photograph were inconveinently located in the kinds of areas where taking a camera out is an invitation for someone to take the camera…

    So, huge thanks to Helen for showing us some of Manchester and putting us up for the night :)

    Then onward again, this time to Brighton. 

    Brighton is one of my other favourite cities; although I’ve not spent much time there, that which I have has been good, and it has a thriving music and culture scene. Unfortunately, it’s also home to West Pier, something which I have watched disintegrate since my youth. I love West Pier, I think it’s the most damning inditement of our Listing laws that there is a Grade I listed building lying in the sea. One which could, and rightly should, have been saved.

    Anyway, ignoring the ranting, the plan was to chill out in the afternoon, get some food, head to the hostel to book in and go clubbing. All of which we did. We headed to the museum too, and encountered work of a very cool musician called Al Start; we also risked life and limb entering a variety of bookshops and other-small-thing shops, but the clubbing bit? Friday night at the Candy Bar was quite empty. Even come 11pm there was not much life there. We did have a game of pool, which was excellent, and then headed back to our Hostel. Finally we spent Saturday Morning touring the shops and going down to see Brighton and West Pier. We’ve already had the rant, so you could just have the photos…

    So, finally we get to the Car. Poor old Brick has racked up 1000 miles this week; he’s burnt virtually no oil, but he’s dumped around 3 – 5 litres of coolant. Flushing the radiator was inadequate, it seems. And while short journeys are conducted fairly reasonably, long ones are only okay as long as you are very, very gentle with the throttle. And no suddenly stopping for fuel or you’ll get that coolant explosion.

    However, we seemed to get away with just topping up the coolant regularly; but what we didn’t get away with was 1000 miles on top of the 12 or so thousand miles on the temporary exhaust repair. It snapped sometime up in the lakes, and unforunately the hostel near Brighton was actually up an unmade track, and that spelt the end of the front section which, it seems, also had a temporary repair at some point.

    Unfortunately, about 40 miles from home the exhaust gave up completely, shearing into 3 separate pieces; and the RAC bloke couldn’t bodge them back together. Thankfully, the very nice RAC bloke towed Brick home (despite me only having roadside assistance) – his argument being that it was freezing cold, and it’d take him as long as it would to wait with us. He was an absolute star, and will mean that the RAC get my recommendation and continued custom. They rock.

    Unfortunately+, I can’t seem to get hold of a new exhaust for Brick. Well, I can get a stainless steel one, but I deem that somewhat excessive. Especially when Rebecca’s looking at being finished fairly soon…  I’ve got to head to work now, so we’ll save the rant about cars and money for later, shall we?

  • And for a change, we went to Oxford :)

    So, having examined the pros and cons, we headed off to Oxford yesterday for a few more Oxfringe events; in the end we only made it to two; mistiming it and arriving after the other exhibition had shut…

    We did: Things on the wall (both venues). In both cases there were paintings I really liked (see, I am a sucky reviewer); beautiful images and images that made you pause and think. Several that I’d’ve happily hung on the wall, were I paid rather more than I am. I did buy a book, though, from @183, which cost me all of a pound. It’s a copy of Stasiland – a book I wanted to read when it came out (but which, oddly enough escaped going on the wants list). It looks, from the beginning of it, very interesting. We also stopped off in a comic / video store, where we didn’t buy anything (possibly to the distress of the owner). It turns out the Scott Pilgrim in the window is but one of a huge shelf-load of Scott Pilgrims. What is going on? I know it’s awesome, but it’s meant to be my bit of Canadian Awesome! Ah well, I s’pose I can share with the world. I did however pick up a free Oxford music magazine, so I’ll have a nose at that for free events….

    We tried to do: Illustrators and Book Artists  – this is in the O3 gallery, which we somewhat belated located inside the Castle development. Not that it really mattered, we’d been wandering around being touristy and enjoying the freezing cold, and thus arrived some time after it shut. Peering through the door, it looked interesting. Better planning is called for next time, on our part, obviously.

