Category: General

I have three current projects and a couple of other bits going on, the first of which is finishing the house, the second is selling vast quantities of ‘stuff’ on e-bay, and the third is DBJ. DBJ is the only one that’s enjoyable, really, and so gets more me-time than I probably should devote to it.

I have recently picked up a Goldring Lenco GL-68 which need a bit of a service (I think the idler wheel isn’t worn, but the mechanism that moves it is either not moving as freely as it should or isn’t quite positioned right – so I’ll be taking it apart a bit to service it). It also needs a cartridge and a stylus, unfortunately.

I’ve narrowed that down to a choice of three, I think:

The most expensive is the Chuo Denki: CN234 Cartridge, then there’s the Sonotone: 3509 Stereo Cartridge and then there’s the Tetrad: TC12 (51) Cartridge. I don’t think any of them are particularly inspiring – but they all have the requisite 78 needle and all have a standard ½ inch mounting. The Chuo Denki one doesn’t necessarily incorporate a stylus at that price, which means it’d be another £25 for the stylus on top of that price – which definately pushes it into the pricey bracket. But I can’t help but feel it’d probably be better quality than the old needle on a stick ones that go into the Sonotone and Tetrad cartridges.

Anyhow, the other projects have not had enough time as they should, so today, now having finished throwing paint at the end of the door (not the whole door, you understand, just the end) I shall be taking me, myself and I into the kitchen for a massive photoshoot of many, many e-bayable things.

Wish me luck, for boredom shall soon be my partner.

So, we’re starting to get on with the completion of the renovation of the house, and have set ourselves the onto market date of end of June. Not that we’ve got jobs or anything, but hey, what do such trifling issues have to do with moving?

We’ve also started to discuss the potential issues around ‘we have jobs but the house hasn’t sold’ – not so much the ‘we have no jobs and the house has sold’. How does anyone do this? It seems painfully complicated and terribly difficult. The bugger of it is because the NHS is completely and improbably dysfunctional (and entirely made of completely separate entities) it’s not like I can apply for ‘internal jobs’ because they’re only open within the specific trust. Not that I’ve even seen any ‘internally open only’ jobs. I’ve not seen ANY ED jobs in Bristol for staff nurses, which is painfully depressing.

Anyhow, positive thoughts and all (difficult with the annoying sinus headache which has decided to lurk, irritatingly above my right eye).

Today and yesterday have been positive steps in bringing the house to market. Having spent much of yesterday cleaning up (it didn’t feel that successful, but some of it was sorting the vast piles for e-bay-age) I also primed some of the wood that needs painting. Today I’ve finally relaid that bit of floor that I needlessly took up in the bathroom when the valve was leaking. Should have realised – constant drip means constant water supply; unlikely to be waste water if it’s a constant drip. Bah. Anyhow it’s relaid and I then spent a few minutes fixing down some squeaky floor boards, unfortunately this then revealed more floor boards that squeak and after brief consideration I decided an endless task wasn’t what I wanted.

Now, however I’m sitting out in the garden enjoying a restful break while I boil an egg for lunch. Then it’s the home-made rosemary bread and cheese sandwich, egg, and even some crisps before I head off to B&Q. Whyfor to B&Q? Because I need change. I bought a 78 playing record deck for Dead Bug Jumping (which does, much to my surprise, seem to be developing a solid listener base. Either I’m not that badder presenter, the shows interesting, or someone’s paying people to listen…). Unfortunately, it’s cash on collection and oddly while I thought I had the odd fiver lying around, it turns out I don’t. So I need to go and get change, and the easiest way to do that is to head to B&Q and buy something we’ll need at some point during the redecoration process, such as, say, the colour matched paint of which we have run out for the kitchen. We would not have run out, obviously, if the arsehole builders at the Trade Trust had bothered to put joist hangers in, and we hadn’t had to have a huge section of ceiling lopped out, joist hangers put in, and the ceiling and wall repaired and repainted. But because they didn’t bother with such trifles, now I need to go and get more paint.

