Category: General

For-the-lose.

Run in with landlord, we suddenly need to live somewhere else.

Good news, I passed my first module.

So, apparently petrol went up 15% last year, roughly. That’s pretty painful, really, for those of us who’s incomes is a bit marginal at times. So, examining our possibilities we’ve come up with the following plan, which we hope to initiate on change-of-house.

1) Borrow / Fix my mum’s G-Wiz. If we can fix it, we buy it. Otherwise we sells-it for her for cash monies (for her).
2) Electrify the Minor. This requires planning, forethought, advice and research.
3) Keep the Volvo for long trips.
4) Podcast/Videocast/Zine (FTW!).
(more…)

Behind a cut, to save you all my whining. (more…)

Today, it seems, for me at least, is determined to suck. I had a nice simple plan for the day. Simple, but it seems, overambitious. The plan was: spend morning reading MSc stuff, eat lunch, do some more MSc stuff, take a break and head to ‘The Mall’ at Cribbs Causeway and complete the Vodafone phone purchase I started at the beginning of December. Come home, read more MSc stuff. Relax in the evening with a film.

Things I have achieved today: Reading some MSc stuff. Watching a film.

The day kinda went like this: Dink on internet, move car for Landlord, put off working. Start working. Realise after an hour of poking at the paper that however much I read it it’s like trying to decipher complex Egyptian hieroglyphics using a Ladybird book of Ancient Egypt. Come to grasp that an in-depth study of apoptosis is, perhaps, a challenging place to start. Decide to listen to the rest of the lectures and hope that my basic knowledge (essentially I understood the introduction, and while I *could* understand much of the contents, what it meant in any specific instance clinically – and remembering it any any meaningful way? That was kind of beyond where I’m at right now*) will allow me to grasp what I need and top up the rest later.

Anyhow, having ploughed through about 2 more hours of lecture I decided to have a break – I wasn’t particularly hungry and Nikki needed to run to the Mall, so… I collected Nikki for her errand and we pulled up at Cribbs Causeway. I shan’t regale you all with Nikki’s tale of woe, that’s for her to do.

I, for my part, went back to Vodafone who explained that they needed to run the credit check *again*, because it didn’t go through back when I visited them at the beginning of December. Okay, fair enough. Only it *did* go through on their first attempt – they just didn’t *realise it*. It got ‘referred’. This happens a lot because I’ve got married and my name on some things hasn’t caught up with my name for real. My bank have more than one name for me, and seem to accept both, according to what kind of documentation I happen to have on me at the time.

Then they added that they couldn’t *guarantee* the trade in on my phone. Apparently their scheme works thus: You send them your phone, they *might* send you money, or they might not, depending on the condition of the phone. If they don’t send you money you don’t get the phone back.

Let me just repeat that – if they aren’t happy with your phone they keep it and give you nothing. Well, that sounds reasonable…

So, I said, I’d go and see what everyone else could do. There’s T-Mobile, Orange, and O2 within a few tens of yards of Vodafone, and a ‘Phones 4U’. Sadly, it seemed that everyone could do, essentially, exactly the same as Vodafone and no better. And for the sake of keeping my 8 year old mobile number, I decided to stick with Voda.

Ye-eah.

So, I went back and they…reran the credit check. Which was referred, because… there’s an outstanding credit check in my name for Vodafone. Okay. Which they can’t fix until tomorrow.

Okay, I said, this is your mistake, you’ve now made me treck across Bristol twice to get a phone. Everyone else can offer me exactly the same deal – persuade me to stay. Give me *something* to make it worthwhile me sticking with Vodafone and not walking over there to O2 or Orange. I can walk into any of those stores and out with the phone I want right now. I was polite, but clearly somewhat peeved.

Here’s what they offered me:

NOTHING.

Fuck all.

He would offer *nothing* that would work with an iPhone. He could, he (the assistant manager) declared, offer me (and this was awesome) stuff that won’t work with an iPhone. He, he said, is not allowed to discount any iPhone compatible stuff.

I’m about to sign for a 2 year contract and pay for a phone and he…can’t offer me *anything*?

I gently pointed out that *he* was there with the person at my last visit, at the beginning of December who said “Leave it with me, I’ll sort it for you”. He stood his ground and said nope, he couldn’t do anything. At which point I said ‘Okay, I’ll go elsewhere’.