    We then meandered around the city taking photos. Well, I took photos until my camera had a strop about the batteries being flat. Given that they were immensely cheap rechargables, which have been hideously abused, and it was fecking freezing out there yesterday I’m not entirely suprised. I’ve taken some shots of Kathryn while she’s asleep on the sofa today (it’s lushously sunny, if also bloody cold) and the batteries are happily displaying ‘full’ so I suspect it really was just the cold that’s upset them. Anyhow, we then made it to various bookshops, and in the end landed up in Borders, to check if there was anything else we fancied doing. Having spied various ‘stage’ type things we um’d and ah’d and were as traditionally decisive as we were, in the end picking “Do something, Martin!” (Martin White) because it was late enough that we could go and get something to eat first.

    It turned out that our choice could have been much less limited by time, because the Mexican Grill at which we got Burritos was the quickest Burrito provider I’ve encountered, and we were fed and on our way with plenty of time to sit in the bar at the theatre/college… which was nice, because it was one of the few warm places we’d been.

    Do Something, Martin! turned out to be excellent, if very very odd. It’s essentially a one-man story with accompanyment on an accordian, and some rather odd little songs in there. Kathryn mentioned a slight Tom Lehrer-esqueness, which I can agree with. 

    Do Something, Martin! also turned out to be where 

    [info]bluedevi

    was that evening (Oxfringe hoodie in evidence), and after some prodding from Kathryn (I have this vague fear of looking like some kind of stalker when I meet people off Livejournal) I said Hi. It’s always nice to put a face to a journal – although we were somewhat hurried – she had more Oxfringe things to do, and we had to go freeze our arses off getting back to the car.

    Of course, Brick having had all of the previous day being played with, declared that he wasn’t going to have any rear lights. Brake lights were fine, indicators just dandy, but no rear lights, no number plate light, and just for real top-level-Vauxhall-Viva humour, no dashboard lights either. Of course, the only thing I actually knew we didn’t have was dash-lights, until we pulled into a petrol station where a recovery truck driver mentioned it.

    Having spent about 10 minutes prodding bits, but foolishly assuming it must be the fuse (made of unobtainium) that I’d blown and bodged (because they are, in fact, made of unobtainum, or in my car 30A fuse wire soldered across the fuse body) I gave up, and we ran the last stretch home with the left indicator on permanently. Not ideal, but it was fracking freezing, and waiting for a recovery truck seemed unappealing).

    Today, of course, I checked and it’s Fuse 4, not Fuse 3 (the one I’d been fiddling with) which does the back lights. Taking it out and putting it back in seems to have cured it, I suspect though I need to find that emery and clean all those fuse connectors :-/

    Today is of course, Kathryn’s birthday. Kathryn’s been dozing in the sun, seems happy with her prezzies and her Pancake breakfast, and so we shall probably have a nice chilled out day before commencing the world of work we’ve planned next week. 

  • Original Content

    Yes, today’s one of those rare days when I’m writing original content. I’ve been reading a fair bit lately (well, one book, but reading it quite a lot) and we’ve also been watching Men In Trees / The L Word / Father Ted and the odd episode of Pushing Daisys. I’ve been watching House and Yes Minister as well, which just shows how little work you can get done if you really try.

    I’ve been feeling though, the lack of creativity in my life. I don’t *mean* to watch TV when I come home, but quite often I’m just exhausted and sit down thinking ‘oh, I’ll just watch one show while I have some tea’ and the the exhaustedness which was following me home gets through the door and catches up with me. And that’s kind of it, I’m stuffed. There’s still plenty left to do around here, but we’re holding off on the kitchen until I’m less in debt. Plan is to tackle the two bedrooms which are (hopefully) just a touch of plaster and some paint. Somewhat less trauma than removing an entire concrete floor and having it relaid, a doorway bricked up, a new doorway opened and so on.

    But in the name of doing something nice for a change (instead of, for example, sitting around the house reading stuff on the internet, watching TV or reading – all of which are pleasant enough but one does need a break, and it’s nice to get out with my beloved) we headed in to London.

    The plan, such as it was, was to tackle some of the time-out treasure hunts, spend some time lurking in bookshops and get something to eat… 

    Kathryn had yet to see Foyles, and wanted to do so, and so after a nice little lunch in the Foyles Cafe we started our afternoon with a tour of Foyles. Yeah. See, we’re both slow in bookshops when they’re tiny. Foyles used to be the largest bookstore in the world; it’s probably still the largest in the UK. We entered the store around 2pm and left around 5, carrying only 2 books… The list of books we could have bought was huge; I could happily spend thousands of pounds there.