Anyhow, my egg should be ready, so lunch :)

Ooh, ooh, before I go we have a Robin who has decided to pop in and out of the garden and clearly has no concerns about humans. He hopped around us, so long as we were fairly still, in a manner that was most cute.

So, I’ve come off nights (yesterday) a day early because I managed to catch a cold. It’s not surprising really; they wonder why NHS sickness rates are higher than other ‘private sector’ jobs; perhaps the combination of ‘dealing with sick people’, shift working, and often working short staffed is related to that. Ironically, on the worst shift I’ve ever had (indeed, I think the department has possibly ever had), we were only (I think) one short.

But it didn’t stop me only managing approximately 400 mls of fluid in 12 hours, during which I worked the hardest I’ve ever worked, and got to the point of wanting to hurl my toys out of the pram; but couldn’t. Because everyone was in the same boat. By the end of the shift I could feel that faint tingling itchyness at the back of my throat that forewarns of an impending sore throat. I drank as much as I could on the way home, and hopped into bed – waking with a very definite cold. One more shift, and the cold was ‘orrible, hence I spent yesterday in bed – sleeping and playing Portal.

I also checked the job sites; could someone in either of Bristol’s EDs please leave? Thanks. Retiring is fine, transferring is great, just I need a job down there! I’ve seen HCA & clerical work but no nursing positions yet. I keep looking though, I’ve also been checking on Bath, but I’d prefer Brizzy, just for location. We’re popping down there next week to see what our potential sale price might net us in terms of houses down there. I really, really wanted this one but it’s under offer now – and last I spoke to the agent they were in the final throws of the sale :(

But it’s so pretty, and it’s utterly everything that we want, apart from being hideously in need of work. But it’s a period property, with a big garden and a garage, located in the countryside but not far from the city. Perfect.

Shame it’s sold, really.

One thing that’s really going to be sad leaving this place, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, is losing the garden. We’ve worked really hard on it over the past couple of years, and it’s finally looking great. On top of which, we’ve let loose our l33t growing skillz on a bunch of seeds and frankly it’s awesome. You put this tiny, tiny leeeetle seed in some dirt, water it for a bit, and POP, up comes this green shoot with leaves. In the case of the beans the thing seems to be growing an inch every day, which is pretty awesome. Kathryn, being awesomeness embodied, has replanted the ones that were bopping the top of the propogator lids – while I’ve sat nursing my snotty nose on the sofa – and they’ve continued to do their stuff.

Soon to be planted out we have a cucumber, a french bean and a sweetcorn and something else; a broccoli, I think. Our lettuce – after a bit of a worrying few days – seems to be perking back up (it fell completely flat – I think it was getting over warm and under wet) – some of it’s not recovering, but some of it seems to be looking like it’ll survive. Hopefully when that gets a bit bigger we can plant it out – I’m thinking that we may need to transfer some of it into the mini-pots soon – and they can live in the propogator until they’re a bit bigger.

The tomatoes, not so good. Our heirloom variety shows no signs of life as yet, which is a little sad. We may have to get some pre-started ones. Oh, and in the range of awesome, one of our chillies has come up. Since these came from scraping out a bunch of old chillies that we had lying around in the fridge and planting their seeds this quite definately rocks.

The whole gardening thing is leading one down a path to great joy, I find. There’s something terribly exciting about growing these things – and the contemplation of that point in the year when we start munching on our own foodstuffs again. Anyhow, I should go and read my PILS manual in the hope that I’m in a fit state to go and do PILS tomorrow…

Most of what we planted seems

So, I feel I should apologise, as is sometimes the case I’ve been a bit mizog over the last few days. I think the stress of the many things which have been going on have somewhat overwhelmed my natural positive optimistic streak. However, one of the things over which I have a degree of control is finishing the house. Whatever else may delay us, if the house is finished, it won’t be that. So having spent some time poking around the garden with Kathryn at her behest, and having done a bit of DIY today, I’m feeling a bit more positive.

So sorry for being insanely unpleasant to be around the last few days.

