Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Shedloads of Cash

    Yesterday I engaged in shameless money grubbing, despite being exhausted I drove for an hour and a half after a revoltingly early wake up call, to go work in St. Marks Hospital for the Feverish and Sickly. I’ve done one shift there before – a night shift months ago – and bizzarely some of the staff were on again. And also somewhat confusingly we’ve had so many agency staff at the trust in which I work over the last few weeks that I knew a whole load of people who were at St. Marks yesterday – all of whom looked very confused when they realised I was out of my normal location. Not only that, but a member of the Ambulance Service who I thought seemed interesting, but never got around to working out how to say ‘hi, shall we meet up for a coffee some-time’*, and who recently left our area to work closer to home, happened to be on duty too. So it was kind of like working in my own department.

    I even knew how the system worked and were the drugs were… which was nice. It wasn’t that harder day, although being one of the agency nurses I got shuffled from one place to another through the morning, ended up doing admission assessments, having my own bay, looking after an observation ward… It was all fine though.

    Unfortunately, it has left me exhausted. The 3 hours of driving after how ever many days on shift has left me feeling drained. I slept in ’til nearly 10, which is incredibly unusual for me, and even now just ache. I need to sort out the exhaust on the mog, the front manifold of which is leaking like….well…something. Although I’ve asked (at long last) about the abandoned garage a couple of houses down, so if I’ve got access to that then that’d make all the jobs that need doing much more pleasant. Unfortunately, it also requires time; time which I don’t currently have. ONe would think that you’d either have time or money, and though this month through a process of working a ridiculous number of extra shifts I’m able to actually look at my bank account and not wince, which is nice.

    There may even be some to pay off the overwhelming debts that lurk on my credit card. And perhaps there’s the possibilty that Charles Ware’s Morris Minor centre might respond to my statement that I’m going to have to take them to court over the ‘restoration’ of Rebecca they did 7 years ago – in which case – the debt incurred fixing that restoration will be somewhat ameliorated.

    Anyhow, I need to get on with doing Kathryn’s present, the coffee doesn’t seem to have kicked in in quite the way I’d hoped, but I am at least upright.

    In other news I’ve sorted a place to sort the gearbox – so the new gearbox is off to them to be reconditioned (later today if I get off my arse) *and* I’ve got the clips to hold the trim in place on the DAF. Woo yeah!

    * I’m always faintly worried that it’ll (a) sound odd, particularly with the techs/paramedics because I barely know ’em, and (b) sound like some sort of come-on, when all I want to do is make some friends**
    ** Yes, I really suck at making friends.

  • Meeeeeeeeeeme

    A. People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blog and replace any question that they dislike with a new, original question.

    B. Tag eight people. Don’t refuse to do that. Don’t tag who tagged you. I dun’ play that game. I tag all my friends who’ve not done it who want to :)

    01. What are your nicknames? RaKate! is about the only one that still stands. My sister and her husband used to call me Turold (after a person in the Bayeux tapestry, for obscure reasons), and people at work call me all sorts of names which have very little to do with my real name – but aren’t really nicknames as-such.

    02. How do you style your hair? Style is probably an overgenerous term. When it’s proper-short it gets blow-dried and filled with goo (wax, I believe). When it’s as long as it is now it gets dried with the hair drier while I read the computer and then eventually I look in a mirror and see what it looks like…

    03. What’s new in your life right now? Civilisation, that’s still pretty new. It’s awesome though. Having a kitchen is also fairly new and exciting still :)

    04. How many colours are you wearing now? 4

    05. Are you an introvert or extrovert? I’m a sort of introverted extrovert. I’m dead shy (no, really) but tend to overcome it with force of will – which is fine (a) at work and (b) in single person situations. When it’s a big group I tend to shut up and hide in a corner.

    06. What was the last book you read? Pole to Pole by Michael Palin – despite lots of awesome books being given to us by our friends for our civilisation, we still went out and bought more second hand. I’ve just started reading something which is called something like Car Maintainance, Love and Something. It’s a lesbian book which appears to have originated in Australia and comes from the wonderful Lauren and Chrissy beings.