Which would have been great, but Orange were out of iPhone 4s, O2, also, out of iPhone 4s. O2, though, to their credit said ‘Go to the Apple store, you can sign up there… it’s just the same contract as here, and you can get your phone today’. Well, woot! I thought.

Uh. Yeah.

Apple store, very friendly, helpful and… their Credit Checking agency? Closed today. 3 hours and a considerable amount of frustration later we left Cribbs Causeway to their suckage. Still, all I need to do is develop a complete and total understanding of Critical Care and find enough spare time to ‘pop’ to Cabot Circus to collect my phone. The advantage being I can, at least, trade in my old iPhone at CeX when I’m in town.

* Which is reasonable, I’m not at that level, but saying ‘Oh read this little paper’, as an aside in course notes? Not helpful.

So, the plan was simple. Drop Kathryn off at work, get materials for eggnog and cookies, pop to bocabar for a nice cup of tea / coffee (and a cake) and some warm-not-in-our-room-time, head home, chill out for a bit, collect Kathryn, make stuff, bed.

The plan didn’t quite work out:
Drop Kathryn off at work (this went okay), get to Sainsbury’s – struggle because it’s not the store I ‘know’ and everything is in a different place. Eventually discover they have neither the right containers for eggnog travel holdation, nor full-fat-lactose-free-milk. Put back stuff I’d collected, and basket, make way out to car. Fight way out of car park.

Drive to Tesco, say ‘sod it’ and buy best available containers. Walk up-and-down the aisles looking for things because the big overhead banner things that say 18: Cheese, Goats, Alchemy Supplies don’t actually tally into the shelves, and it takes me a while to notice that in fact, baking ingredients are under ‘Cat Scratchers’ or some equally helpful marker. Find eggs. This takes some time, because they are – as usual – in their own special ‘egg zone’ far away from anything which might be considered related to egg usage. Assemble, from the many broken shards, a box that’s not covered in leaked egg, and a set of eggs which aren’t broken. Make way to tills, woman can’t get the ‘collar’ off the Rum bottle. She resorts to hitting it on the desk. Thankfully, the clip gives up before the bottle does.

Queue for petrol.

As usual when attempting to ‘fill’ the minor, get petrol over the back of Rebecca, and have to then wipe the car down*. Then I had the genius idea that I’d reconnect the fresh air hose – having covered her grille with cardboard she’s now actually almost, but not quite, reaching operating temperature (seriously, there’s a 4″ wide gap of radiator visible, and that keeps the engine temperature down to 75-80ish, the thermostat’s never opening**). This does, actually, appear to have had the desired effect that the air forced through the heater’s rattled along between the radiator and the air-dam (or cardboard sheet) first and so is pre-warmed a bit before hitting the heater, thus producing a warmer car interior. Putting it on ‘recirculate’ (or disconnecting the fresh air hose) has resulted, so far, in a car that’s quite warm right next to the heater, and cold everywhere else.

So, I think to myself, might as well give the Bocabar a go. Drive past, the place is visibly rammed full of people. Don’t think my social skills are up to it***, go home hoping that our landlord might have lit the fire and I could sit down there being a bit sociable and working on my course.

Get home, it’s the usual frigid temperature. Go and hide in room.

I’d never really understood the phrase ‘stir crazy’ but I’m beginning to get it. I can’t stand the sight of these 4 (well, 8) walls anymore. My moods have been insanely labile recently****, and right now I’m tired and want to quietly curl up for a bit. But I really should do some more course work, because I’ve done very little so far today.

So yeah. Best laid plans. etc.

* Modern pumps and Rebecca’s straight fuel filler neck don’t mix. Allowing it to ‘autostop’ normally involves a large amount of petrol on the floor, the back of the car and me. I normally just guestimate the amount I need and don’t fill her right up – but due to the multiple bank-holiday thing approaching and my need to get to work I felt it might be sensible to start with a *really* full tank.
** 90 Degree stat, y’know.
*** Shy+++, Tired and not feeling my best – a bar full of people? Meh, wish I could but unless I have to I’m not going to try and face that :-/
**** Despite things at work being better, I think the house and such is still getting the best of me.

So, yesterday was Kathmas! Or somesuch. Yesterday we celebrated Christmas, because as is often the case I’m working Christmas day (and boxing day), and this year, Kathryn’s working Christmas Eve (and boxing day). Not quite our traditional level of relaxation, sadly, due to a mistake on the shopping front we lacked a few bits for Christmas dinner.