On the pondering front – I’ve been contemplating the computer again – the entertainment mac (hackintosh) as it is. I’ve been contemplating a few solutions to the issue of it ‘not being fast enough’. Part of me is tempted to just get the laptop a cable, and make the hackintosh into a server which just sits there doleing out music. Thing is, I do sometimes like to dink on the interwebs while a show is on – and I could probably not do that so easily, not unless it was ‘quite a long cable’.

Meh.

It’s nothing urgent – although things have been being a bit pigesque, with the laptop generously updating iTunes’ library on the hackintosh; this obviously would have been fine except that iTunes on the Hackintosh is iTunes 8.x which is the last version it’ll run; iTunes on the Laptop is 9.x – and seemingly the whole thing went a bit wrong as suddenly both versions of iTunes couldn’t access the library.

I also continue to ponder the EV, not that I’ve got any kind of result from sending payment. Which I think is pretty much par for the course.

So far, my plan to escape Slough has been hit by a succession of snags which delay and delay and just f*cking delay.

My registration had lapsed, despite the agency I work for making me do a mandatory training update (waste of my life, which appears to be what every one else wants to do with it). And I can’t just ‘reactivate it’ which is what I was told initally. Oh no. I have to go through the full and complete application process again. Which means CRB check, again. They’ve also taken exception to the most useless piece of mandatory training in all of christendom*, which, they’ve declared, I have not done sufficiently recently.

This of course delays the process. I can’t be interviewed because my manual handling’s not up-to-date. I need to go to work and find out when I can do manual handling, ideally on a day when I’m already in work, because otherwise it’s going to suck. All of this delays departure – and delays me getting into the routine of regular agency which I’d really like to do.

I’m feeling so shockingly negative at the moment – and I don’t mean to be – but really Canada, the Senior Position, the Court case, and now this? I’m just totally and utterly fed up.

* At least, in A&E. In all honesty, nearly all of the Mandatory training I’ve been to told me things so exceptionally obvious that I’d fear your ability to breathe while moving if you screwed it up. Over many years, I think I’ve managed to acquire a few neat tips from Manual Handling – but mostly, in all honesty, it’s pretty obvious.

So, some of you I’m sure have been waiting with baited breath to see what would come of our complex little planette, the one which involved me being a Senior Staff Nurse. Well, stuff all is what’s come of it. Apart from an invitation to keep working above my grade to get ‘more experience’, which while delightful doesn’t really engage me in the way I think it was intended.

Since being declined on that job front, Kathryn and I have been instigating ‘plan B’. Plan B is so named, because it is the alternative plan, and I note it involves the first letter of the city to which we intend to return.

Yes folks, we’re moving back to Bristol. Well, that’s the plan, anyhow.

Unfortunately, I’ve fallen for a house that’s completely and utterly like this one, and priced well above where I’d expect to be at. It has ‘potential’ though. The worst thing about it is not that I’ve fallen for it, but that it’s for sale *now*. It will quite possibly be gone by the time we’re actually in a state to move, and that will be somewhat upsetting. But as it stands, I like it’s proportions, I adore the available garden space, the fact it’s got a garage, and a driveway so long that people will need to stop to charge their EVs / fill their cars just to drive down it.

Okay, that might not be entirely accurate, but it’s certainly better locationwise than where we are now.

It does require this house selling for pretty much it’s maximum value, and the house we want being sold to us for less than it’s asking price, by quite a bit.

Also in the plan is at least 50% of us having a job. Now, ideally we’d have a 100% jobishness rate, but we’re aiming for only 50% – I can always go off and do agency shifts, it’ll be hard going for a while, but if it means we can get moved sooner, then that’s a good thing.

So today I’ve tweaked my CV and in a few minutes time will be unleashing my awesome telephonic skills on two of the trusts at which I’ve experience (the third and fourth a bit far away).