    07. Do you nap a lot? Rarely. When exhausted I’ll nap. I quite like curling up with Kathryn tho’, and am more inclined to nap, head in her lap, than I am if I’m on my own.

    08. If the person you secretly like is already taken, what would you do? Heh, she is. By me. Muwhahahahahaha!

    09. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days? Money. Single biggest stressor in my life. About the only true stressor.

    10. What’s your favorite dessert? Cheesecake, or, oooh, Key Lime Pie. Something like that :).

    11. How long does it take you to get ready in the morning? Work days – ’bout an hour. 30 minutes of slowly munching through breakfast, coffee, reading LJ… and 15 minutes to shower, dry hair, and then about 15 minutes of chaos as I try and flee the building.

    12. What websites do you visit daily most frequently? Uh, LJ, Questionable Content, my e-mail, MMOC and the DAF Owner’s Club Forum, hrm, that’s about it. BBC News and the Guardian and Independent websites pop up quite often, and the 360 Winnett blog, oh and What Do I Know and Random acts of Reality are also pretty high up on the frequency of visits list.

    13. What classes are you taking right now? Well; I’m an A&E Nurse, there’s a few courses I want to do for that; PILS and ALS spring to mind, not on any of them though. Unofficially, I’m taking my self-taught DAF maintainance course, and continuing to learn more about the Morris Minor.

    14. Do you like to clean? Not really, but I like things *being* clean, so I endure the former to reach the latter.

    15. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head? Everyone’s a little bit racist (Avenue Q)

    16. What’s the last movie you saw? Wall-E, it was excellent.

    17. What’s better: eternal love or memorable love? That is a dumbass question, and I say that knowing I could replace it within the rules of the meme. Surely Eternal Love is pretty darn memorable.

    18. What is your least favourite thing to do that you have to do everyday? Driving too and from work. I miss when I used to walk to work.

    19. Best time of your life? Now.

    20. What are you most looking forward to in the coming month? Spending Christmas time with my love….

  • Sabotaged by badgers.

    This is the most likely explanation for today’s occurrences. Whilst my plan was to service the Mog – in a limited way at least – grease all the grease-points, adjust the drum brakes at the back, repack the front hubs with grease (nearly forgot to do that), change the gearbox and engine oil, and that was about it.

    But, being as I’m a well known tinkerer I had a little look under the distributor cap and found lurking (prior to any problems, thankfully) an almost completely disintegrated set of contacts. Several of which appear to have rotated to be at a jaunty, if inconvenient angle. The rotor-arm was also looking distinctly less perky than normal – being a fetching shade of black.

    Also in the realms of unfortunatitude, I realised after I emptied the engine of oil that the oil filter I’d picked up was the wrong one. So off I went back to Halfrauds to get the right one (I have to come clean, they reckoned it was the wrong one, and they were right – I thought the A+ engine went into both the Mini and the Ital, but I was wrong; oh so wrong). It turned out that they no longer stock Ital* oil filters – but I went down to Jagdev Autos – who, it appears, do actually stock things – it’s just that the bloke (presumably Jagdev’s son) who I asked last time doesn’t know about how to convert from the old part numbers to the older ones to the modern equivalent.

    In fact, they had everything except a fan belt and a rotor arm. If I’d’ve realised I needed a fanbelt I’d’ve got one – ‘cos he could have ordered one in – like the rotor arm which he did order in. He ordered in the Rotor arm and it arrived all of half an hour later. Well, I presume it did – I turned up having adjusted the brakes and repacked the hubs with grease – still wearing my ill-fitting boiler suit (with Singapore Technology Aerospace on it, oversprayed with Whipem Down Garage (back from Pride in 2005)) to collect the rotor arm, and at that point asked about the fan-belt only to discover it was too late to get it.

    So I went back to Halfords who did have what is alledged to be the correct fan-belt for an ital. Only it ain’t. Even with the adjustor (which is, I’ll grant, the wrong adjustor) removed and the alternator hard-up against the engine you can’t actually get the fan-belt around the alternator, the water pump and the crank-shaft-pulley. The current belt (which has flung some of itself somewhere) is so long that even at the very end of the adjuster it’s still not taught (hence, one presumes, the occasional bouts of alternator-light-delayed-turning-offitude). So I’ll be taking it back to Halfords and asking if I can change it for one that’s "a bit longer").

