Category: General

So, I’m waiting for the HVLP sprayer/compressor to arrive. They alledge that they attempted delivery yesterday; no card, no knock, no doorbell ringing to back that suggestion up. Annoyed, I am. So I’m not able to go out again today; although there’s much less need to leave the house because after shopping yesterday we stopped at Halfrauds on the way home and picked up the DAF’s new throttle cable (universal brake cable inner for a bike), a new set of exhaust rubber o-ring hanger thingies and…

– A Fire extinguisher
– A High Vis jacket
– A GB sticker (with little Euro stars, like I’d have on a modern numberplate, if I had one).
…

This is added to the fleet of things we need to carry:
– First aid kit
– Spare plugs/points/condenser/distributor cap
– Spare bulbs
– Sockets / Spanners / Screwdrivers / Feeler gauge
– Thinking of carrying spare starter and spare dynamo
– Spare exhaust mounts
– Multilingual workshop manual
– Oil / Brake fluid
– Bucket load of prayers.
– Spare fan-belt

As a side point, I also need to mark some km/h markings on the speedo, and I must remember when we get off / on the ferry to switch the headlamps over.

See, I wanted to take Jejy. Jejy’s been quieter, reliable, and clearly at least reasonably maintained for 30 years. Vixy, with her incredibly low mileage (less than 650 miles a year for the first 34 years of her life), has probably barely seen the inside of a garage. Even less so a garage that understood DAFs. The belts are probably all original…. they look okay though.

She makes a variety of interesting noises since the clutch shoes have been changed, all of which I’m putting down to the clutch-shoes clipping bits of unworn drum. I can’t see anything else wrong. I will, however, be booking AA cover for the trip, again – I’m thinking I’ll book cover for a whole year, just incase we decide to toddle over to FOREIGN* again.

Oh, and I’m thinking I want to fit a cigarette lighter, because they’re always handy.

I really want the compressor to arrive today and I want the weather to hold out – because I want to spray the door. I want to spray the door because it has a working window winder, and frankly, I’d like to be able to open the passenger side window on the car – because in France that’s the driver’s side.

Anyhow. Enough angst. I have spent the morning engaged in the useful activity of painting the drawers for the bedroom. I’m trying to bend the piece of pine that’s meant to be skirting board too, exciting as my life is. It’s got the old Denon hi-fi on it (which I ought to freecycle really, considering cleaning the connectors has brought back vinyl into my life). I am now working towards finding the energy to wash-up, and clean the kitchen up.

Chrissy and Lauren are visiting tomorrow – and whilst I plan to spend part of the morning lying under the car, and then over the car (exhaust hangers, fitting the new throttle cable). I’d like the house to be at least fairly neat. I don’t have time to paint the rest of the cupboard – but if I can get the drawers in and varnished then we can put clothes in them. That would be less mess. I can’t do much about the line of albums and records sat in the lounge, but getting the skirting partially fitted would help towards the aim of having them sorted before we go on holiday. Because it’s shite coming back to a messy house.

Am I rambling enough? I think so.

Right. Stop.

* As the world was previously divided in Britain. i.e. Great Britain and FOREIGN (on the rubber mats that came with the car ;) ). Of course, we did have another category – EMPIRE MADE ;)

So, the cold is being pushed into the corner, my immune system standing over it like some movie thug, preparing for it’s final dispatch. I can actually breathe properly, more or less, and today I’m getting through tissues at a somewhat reduced rate. That said, I can’t say as I’ve exactly been ‘swift’ to get moving this morning. Though a big chunk of that is simply lazyness and wanting to watch Captain Jack and his gang :)

I’m also in that troublesome state of expecting a delivery, and not wanting to be in the shower when they come, because they never bloody wait.

But when it does arrive it’ll be a struggle to resist doing some work. The sprayer should be here so I can spray the car door (the crappy one I had before having landed in the bin because it no longer actually worked).

However, there is some painting that I can, and probably shall do, once I’ve showered. The cupboards in the bedroom need painting, and that is something I can do. I might even dig out the primer for the wood in the kitchen. Wouldn’t that be exciting?

Anyhow, I can’t remember if I posted the ECG Dance before, but it’s on one of the blogs I read, but it entertained me: ECG Dance – and did actually help my understanding of ECGs (which possibly tells you how little I know about ECGs); anyhow, I then followed that with Diagnosis Wenckebach, which is also very silly.