In other news, the cucumbers, broccoli and lettuce (despite my hurling of the latter on the floor) have started sprouting, it looks like the back windowsill with it’s permanently warm heater is the bomb, as it were, for the growing. We’re both really over excited, and can’t wait for the little seedlings to get big enough to be planted out and have some seedling fun in the garden. They need to be quite a bit bigger though; as yet they are but spindly leaves poking through the soil on the thinnest of stalks. It is utterly awesome though. This whole growing m’larkey is just brilliant.

Our garden continues to do really surprisingly well, especially given our general lack of apptitude. I think, essentially, things grow. They like growing and so long as we don’t do something actively unpleasant to them then they’ll get on with it. Sometimes we probably come under the catagory of helping, and sometimes I’m sure the plants are going:

‘Oh just f**k off and let us get on with growing will you’

But it’s still really cool to see the peas unfurling their leaves, and the carrots popping their little grass like stems up and going ‘hey, we’re gonna beeeee carroty!’. It is, in fact, lovely. Of the things in Slough, our garden and it’s happy growing is one of the very few things I’ll miss. However, the new house* has space for chickens, and I’ve been quite taken with this idea of having chickens, so perhaps that might be something we can do :)

I ought to mention, incidentally, that on the work front I did ‘quite well’ on ALS – and got invited to be an instructor when I’ve got a bit more experience. By ‘quite well’, I mean that a consultant I know of old, who has nothing to do with ALS rocked up in A&E to see a patient, and mentioned my performance as something that had been mentioned to her. So I’m assuming it was really quite well. I’m quite tempted by it as an opportunity, not just because I think it’d look good CV wise, but actually because it’s something interesting and gets me more into the area I’d like to be heading in. I don’t *don’t*

dont want to be doing management. No way.

Finally, in other other news, the Dead Bug Jumping podcast continues to actually grow in popularity. I’m not exactly hitting the exalted heights of triple figure listeners, or anything, but I’m getting a steady double figure number (the first figure might even have exceeded a 1 for episodes 1 and 2, which is a shame, because they’re the most sucky episodes). I did have a DBJ accident though, after the interview I headed into Reading and found that Reading sports an Oxfam Music, Video and Comic book store. This, unsurprisingly lead to me getting a few Gramophones and a Strangers In Paradise pocketbook (we now have 1, 2 and 3). I’m intrigued by the gramophones, but haven’t broken out the gramophone yet to hear them…

I think I might use one of them as the first gramophone of the next show though :)

* if we are to get it, damn, I think I’m really rather hooked on it. We / I / Kathryn might hate it when we get there, I suppose. But it’s got Sash windows! and Fireplaces! and big rooms! and a garage! and has Potential!

Well, it’s taken a while. I finally got sick of the broken leaking fuel tap and lack of top-box on my bike, and so ordered a small selection of bits which arrived today…

My ‘zed is now sporting the ratty old Pizza/top box which has made it through three cycles of bikes. It’s also sporting a new fuel tap, and a new rectifier which hopefully will make it a happier ‘zed. Now I just need to paint the panels again, and sort out a slogan.

I’m tempted to put back the:
Es ist eine lesbische seche
(I need to check the spelling of that)

I also liked a logo for ‘quantum mechanics – our work is your reality’ or something similar…

Needs work though. Suggestions considered… :)

Today I have:

– Spendt £1000 on someone I rate lower than the rat that occasionally appears in the garden*, and that I like to refer to as ‘A shower of arseholes’ or ‘the git’ (You know who you are…).
– Avoided work on-and-off – and despite that still managed to read through the end of the ALS manual. Just want to re-read the drugs and ECG sections now. About 20 billion times.
– Contemplated repairing an Enfield EV as a slow project.
– Looked at naughty houses which will lead to endless disappointment when they’ve sold before we can move.
– Contemplated owning chickens
– Wandered to the post office to send off stuff for Kathryn and from the last batch of e-bay auctions
– Been very naughty and had lunch from Tummies, rather than the Co-Op (well, I was close, and the veggie selection at the co-op set new standards in pathetic).
– Enjoyed a bit of sun.
– Drunk a lot of tea.