Thankfully, being Kathmas, all the shops were open and we toddled down to the supermarket to get a few bits and bobs. We also meandered past the house that we should be in. I’d been vaguely wanting to trundle past for a while. I’m not quite sure why – a bit of persuading myself it’s worth it, a bit of making sure it’s not exploded/collapsed/being squatted in/a huge mistake. It’s dragged on so long and been such a desperate and stressful drag on us that I just needed a reminder that at the end of this stupid hassle, there is actually a nice house waiting.

Thankfully, ringing my mum yesterday, she commented (with marked delight) on the house (although I think the garden may well have been a significant factor in her opinion) having just seen the . On the plus side, I think it may be favourably placed for free Solar panels, which’d be cool, and I’ve found some stuff about external insulation for solid-walled buildings, which would also be good. Hopefully we can drag its energy efficiency up a fair bit.

Anyhow, so, Kathmas – awesome presents, and lovely just to spend the day curled up with my love. We’ve got our little habitat christmas tree (with it’s little white lights) glowing away in the corner of the room. It feels lovely and and christmassy, and adds some much needed cheer to our room. Tomorrow, is of course, everyone else’s Christmas – so Happy Christmas everyone, hope you have a great day.

Heh, alliteration.

Since we’ve moved (in my case, back) to Bristol we’ve made a conscious effort to change the way we shop. We are not big fans of supermarket/cheap food/etc, and we both have ethical concerns about the push to make food cheaper (e.g. cows not being allowed out to pasture at all – after all the crap we’ve done to cows, not even allowing them outside…). So, independent little local stores and ethical stores are the order of the day, as far as possible*.

And it’s interesting, I’ve never hugely enjoyed the whole supermarket shopping experience, it’s largely bland and soulless. Shopping at the little independent stores has been delightful. Lots of interesting new foods, lots of lovely people who actually seem to care about the food they’re selling. And actually, it’s quite a lovely way to spend a morning; less so as it’s got colder, but still going and picking up fresh produce (not in bags or wrappers), eating really great food that’s carefully prepped, and meeting sellers who know who you are**.

So, I recommend it, it’s just a nicer way to shop.

As a side point, the BBC’s Turn Back Time – The High Street is a really interesting series.

* We drink Lactofree milk, which seems to be a supermarket only thing, largely, and the milk appears to come from a Co-Op farming scheme, which is good… I suppose.
** Although we’re apparently a memorable couple, many of the staff in Sainsbury’s Taplow seemed to know who we were, which is odd.

So, I thought it was about time for another update. I’ve been lurking on the fringes on the internet a lot of late, largely because our landlord’s Sky box has the worst connectivity up here on the 3rd floor, (or 2nd floor, depending on how you count). Why, you may ask, do you not go and sit down on, say the ground floor and enjoy much improved connectivity? Well, that comes down to this device:

Circa mid-70s, this Agni Cuitomatica (I think that’s what it is, it’s all wavey 70s fonts on the front) is a charming butane heater which keeps the room warm. In fact, sometimes it keeps it positively hot. Unfortunately, lugging 14kg of butane up/down the stairs and a hot metal object is not something I really, really want to do. Hence I am living upstairs, with occasional well wrapped forays into the downstairs universe.

A few days ago we had a friend come by – and bizzarely, completely inexplicably, our landlord had the heating on, the fire in the lounge on (which we don’t know how to light) and had chopped wood and lit the woodstove in the back room. It was positively *roasting*. Which was nice, similarly the next day was warm. The day after that though we’ve gone back to chilly, and today it’s frankly *cold* downstairs. Which starts me coughing, which brings me onto another piece of delightfully wonderful news.

Apparently, I have Asthma. This is not, in fact, a huge shock. I have been faintly denying the possibility that I might have Asthma for, well, years. I had this peculiar cough which would (does) start if I laugh too hard, and sometimes if I go from hot->very cold. Given my mum’s fairly serious Asthma, I suspected for many years that there was a high probability that I had it and had largely ascribed the coughing to ‘very mild, doesn’t need anything doing about it’ Asthma. Unfortunately, the Matron at work disagreed when I called in sick coughing an insane amount as a follow up to my cold.