This has lead to the discovery that there’s an awful lot of very bad medical comedy on You Tube. Anyhow, given that the sun’s out and it’s warm, I think I’ll spend the day painting wardrobes and lying on a deckchair in the garden and reading Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air which seems to be entertaining and interesting :)

Renovating a house, working full time, running 3 classics and a motorbike, that clearly is not enough for me. Why? Because despite being off sick*, with help from Kathryn and her mom I finally e-submitted my application for the MSc Critical Care Course I want to do.

This is scary for a number of reasons. One, it’s not run by a rinky-dink ex-poly with ambitions to grandeur. Two, it’s a course with doctors on it. Anesthetists. ITU doctors. People with clue. Three, it’s a bucketload of work. Four, it’s quite pricey. Five, it’s just f*cking scary, okay?

Anyhow, being on nights and off sick has allowed me to do two things:

Watch Torchwood (definately gets better as it goes along. No one spoil anything for me; I haven’t seen season 3 or half of season 2 yet).

Watch Caprica (excellent, can I please have the rest of the season now?)

Also, I discovered that someone at work is a Sci-Fi geek. I had had a brief conversation with her before in which it had become apparent that she liked ‘some’ sci-fi, but now I know it’s not just Firefly and a bit of Trek she likes. It’s lots of Sci-Fi… Yay!

Anyhow, I’m now going to neck more night-nurse in the hopes that I can sleep, and that I’ll be able to breathe for a bit, which would, to be quite honest, be rather nice.

Oh, and for obvious (not wanting our house to be emptied) reasons I won’t say when we’re away, but we’re going away for a bit in a while. France… and then generically abroad in Europe. Pray for the DAF.

* The big problem with swine flu is not the actual flu. It’s the 89,000 people who are scared thanks to the media and panic and ignore the government’s advice (or who have GPs who are idiots**) and thus turn up at A&E requiring triage. This is a process which, at least initially, is conducted without a mask. And therefore I now have a cold. In the middle of summer.
** Like the one who sent us a suspected swine-flu case***
*** Mind that individual was stupider, having developed possible swine flu abroad, their immediate course of action was to jump on a plane home. I’m assuming the person did not charter a private jet.

I should remember from before, but it is quite odd, having got the 300 series (1940s, bakelite, carbon granule mike’d) phone working with the internet we received a phonecall today. Now, really, the reason I like it is that unlike the modern DECT phone which plays an attrocious tune (because it doesn’t have ‘ring ring’ or just plain ‘ring’ in it’s repertoir of awful noises) it rings properly. Now, on the net-phone adaptor it does, I’ll admit, go ‘Riiiiiiiinnnnnnnng……………………….Riiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnng………………’ in the manner, disturbingly, of a US phone. Something to which I’m not really used.

But it does so with a lump of metal hitting a couple of bells. As it should.

But it is a trifle odd talking to someone in another country on a piece of British history using technology they’d never have dreamt of when it was invented. Especially when you’ve been watching too much Torchwood, and are a huge fan of Dr Who.

Anyhow. Back on nights. Feeling still not 100% so let’s see if I last the week or disintegrate part way through.

With the best will in the world, our garden isn’t as big as I’d like it to be, and the old-fashioned, 1930s style ‘open drain into which water from the kitchen runs’ system does mean that while relaxing in the garden is delightful, the spot that’s shady and thus my favourite (right by the house) is slightly marred by the occasional spray of running water draining away.

To be fair, it’s only ‘cos the washing machine is running.

It is, however, very very pretty out here.

There’re lots of flowers, there’re lots of butterflies, the sun’s shining enough that it’s warm, but the house provides much needed shade.

At any rate, I’ve decided on a programme of stress reduction. This is largely centred around such exciting things as getting the Regolith account closed (close current account, pay-the-damn-money on a requirement that as soon as it’s done the account is closed. Refuse to pay if they won’t close the account). Even just thinking about Regolith makes my stomach feel like it’s got snakes in it, which I don’t really need today because my stomach’s been feeling a little snake filled all day. Not nearly as bad as yesterday, but certainly not right.