And now I should get back to ALS because I’ve tried and no-one has come up with an excuse for me to skive off for as much time as I’d like.

* Doesn’t appear to live here, and hadn’t seen it for months, then Kathryn saw something that she thinks wasn’t a cat. It’s not munched it’s way into the compost so far as I can tell, so I have no idea whether it is a rat.

So it looks like we’re going to be staying in the UK for probably another 2 years. This has advantages (Kathryn gets Permanent Residence) – and indeed will be eligable to become a British Citizen, should she so wish, which would mean she could have dual nationality (having looked at things, it looks like America doesn’t mind, and Britain doesn’t mind, so that’s all good). Having Dual nationality would be handy, should we wish to come back to Europe to stay for a while once we have kids – which is something we’ve discussed… It also means that we’ll be closer to my mum for a while, and my friends here in the UK. We also have more time to save, and Kathryn has the chance of getting into a job she wants while I’m potentially better able to support her if she wants/needs to do some freelancing (which might be ideal for her).

I am, however, very disappointed to be putting off Canada again. Kathryn has to stay further away from her family, and I have to stay here, being pissed off about the way this country is. Watching the election debates, the second one, I was prompted to curse the whole damn lot of them when they started rambling on about immigration. They are all a shower of shallow idiots and it annoys me how xenaphobic the UK is – and has become – because of shite like the Daily Mail with it’s incessant rant of ‘Immigrants are badness’.

Immigrants are, for the most part, goodness. They bring novel ideas into the country, they bring people who want to work, and they bring diversity into our nation. This is good stuff. Without this, Britain would be a much less rich (culturally, and economically) nation. And it’s sad, watching our country scream that our culture is being destroyed, that the social support systems are being overwhelmed, when it’s clearly bollocks. I sit on the front line of the NHS and I see who comes through, and yes, some of the people who don’t understand how the system ‘works’ are immigrants, but the ones who abuse it seem, most commonly to be British people who understand full-well how the system is *meant* to work, but also know how they think they can jump the queue (and are generally disappointed and angry when they discover it doesn’t work that way).

And making me shout at the laptop incoherantly while watching the debate isn’t a ‘good’ way to make me want to vote for you*.

In other news, we’ve been nozing at properties. This is because if we’re staying in the UK we are not staying in Slough. We have a timetable for moving, which is I’ll grant dependent on selling this house, and sadly we’ve seen several houses that we rather like. And they’ve also made us ultra-picky. ‘150ft garden’ is within our pricerange, it seems, in the areas we’ve been looking at, which means that Kathryn shows me a nice house with an average garden and I go ‘Oh, no. The garden is too small’.

I also have been rather taken with another project house. For two reasons. One, we might make some money on it, and two, it’s got a garage. The ‘favourite’ doesn’t have a garage, which is a bit of a pig, because I promised myself that I would have a garage. It’s also got a smaller garden and no stream, the favourite has a stream, a workshop (with three phase) and a maaaaahuisve 150ft garden looking out on to fields. (I think the project house also looks out onto fields, but has some trees betwxit it and the fields).

My ‘thoughts’ such as they are, are that if we can make sufficient profit on this place, and make a sufficiently low offer on the houses we like, we could stick all our stuff in in boxes and take two weeks during which we get builders in to strip/plaster/prime and in the project house wire/plumb and then we move in and decorate. It’s really bad that I have these thoughts running through my head. I know how much of a pig this property has been.

We do however need to finish this house first, and one of the things we are going to have to do is ‘make a list’ and schedule works, because quite honestly, we suck at working on the house now because it is ‘liveable’.

Anyhow, I must get back to Advanced Life Support, because otherwise I am going to make an arse of myself tomorrow.

* I’m voting Lib Dem, incidentally, despite that, because I quite like a lot of their policies. Not all, but quite a few.

So, yesterday I posted a very ranty little rant because I got my *local* council election thing, and wasn’t very happy about it. I should pay more attention.

Anyhow, today I’m less ranty – and my motorbike still works. All of which is good.

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