Having been seen, and doled out an Inhaler, a Peak flow meter and instructions to keep an Asthma diary for 6 weeks, it’s somewhat harder to deny the possibility. Although I’m not wholly convinced that I actually *do* have Asthma, because some of the time the inhaler seems fairly definitively to be ‘doing something’, and other times it seems to, well, not have helped at all.

So, we’ll see where we’re at after a few weeks.

I have finally admitted that ShinySmall, the MacBook of mine is in need of reinstallation. In fact, that’s probably putting it mildly. It’s got loads of cruft on it and I’ve been waiting for a new version of Office before I unleashed 10.6 on the laptop. And now I have Office 2011 and OS X 10.6 to go on. Of course, most of the other software is lying in a storage box in my sister’s garage, which makes some things a bit… more… difficult. There’s other stuff I’d like to get too, like a new Adobe suite (but the stroppy gits say doing a Masters isn’t enough to get a student discount; sods), and obviously I need to get Logic back on here. The Xmas epsiode of DBJ may well shuffle into a new year’s one, or a new year one.

So I’m sat waiting for the computer to do a fresh, shiny back up of my main directory, and *then* we shall nuke the entire site from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure). It’s funny, because this laptop is not ‘old’ but I’ve got so used to OS X’s not-requiring-much-from-me-ness that this whole reinstalling thing – something I’ve previously been very used to (with Windows, really) is a bit weird. It’s just under 2 years since I got the Mac, and it’s been inflicted with (and uninflicted with) a wide variety of hideous, cludgy, interesting, and dubious software. It has stood up to this test well, but now it’s time to be a proper work machine, so away with the toys of youth (apart, obviously from the fun ones) and on with shinyness.

And the *other* thing which is no doubt not filling your minds with concern is, well, the house purchase. Like a fossilised snail, our house purchase is bounding along at the standard rate for british purchase (i.e. you have to keep poking it to make sure the purchase process hasn’t died and started quietly rotting). Apparently, we are waiting for *ONE* sodding search (the local search), which they’re going to poke the council for. Also for the actual signed contract which, I’m told, was with the buyer. I also need to pop a copy of our Marriage Cert (certified) in the post to them, to prove I’ve changed my name legally. Once all of those are in we will, actually, possibly be in a position to exchange contracts. And then we’ll theoretically be down to the relatively simple bit of setting an exchange date (which will, hopefully, fall while I’m on nights*), exchanging and then actually moving. The word ‘simple’ doesn’t really apply to any of this.

I continue to hold my faint hope that it’ll be before Xmas.

And that, is largely the news. Especially because… the back up has nearly finished! Woot!

* While I’d rather not be on nights while moving, I’d rather be moved than not.

So, actually today’s a good day. I submitted my essay yesterday morning, and it’s the two week break between modules, so I’m hoping to relax a bit. I may cut loose and read something non-work-related.

So, I’ve been trying to source a second hand calor gas heater. Now, given these things have been around since the dawn of time, you’d think that they’d be fairly easy and cheap to pick up. You’d be wrong. They sell for actual money on ebay. Before I looked hard I thought I’d try freecycle – but no, not even any luck there.

So I’ve been trying to bid for one that’s not desperately non-local, that’s not as expensive as buying a new one, and that’ll actually keep us warm. See, having had a chat with our landlord I discovered that his concern about the heating is that we’d spend millions on heating this room with electricity. And to be honest, it’s proving to be a very difficult room to heat – 4 external walls, and a roof. Heat just disappears rapidly and since the heating’s on for a total of 5 hours of the day… well, it’s a challenge to keep warm.

So we agreed to get a Calor gas portable heater. Which would be nice, because guilt free warmth would be good, but it’s not happened so far. I may have to resort to just ‘buying one’.

I have, however, (braced myself for the cost and) splashed out on a new copy of OS X and Office for Mac. I’d like to update to Adobe CS5 too, but that may have to wait. Which is irritating because I wish to nuke the mac and reinstall – being as I’m a very nukey-reinstally person. And the disks for installation of softwares are lurking in the packing boxes in my sister’s garage.

Which will, I’m sure, mean my mac will be very quick. Very quick and lacking in some of the tools I like to have around.

There is, incidentally, no exciting news on the house. I’ve got a bunch of things to sign that hopefully Nikki’ll be collecting for us. Until they arrive not much else is going to happen.