    Which would of course, be foolish. When would I have time to read that many books? But hey.

    It being slightly later than perhaps intended, we headed off to do the Literary treasure hunt. It wasn’t really a hunt, as such, in that they basically tell you exactly where what you’re looking for is, and what it is. And apart from a few slightly clunky bits of navigation, it worked well. It was, however, nice to see a bit of London that, well, I’ve not really seen since my childhood, despite being really very cold…

    We also ran into a couple of people doing the hunt themselves, although they were doing all 5 and we – in the end – only did one (it was bloody freezing).

    Having satisfied ourselves that CC&K would be open for desert we headed to Palm Court for dinner; supping on fine cocktails (well, one each) and eating fine food. Being rich would actually be quite handy.

    Finally, we finshed the day in CC&K, and headed home to bed.

    …then on Saturday we got a phone call in the morning – the wedding dress place we wanted to visit was open that morning – my mother was coming with the hope that we’d get to go visit it, and so we quickly made an appointment and headed in. It’s a weird experience being fitted for a dress. I’ve never been fitted for anything in my life, not by anyone else, and so being prodded and poked and squashed into a dress was quite a novel experience. But, the women there were great – they didn’t make us feel bad for not having much in the way of a budget; they let us try on loads of dresses, and my mum’s and their advice combined to get us two good possible combinations.

    Obviously we’re going to try some others too; but that first experience was important – it’s quite unnerving to be in your undies in front of lots of people you don’t know who’re pulling you into dresses… And in the end it was quite fun; and Kathryn looked truly stunning. Even I didn’t look too shabby :)

    We then had a chilled out day at home – sorting out music and french lessons for my mum and Parmita. Today’s been a chilly day; the snow falling steadily all mornind, but distressingly not settling even a little…. I’m hoping for more… but a peaceful day of paperwork and snuggling lies ahead.

  • Variously titled, but fundamentally the big, late update

    Welcome to the combined Kate’s Life 2007 update package. This package will update your Kate’s Life Information on the following issues:

    – Thanksgiving
    – XKCD is in my head again
    - Stuff of a housey nature
    – Random photographics
    – Other sundry informatorial updates may be included.     Click here to install this update

    So, yes, I’m behind again, aren’t I? So, we’ll do things in kinda an order. First up, XKCD is in my head; I’m now at a state where I have no properly working computers. The laptop’s power cable is fubar, so I need to find the spare supply for it (which is probably in the attic, fortunately, and not in the ‘spare room’ which is currently full. The G5 still needs a new power supply; I’m hoping to sort that out this week, if at some point before friday I have a working car. The PC downstairs still falls off the wifi, it is to be fair working in all other respects. And the hackintosh remains without network. There was no small degree of frustration after spending hours on it, I realise now that I need a USB WiFi dongle *anyway* (my brain kept saying, no you don’t; you won’t need one when you get the G5 working because you’ll just stick the homehub up there as a wired / wireless router – but it’d just be easier if everything can be wirelessed). So, yes. We’ll see what happens.

    Anyway, so, Thanksgiving. We celebrated thanksgiving with friends (thank you for coming Jordax!), producing a not-quite traditional (but real) chicken (there were only 3 of us though, and we still had *loads of food*), stuffed with home made stuffing consisting of (veggie) sausage, raisins, celery, onion, and herbs; sweet potato and pecan casserole (that was delicious, if mostly sugar :) ), US style biscuits (very yummy), green beans, carrots, brussel sprouts, mashed potato and cranberry sauce, all washed down with some rather nice red wine. This was followed by an excellent Lemon Icebox Pie made with real proper Graham Crackers imported from the States… (and this is the best description I can imagine of a Graham Cracker: “…if a Digestive were ever to get a Ryvita into trouble, possibly at a wild party behind the cheese board, then the resulting progeny may well end growing up to look a lot like Graham Crackers“). Anyhow, proper thanksgiving tradition being followed we attempted to watch clips of the Macy’s day parade, but they were a bit short and required more attention than we wanted to give them (next year, can someone please post the whole damn thing to YouTube or GoogleVideo? That’d help. Ta), so we switched and watched the Peanuts / Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special (1973) :)

    And then we settled down to play Squabble for a bit (Kathryn won :) ), chatted, drank and whiled the hours away before heading to bed. Sunday was spend doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever (apart from some laundry and all the washing up in the entire universe).