    The rest of the service seems to have gone okay. I want to stick up a shot of the Distributor cap at some point – see if anyone else has seen anything like it – the contacts do look to me like they’ve decided to wander off at some point and turn themselves round to face the wrong way. They’re corroded to buggery as well, one presumes that’s the salt-water on the roads.

    As a side point, inspecting the under side of the car revealed a happy state of affairs where all the paint is more or less intact, there’s a couple of small areas which need some rust-killer/primer/paint attention which I’ve (for the time being) slapped old oil on :)

    And amazingly, that which came out of the gearbox was not filled with great shards of metal, something which makes me feel better :)

    And today, we have plans, so I must away with the fairies, get showered and we should get off.

    * The engine in my minor is an uprated Ital** engine. The ital has a later (more developed, more powerful, stronger), larger version of the engine in the minor.
    ** Isn’t it amazing what you can find out from Wikipedia – apparently the Ital went on to be produced in China for years after it was discontinued here. Albeit with a different engine, transmission and chassis.

  • There’s greasing to be done

    So, ‘becca’s covered a full 3000 miles since her rebuild and it’s service time. While the newly rebuilt A+ engine has somewhat longer service intervals than the A-series, the suspension, gearbox and back-axle are all original mog and need servicing every 3000 miles. It’s a clear blue sky out there and I’m going to shower and head to the store to get some oil and oil-fiter and bits and bobs (I’m not going to do the valve clearances, but I will ring Southam Metro Centre to see if they can fit me in any day before Xmas to get the 500 mile check over done; because they said just carry on driving and come back when you’ve got enough time free).

    I’m planning to take the fan-heater outside with me (the one with switches) so I can warm my toes and my hands as I need to – because despite the sun being ‘out’ it’s still frosty outside. I’m also planning a quick trip to the bank to deposit Kathryn’s half of the mortgage and such – and then I will get the stuff ordered for the DAF. I’m already going to have to move ‘er today, which is less than ideal, but I need the driveway space. My lax approach to asking about the garage on the corner means today’s service has to be conducted on the driveway. In the cold. Lying on a sheet of cardboard.

    I also need to sort out some means of getting music outside or I will, and I say this quite honestly, go nuts. I hate working on the car in silence, and I’ve done it often enough. I’ll probably run the cable round from the back of the house and dump the laptop on the wall. But I must admit to being slow about getting outside because it’s fucking freezing. It was cold *in* the house (this morning, it’s not now :) ). Outside it’s going to be even colder.

    Work continues to be incredibly short staffed, virtually every day they’ve offered me extra shifts – I’ve covered 2 this week and been offered another 2 – and we’ve been working with more agency staff in the department than I’ve ever seen before. We have had some truly excellent Thornbury nurses, which is not entirely surprising, but it’s good when you see how agency should be. People with plenty of A&E experience coming in, which makes it far easier to deal with than when you have lots of non-A&E staff.

    I’ve accidentally accepted a shift I shouldn’t have though. I’d meant to keep the day open for Agency, but forgot to put that on the Calendar. Ah well, at least I know I’ve got a shift.

    I need to send my agency my Plaster form and Suture form and Cannulation form too. Get that sorted this week, maybe.

    Sorry, this is emensely dull for you. Today’s journal post comes from the ‘Post it note of things to do’ genre. ;)

    Yeah, so anyhow, on other topics. Canada’s been lurking in my consciousness a lot recently. Contemplating logistics, and timings, and considering posting on the vancouver community (and possibly canadian lesbians) to get some input on ideas. Propsects for Kathryn’s job-interests, good hospitals, should we consider living in Richmond – or would it be like living in a giant Slough. Also wondered if there’s some kind of equivalent to housing auctions here – there – just because I’d like to look at Reno possibilities (not yet talked to Kathryn about that) – with the idea that we could live in place A, reno place B (or even get people in to do it) – and thus be able to land up in a house of our own (again) – ‘cos I like having a place which is ours. I like painting and decorating and the fact that we picked the decor, and we can change it when we want.