In other news, we met Kevin McCloud on Saturday – now while for some of our friends this is not deeply exciting, for us it was quite cool. He’s published a very interesting book/manifesto for modern living/collection of concepts called 43 Principles of Home. And we went to a book launch / talk thing by him. He is a very interesting speaker, and the book provides lots to think about (it’s quite ‘big’ so it’s going to take a while to look at!). So yes, that was very cool.

Sunday was Thanksgiving which was awesome. Great food, great company, and much to give thanks for, even with all the stress this year. And now I must shower and prepare myself for work….

So, I note that again it’s ‘been a while’. This is not for want of trying to get around to writing. I’m meant to be doing my MSc, but as usual house stuff has taken up my morning. The bank is far enough away and open late enough that I did the bad ‘killing time’ this morning before going and then there was ‘the queue’ which mean that by the time we got to ‘now’ I’ve not had time to work.

Anyhow, enough grumbling at myself. At least I’m done reading the story I’ve been reading which had sucked me back in surprisingly successfully to it’s little world. That means I’m less inclined to spend ages staring at it, and hopefully more inclined to actually write the damn essay I’m meant to be writing.

So. What’s the world been up to? Well, theoretically, the house is sold, we’ve sent back a signed contract and just need our buyer to sign it. He’s apparently “got a few questions” – but we don’t know what they are yet, and no one’s rung me yet – mind it is only 1120 on a Monday. Hopefully they’ll ring, but I’ll be checking mail midweek, so either/either/or I’ll get those questions soon. We’re *hoping* for a completion date on that sale of mid December. Frankly, tomorrow would be good with me, but it looks like we’re going to have to struggle through another month of the fun-and-games that we’ve been doing.

The house we’re buying, the mortgage is lined up, the survey done, I’ve sent off the payment to start the land/everything searches – so hopefully we should be able to get that going quickly. And then we will have somewhere to move into. I have this faint, faint hope that it’ll be the same day – but it’s really a ridiculously faint hope. Moving house, it turns out, is a nightmare straight from the seventh ring of hell. It’s made more fun and entertaining by money that Kathryn freed up for this moving process taking the longest time possible for the bank to actually process her cheque from the States (they said ‘five days’, and then…said well… it might be more ‘weeks’). And because I thought about – but wholly failed to really consider thoroughly – whether I should bring my savings account information with me. Now my savings account is a laughable name for what is, usually a few hundred quid put away over the last few months. It’s a bizzare idea considering the debt in which I continuously seem to lurk, but I do occasionally find myself in these moments when I just need ‘a bit of cash’ and lo, there goes my saving account (again).

Unfortunately, the 40 quid’s worth of fuel it’ll take to *get* the damn account info, and the lack of time, meant I had to put the payment on my credit card. As a cash advance. Which means I’m paying 17.5%APR or something ridiculous, thanks to a stupidity on my part.

As usual at the moment, the money’s there, it’s just in the wrong place. I really can’t wait until all this is over, because once all this is over finances will go back to being something I’m generally quite useless at as opposed to something I’m proactively and effectively making a hash of.

I have this distressing feeling that we’re going to put money into this house, which is actual real money, and my usual level of financial acumen will come into play and we’ll get none of it back :-/

I’m assuming that I’m wrong on this front. But there we go. It still lurks in the back of my head and goes “Hey! Kate! You suck at this! You’re sure to be wrong!”. My head can be helpful like that.

The upside is that we have the potential to have an enormously cool house. Well, frankly a fucking freezing house when we move in; but a house which is cool in the relevant and interesting ways, and not so much in the ‘ah, I’m living in an icecube’ ways, which it will be at first. I’m really hoping that we can get planning permission and afford the works we want done on the house, because they’ll make the house just such a great place to be.

In other news, less positive, I got a speeding ticket. On bloody Wells Road, which is mostly dual carriageway – and is on the section on which I was caught doing an awesome 37mph in a 30mph zone :(

The frustrating thing is I’m *normally* very good about urban speed limits (20/30/40/50s) – while I’ll whine about them – but it was just after we’d move down here, and I’d forgotten that we weren’t in Slough where all the duals are 40mph. Accelerated up – then remembered and started braking – and then saw the bloody speedcameravan. Annoyingly, they don’t send you a copy of the speed-camera-picture, either, which would at least be slightly more worth it. And they say moggies are slow.

Anyhow, I’m going to go eat lunch and head to work… Hopefully we’ll have more news for you soon and then normal service can be resumed.