    Anyway, I know it’s rather bleached from the flashgun, but here’s the thanksgiving dinner…

    And here’s a bit of old news; I drew a person…

    Raaaa!

    So, stuff of a housey nature (Which I should, really, be doing now) – the bathroom has water. Water! The taps work and everything. Well, the cold ones. Jobs left for us to do are (in order, ish):

    – Cut and prime wood for behind toilet cistern.
    – The rest of the grouting, most importantly finishing the shower and polishing the area behind the radiator.
    – Painting the woodwork behind the radiator.
    – Continue to strip radiator.
    – Seal sink drainer (because it’s leaking….le sigh).

    Day 2
    – Paint wood for behind toilet cistern.
    – Silicone sealing around the shower.
    – Continue to strip radiator.
    – Sand radiator and paint… hopefully.
    – Silicone seal around toilet

    Day 3
    – Switch over to chrome flush lever / chain / etc.
    – Mount toilet cistern, connect up, pray it flushes okay.
    – Connect radiator.

    Other non-urgent jobs are to finish the rest of the grouting elsewhere, put a second coat of paint on some areas that missed out on the walls then mount shelves on those walls, and to – once the plumbing’s all connected up (hot water, specifically), fill in the last segment of tiles (over the currently removable panel work) and to grout everywhere that’s left.

    It’s close, but this made me ridiculously happy:

    And finally, for various reasons I’ve been trying to get some artsy shots of the Viva (well, one specific reason) – so, here’s one or two:

    Uh, so there you go, closing with pictures. I’m going to end the update there, hopefully that’ll sort people’s complaints about lack of pictures ;)

  • late night ponderance

    See, nights. I always try and swing my body round to night shifts by staying up insanely late the night before; thus allowing me to sleep late into the day before my night shift. That’s the *idea* anyhow. Which means staying up late at night, which means pondering and thoughts and kind of wondering about things.

    So, I’ve got various things lurking in my brain; the Viva project (which I’ll unveil at some point when Zesthost have sorted out the problems with billing which may be internet explorers, my, or their fault (I don’t know how it happened….)) lurks in my mind distracting me during the day; the house – obviously – continues to be cold and I keep thinking about the bills (including the TV licence :-/ ), and trying to work out whether it’s better to fork out 80 quid on a tool that we need, or leave it and rent it (at 40+ quid a day); and funnily enough I’ve got a strong desire to make a Super 8 film again.

    A couple of days ago I finally showed my cine films to Kathryn and it’s left me with a strong urge to get the camera out again. I’ve been missing the video camera – having played with John’s camera my little Aiptek which shoots at less than half tv resolution it just feels – well – exactly what it is, a cheap point and shoot which does video. But cine film has a certain quality to it; not so much a timelessness as a feeling of being fixed in time. Having hunted e-bay I can see a variety of options; well, two really. The Ektachrome colour film (I need to check any of my cameras will take this), or a black and white film.

    Either way, I have a distinct urge to get the camera out; only I’m not quite sure what to film. Anyone got a script that can be shot in 5 minutes (or so)?

    Anyway, the plan for tonight, such as it is – having watched Long Way Down (which I was seriously beginning to struggle with watching until about 2/3rds of the way into this episode when suddenly it became much more about the journey and the people than just an endless struggle to get the miles in), is to go and sort out the Mac. The only problem with that is that it’s in a room that’s cold. Cold and upstairs. So, thought for the moment is that when I’ve done this I’ll make myself a little cup of tea, grab my nipod, my copy of Accident and Emergency Nursing and head upstairs – taking with me a fan heater (well, I’ll use the bathroom / workshop heater). It’s a shame, ‘cos the gas fire’s just made the lounge nicely habitable. But hey.