    I keep having this sort of pseudo-dream that I’m coming home from work and we’re living in Canada. It doesn’t get as far as ‘and I’m not working 3 jobs’, but I suspect that all the extra shifts I’ve been doing are factoring in to it.

    The unnerving thing is that to earn enough to pay off the credit card I’ll almost certainly earn over the threshold of starting to pay my student loan. Which I’ve been carefully avoiding for the last 6 years. In fact, I was hoping to make it, in some cunning way, to the point when they write the loan off (which iirc is around 50 years old). Unfortunately I’d like to earn enough to eat and go out – the two don’t necessarily coincide.

    One quick question though – I read this post in the Vancouver community – I can’t find anything about this new show (‘Paradox’) anywhere online – has anyone heard of it? Only it sounds quite cool – and I’m intrigued ‘n want to find out more about it…

    So – anyway – I need to go shower and get on with getting oily and dirty. Have fun with your days, y’all. Think of me, frozen to the floor outside.

  • le Weekend

    So, despite the persistent sore throat (which has lead me to be worried about whether I got something icky in the small cut I found on my finger during one night shift (and hence whether I should have done an incident form and gone to occupational health); I have to remind myself that I had the sore throat *before* the cut, and therefore my paranoia should shut the f*ck up) we held a pretty darn spiffy Thanksgiving.

    Nikki and Kate supplied turkey, James some truly delicious wine, and us the veg, the cooking space and the, uh, space. Our house isn’t huge – but we managed to squeeze 5 around the table without too much difficulty – and thanks to Kathryn’s careful scheduling the food all landed up being cooked and ready to eat at the right time. We had a traditional US dinner consisting of Turkey (one of the rare occasions we’ve cooked meat, although I let Nikki do all the prep ;) ), Sweet potato casserole, Sage Cornmeal biscuits (anyone know where you can get Cornmeal in the UK? We brought back an entire kg of it from the States – in our case), Home made stuffing spicy sausage and sage stuffing, Cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, Gravy, Wine, Schloer & Root Beer… and for desert, made with fresh pumpkin – Pumpkin pie with whipped cream / pseudocream.

    It was a vast amount of food. We have, as is traditional, a fridge half-full of turkey. Yesterday Kathryn made one of our pet meals, Artichoke and Cheese Tart – but replaced some of the onion with… Turkey. Today I’m going to have a second slice of tart for lunch and some… Turkey :)

    We attempted to fob off much Turkey on Nikki and Kate, and later on James, as well as some of the remaining produce from the Fried breakfast for the day following (Pancakes, Sausages/Beans/Hash Browns etc, which Nikki very generously cooked).

    So much food!

    It was a delight, though, to see everyone and have everyone here. I have new admiration for dog owners though. Pepper and Eddie occupied our house for one day – and very well behaved dogs they both are too – but the amount of hair and dirt they left behind is truly astonishing. Our venerable and aged Dyson DC01 wept tears of frustration as it attempted to suck and beat the hairs off the carpet*; and the sheer quantities of hair that we swept up in the kitchen – well – I am much impressed by those who keep dogs and keep their houses clean. I’ve no idea how you do it. I do, vaguely** recall that when living with Daisy there was an amazing amount of fur-deposits around the house, and that vacuuming was often a multi-bag-emptying job (with the then quite shiny DC02).

    Anyhow, we spent the evening engaged in a War on Terror which – amazingly – we (the coalition of Nikki, James, Kathryn and I) beat down the terrorists (Kate – who managed to at one point have Terrorist cells in virtually every country). James wishes it to be known that while the Coalition won, he won the most*** ;)

    Sunday, Kathryn and I had a fairly lazy day (apart from the hoovering, sweeping and laundry) leading in to a week of work in which my shifts are ‘not great’. Two long days**** and two late shifts. This weekend just gone was the last and final weekend I get off until after Xmas – the only reason I have a weekend off then is to prepare for nights. And to ice the cake of awful shifts – Kathryn is off for two weeks over Christmas – Christmas week – which I’m working (except the weekend after) and New Year’s week – which I’m on nights. The day she goes back to work is my first day off after nights.