Anyhow, on better topics, we got another clematis for the garden; the ‘mile a minute’ clematis having started to do it’s mile-a-minuting, a little further along the fence some more clematis, I felt, would not go amiss. So we’ve got some Clematis Macropetala (or Wessleton), we’ve also got some Erygium Planum (no idea what the common name for that is, but it looks kind of alien, and purple, it’s awesome); and a big pot and some Jasmine to grow around by the front door. We’ve also got some decorative grasses to grow in the front of the house, in our little garden there – although it’s going to spend most of it’s time hidden by cars, it needs something other than the Iris and the Rose. The buddleia will be going in there, I think, when it stops flowering (it can’t stay growing between the wall and the concrete, that’s not a good place for it) – but at the moment the front of the house is permanently surrounded by butterflies and that’s pretty darn spiffy.

In other stress reduction news I realised today that the car’s (Vixy) MOT doesn’t run out for *ages*, so I’ve only got to get one DAF sorted for it’s MOT. Vixy’s ropey welding doesn’t have to be dealt with in quite such a hurry. Which has made me relax a bit. I’ve finally forked out for a grotty little HVLP spray kit – so I can hopefully get a coat of paint on the bits of Jejy that need it, and on the new door for Vixy. If things actually stay working well for a while I may even put some filler on the dents in the bodywork and spray that (if I have any spray paint left after doing bits of Jejy (Bonnet, front panel, leading edges of engine bay, front wings) and most importantly Vixy’s new door. That said, having bought the HVLP compressor then getting a bit more paint isn’t that expensive, and will make both cars much more saleable when it comes time to go.

What I’d really like (in addition to my temperature not wandering all over the place like some kind of insane goldfish – I’ve taken some paracetamol* now, so that should hopefully make things a little less labile in the temperature department) is to have the motorbike together and running, because today is just the right kind of weather for wasting fossil fuels in a futile jaunt to the middle of no-where and back.

Yes, obviously, had I the money to build an electric MZ based motorcycle, I would. But I don’t, and I can’t, so…that’s really an end to it.

Anyhow, I’m going to get back to relaxing and reading and enjoying the garden for a bit :)

* AKA acetaminophen or ‘tylenol’, for those who like US brandnames.

So, the butterfly bush has been living up to it’s name – I took these yesterday before the nausea kicked in. It’s the pretty:

The ‘set’ starts here (it’s appended to the July ’09 garden set) – lots of playing with Macro and photographing butterflies :)

There’s good news and bad stuff.

Good news: The DAF is running much better, and appears to be a very simple fix.
Good news2: We went to the garden centre and have more plants :)

Bad news: I’m sick; again. Temp 38.8, nauseous and generally achey.

So, tomorrow the rental goes back, which means I need to fix Vixy, properly. This is potentially traumatic because I am, quite frankly, exhausted. Today’s shift was laughable in the number of dross patients (a bloke who really, truly had man flu. I rarely want to slap patients, but frankly he needed a slap*). People who really had no place in a hospital cluttering up the beds and making me feel like…well… it stretched my patience a little.

I’ve been working on being ‘nicer’, I’m not quite sure what I mean by that, I’ve never thought of myself as being a not-nice nurse, but I’ve been trying to be more touchy-feely than I used to be; I am, however, hampered by the fact that I’m extraordinarily sarcastic.

One of the agency nurses said I’d delivered a foundation course in sarcasm today :-)

Still, I’ve been getting on well with the (nicer) patients, and perhaps saving my annoyance for those who don’t deserve the extra-nice Kate.

In other news, I finally obtained a cable which meant I could plug in my 300 series phone to the internet boxen. This was cool, in-so-far as it went ‘Riiiiiiing’ (because it does a US style ring) – unfortunately, picking it up killed the phone stone-dead. I’m assuming that while it can run phones with a REN value up to 5 – the 1950s circuitry requires a tad more power than the standard modern phones use, and therefore the little boxen can’t power the amplifier. A terribly sad situation.

I’ve got a 200 Series phone, too. With an A/B coinbox. I want to get that working in Canada too,

Essentially, I think I need to build a separate power supply to power the phone which is a bit of a bugger, really. And may need me to get my head around some electronics I’ve not really been thinking about for a long time.

* I’m thinking of developing a clinical parthian shot – I suspect it’s clinical efficacy when correctly administered to appropriate patients would be remarkable.

We’re going to the fringe festival this year. This does, unfortunately, entail driving from Bristol (where some friends are getting hitched) to Edinburgh. Anyone got some crossable fingers?