    I need to get the Mac up and running really, because I’m fed up of using IE on the laptop – but I daren’t reinstall the laptop until I’ve got one other machine working. I’m slightly concerned about the Mac also because when I switch to the BeBox, as I intend to, I’ll have to pick up a wireless card for the Mac… and so far the ‘it works perfectly’ squad of Hackintosh people have produced for me a machine which has never worked the way they said. I’ve still no sound… and the latest Hackintosh software’s only succeeded in giving me more problems (that had no sound or networking). I don’t have the skills / interest / time /energy to care enough or to fix it; so it’s back on an earlier revision which just left me with no sound. Something I can deal with thanks to the nipod, and the existence of the laptop. But it’s not something I have any urge to live with permanently. Thankfully, my life behind the technology curve just got much better, with the addition of a G5 Mac. Only teeny little problem – it’s a dead G5 mac. So if anyone’s got a spare G5 power supply kicking round it’d sure come in handy right about… now.

    Anyway, I should get on :)

  • Holiday, Part 2; Photos and House, part whatever.

    So, yeah. I promised I’d write something about this. Anyhow, after the lakedistrict we headed down to Bristol. I have several fantastic friends in Bristol who I’m very bad at getting down to see – and also I wanted Kathryn to meet more of my friends. So, a plan was hatched (thanks to LizBuf who pointed out that the harbour festival was occurring) and we headed on down to the land of Bristol on the Friday night before all piling into Kate’s Prius for a journey to the city centre.

    On the way in we caught up with a little abandonment; the whole of that bit of the harbour is redevelopment prone – especially now they’re well underway with the waterfront developments further up. So the previously grotty and interesting end of the town is starting to be gentrified; but there’s still some interesting bits of fallingdownness. Impressively I largely failed to get any shots of the actual harbour festival; but some interesting shots of friends and some interesting shots of abandoned boats, or bits of ’em. Anyhow, shots of the weekend are located here…

    Next up we have another photoset; this is shots taken from London; mostly around Bankside powerstation / The Tate Modern. I’ve always meant to go to Tate Modern, and actually I still need to go, because we only really had time to look around an exhibit about urban life (which was ace) and then while Kathryn was busy I spent most of my London afternoon taking pictures outside or lounging on the grass, then we headed to St Pauls, and then off to Gay’s the Word (where I bought two books, despite knowing I shouldn’t, but one of them is called ‘The Wombat Strategy’ and therefore needed to come home with me). On my way home that evening I was treated to a gorgeous synchonised flying display from the local bird population. It was just *stunning*. Sadly the batteries on my camera were somewhere beyond flat, and lurking around in the micron thick range; I managed with much shuffling of batteries to loose two shots; one of which was in focus. It was just a glorious, glorious sunset and the birds were flocking and flying and… I just stood and watched for ages. So that photoset is here…

    And finally, in the name of updating you all; the fruits of mine and Kathryn’s labour. This is the bathroom as of today.

  • Holiday, part 1.

    So, I had this faint intention of writing about the holiday in great depth, because it was a fantastic holiday filled with awesome.

    But I’m too tired to do that. So, rather than wait until I forget about it I’ll sketch it for you shiny people, and then give you a link to some pics…

    Day 1 was mostly spent travelling; the traffic was okay, I think; Brick performed flawlessly, apart from a weld on the exhaust failing as we off-roaded up to the hostel. Actually, it wasn’t as bad as the coniston one by any means, the track up is pretty rough though. We landed up at the hostel fairly late in the evening – and despite failing light took a little wander up towards Red Tarn / Helvellyn… the air was just so clean. It’s amazing, you forget what real, fresh air smells like.

    Day 2 and we headed for a nice light easy walk; easing ourselves in – Kathryn had new (unbroken in) boots, and I am well out of practice with walking, so we walked down the mountain to Glenridding; and after a brief detour to buy waterproofs for me (because I’m a dizzy mare and forgot them) we headed  out to the ferry to get the ‘steamer’ (diesel, these days) to Howtown. From there the plan was to walk back around Ullswater, one of the Wainright walks; sadly there were about 3,000,000 people also with this plan, so instead we decided to nip up Hallin fell. Hallin fell took exception to being ‘nipped’ up; and we got rained and hailed on, sheltering behind the obelisk at the top. Once done with the rain and hail, and my boots having disintegrated, we headed down and (squelched) around Ullswater and the weather went back to being rather lovely.