    Bloody fantastic that is :(

    The only compensation is that while December is a 3 week month pay-wise and January a convenient 6 week month (urk!) then the pay I get in January should be less painful for it because I should get a bucketload of enhancements. Making it through the December / January months is always somewhat difficult. I am faintly tempted to move my pay straight into my savings account when it comes in, and give it back to myself just before Xmas (an idea which only just popped into my head).

    And, can we all have our ‘make it a nice day and Kate-be-well’ heads on for Friday – ‘cos ‘beccamog really needs a service, and however much I try and put it off it’s time and I should do it. Even if it’s bloody freezing (like today :( ).

    As a side point – changing your name is complicated as a Registered nurse – especially when people randomly say things like ‘hey; your civil cermony certificate isn’t signed’ and you go ‘oh, no it isn’t, arse’. Virtually everyone’s accepted it except NHS Professsionals, which makes it doubly complicated because my name on the Register has now changed. Anyhow, jobs to do today include faxing my statement of entry (from the Nursing and Midwifery Council) to all and sundry and also ringing Cumbria’s Registrars and saying ‘oi, should our Civil Partnership Certificate be signed’?

    * although I think its filters probably need changing again – what with us having had builders in and much dust being sucked through the poor benighted object.

    ** all too well, actually

    *** Having all of North and South America under his control

    **** Sort of my choice.

  • Memories and Thinks

    I was about to post about my plan, which I shall do in a minute, but I was distracted by reading emilydm’s post about going skating. Years ago, years and years ago, when I was but tinysmall, and my friends were similarly sized, my dad used to take us to a skating rink in London. I’ve no idea where, which has always saddened me slightly, because I’d love to go back.

    But it’s almost certainly been modernised.

    I remember it being “world of the 70’s”, the clearly British but American-‘themed’* diner attached at one end of the rink, tinny music playing, some kind of stage-esque curtained thing at the other end of the ring (what in god’s name was that for? So they could put on stage shows while-you-skate? I can see why that might not have succeeded), Black and very worn rubber matting and the battered looking rink boundry with it’s chipped and broken paint.

    It was enormous fun, circling the rink, in the 70s atmosphere (despite it being the mid 80s), the slightly run-down charm bringing back even earlier youthful fun in Hemel’s AMC Bowling Alley (which was demolished when I was pretty small and was a similarly 70s building – but that actually only just made it into the 80s).

    The nice thing about these memories is the warm fuzzy family feeling. Remembering my dad taking me out onto the ice holding my hand, getting me started and then me flying off Hockey-Skater style, while my sister with her Ballet-learned grace would float round the rink.

    It’s one of those…slightly melancholy nostalgias, perhaps it’s better that I can’t go back, it’s probably been either closed or drastically modernised; as is the wont of these places.

    There is one place from my childhood I’d love to go to – the REX 1&2 – now known as The REX Cinema – this place has survived the ravages of time – in my youth it was a ratty but glorious piece of Deco artwork. I saw few films there – being as my dad was generally of the opinion that it was cheaper to wait and watch it on TV – something I sadly do out of financial distress rather than desire. I cherished that place, but never imagined that it would be saved – the Sad REX 1&2 sign lingered in my head. But now saved and restored, it’s a place I quite definately want to go and visit.

    Anyhow, enough of that. Plans. Or specifically, the Laptop plan.

    I had this idea – see, I want a new laptop. The Dell CPi that Lauren gave me has been soldiering on pretty well, really, given that it’s 8 years old, has a processor it doesn’t support in it, and is held together with a plate of steel, extra machine screws through the lid casing, copper mains-wire glued in with epoxy resin to support the cracked and damaged case and has a 4 key which is pops up because it’s lost part of it’s clipping mechanism. Oh, and it’s killed the 2nd new battery I gave it and about it’s 5th battery overall in that time.

    Oh yes, and the screen connector is held in with cardboard because the bit of metal that ‘holds’ it in is bent, and too weak for the job.

    So all in all, the fact it works at all is pretty impressive.

    I do have other laptops. Kathryn gave me her old Clamshell ibook – which I was planning to fix and use, then I discovered that you can’t get a faster processor for it, or faster memory, and it’ll probably be slower than my 450Mhz Dell. It would, however, run OSx, which I kinda want. But it does need stripping down because the power connector is borked. And it only runs at 800×600, which is kinda painful these days.