    Day 3 – and we headed to Keswick. Keswick is where most of my youth holidays were spent; so feels kinda home-y; we wandered around many bookshops, a few sweet shops, and also did some (of the vast number of) mountaineering shops (to replace my boots and get a knee support and a trecking pole (or stick, as I insist on calling it)). We also found a truly excellent cafe called the Lakeland Peddlar. My, that was some good food… And I also availed myself of Keswick’s exhaust repair facilities. Brick’s re-welded exhaust remained trouble free…but when we arrived to collect Brick there was a chap who, well, let’s say he was very excited to see an HC Viva still on the road. He all-but bounced, and asked to sit in the car (so I opened the door and let him have a sit inside)….
    Day 4 – Helvellyn. The weather looked hideous when we started out; but the report said that the clouds would lift and the rain would stop and the sun would shine. And y’know what; it was true. When we were walking up Helvellyn we stood about 200 meters from Red Tarn and didn’t know it was there; and had to guess at which path was the one we wanted. We didn’t bother doing Catstye Cam (which we were going to do) because, well, we couldn’t see it. Anyhow, 3118 feet up, and the weather cleared a couple of times for us; giving us some truly breathtaking views. And by the time we were crossing Striding Edge it’d become a glorious day. We opted to walk across Grisedale Brow (where I shot my quick bit of abandonment; this dam), and down into Glenridding – where we would grab a pub meal before making the treck back up to the Hostel.

    Day 4 – And we decided on a nice, relaxing day; visiting the museum in Ambleside; and wandering around many bookshops in Ambleside where we chanced upon a very informal, very friendly poetry night. It was excellent, and very friendly; and I deeply wish it existed in Slough. Anyhow, if you’re ever in Ambleside the poetic justice poetry night is well worth it.

    Day 5 – We headed to the Potfest – a place where we could both have spent vastly too much money. There was some beautiful ceramic art and pottery there; some of it very reasonably priced. Some of it while reasonably priced also very expensive, and some of it oh-my-god-expensive :)

    And then we headed to Bristol, but that’s a story for another post.

    Anyhow, here’s the pics…

  • Dolls in pram ≠ Brick

    So, today was a bit insane. At least, I thought it was insane.

    I’m not sure why, but the nurse in charge decided I should be 1st in in Resus. This was actually good, in a lot of ways; because I much more enjoy and am much better when I’m thrown in at the deep end.

    But it was scary++ because, well, not only do I have only a limited clue as to what I’m doing; but also I’ve got next to no Emergency skills. I can’t take blood (although hopefully I can do my assessment this week), I can’t give IV’s unsupervised, I can’t cannulate, and I can’t plaster….

    So it was a bit interesting. I got very good at saying “could you possibly…”

    And “no, but I’ll get someone who can”.

    Thankfully someone much more experienced came in for the Trauma call (a chap with extensive burns). And I stuck to my chest pains, and self-harmers. I did meet a genuine bona-fide gangster; at least according to himself… I must admit when he self discharged I really didn’t care that much…

    After my shift I drove home, although there was a brief pause because Brick randomly decided he didn’t like the rust syrup masquerading as coolant, and thus spat it out. I’ve only seen a car-spitting-out-coolant-old-style once before (Nikki’s Mog) and it’s quite impressive. There was steam pouring (and I do mean pouring) out from the bonnet, from the back of the bonnet (where the vents are) and when I opened it there was a whoosh of more steam. So I shall *change* the coolant before heading up North; although I shan’t flush it.

    It seemed fine after slopping some fresh coolant in so it was probably a stuck thermostat. But I shall be paranoid’ly observing it.

    I finally, incidentally, got my shot in for Snapshot Hunter; ‘ve stuck it below, and I’m quite pleased with it… I’ve got a whole bundle more from the weekend with Kathryn, but I shall maybe upload them tomorrow.

    And to take you into the evening, here’s some links: Funny. Scary.

  • There’s good news and uh, some bad.

    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…