    The other laptop, the Powerbook G3 is even slower (233Mhz) – I did get a 300Mhz upgrade for it, but it doesn’t work with the Powerbook for reasons which the company (who instantly refunded my money on being told it didn’t work) informed me are obscure and strange, but there are, apparently laptops Apple made which are ‘finicky’.

    The HP Laptop was sent off via freecycle to aid a kiddie in her schoolwork.

    So 3 laptops, all of which aren’t entirely well.

    So hence; the idea: Sell the whole damn lot of them.

    More specifically, fix them all as well as they can be fixed. Flog the G3 with the Clamshell’s hard disk (because the Clamshell’s hard disk, is, iirc, bigger than the G3’s). Flog the Clamshell with the Dell’s hard disk having fixed it’s power connector. See if the G3’s memory upgrade that I bought before discovering that the processor upgrade didn’t work will, uh, work, in the Clamshell. Put the HDD I bought for the G3 into the Dell and flog it.

    Unfortunately, I suspect that this won’t net me the amount I want. The G3 Clamshell appears to be the most valuable; the G3 Powerbook running in second. Looking at the value of Dell CPi’s? Distressing. Though there weren’t many working ones on e-bay. I was vaguely looking in the sense of ‘maybe it’d be worth loads more in a new case with a new battery’ but no. The poor bloody thing is valueless either way.

    Ah well.

    I’m aiming for around 300 quid – the cost of an MSI Wind. Why an MSI Wind and not a Apple of shinyness? Well, I’d love a real true honest to goodness apple. But what do I actually *use* my laptop for? Well: Browsing the web, doing my e-mail, doing paperwork, and that’s about it. I watch videos on it when I go on holiday… but, well, that’s really it. So why get a full-size laptop? Why not get something (a) dinky and (b) new – for once. Laptops are not the most long lived items. The Dell keeps it’s long lifespan mostly by being, well, treated quite gently. I don’t open and close the screen much (it lives open), and despite the fact it’s falling apart at the edges… it’s stood up pretty well to the abuse. Anyway, I never really answered the reason why I want an MSI Wind. The reason is, alledgedly it runs OSX really rather well. Apple don’t do a subnotebook (and I’d probably still not be able to afford it if they did) – but I would rather like one, so the MSI wind is currently my plan of action. I wonder if it’ll work.

    So getting laptops second hand never seems like the greatest of the great idea. Although if I do carry out my plan and end up laptopless then I may have to consider it.

    *If I’m being *really* generous I’ll use the word themed, styled would be going way too far.

  • Being good

    So today I feel more or less back to normal. My throat hurts, but the rest of me is pretty much up and about and hunky dory. Not quite so far as Tickedy Boo, oh no, but adequate for most purposes. If I needed to, I’d’ve gone to work today. I won’t, sadly, be going to Sam’s leaving do – Sam being an ambulance person who’s leaving do is, annoyingly, tonight. I just don’t want to make myself sick for tomorrow – what with our mini thanksgiving (I’ve actually realised we could probably have invited a couple more friends, but in all honesty, +3 is about the maximum that can reasonably sleep here at night)

    At any rate, for the impending arrival of ‘the guests’ it is necessary for us to have a bit of a clean and tidy. The kitchen floor and the bathroom floor need sweeping (and the bathroom floor could benefit from a wash). The sinks ‘n stuff could do with cleaning and the lounge needs a pick-up; dust; sweep and hoover. Oh and the stairs – where the grand accumulation of crap seems to occur could do with sweeping. Oh, and the office could do with a once over too.

    That makes it sound like the house is s a tip. It’s not, it’s just a little untidy around the edges.

    This would all be fine if I were well; but I don’t want to overdo it, nor, equally, do I want to leave it all until Kathryn comes home. So, plan of action is to do about 30 mintues of cleaning to 30 minutes of rest. We’ve done one run through, and produced a larder with no more recycling in it, and emptied all the bins (just in case Pepper (one of Nikki and Kate’s dogs) gets that old urge to rifle through the bins and scatter damp, shredded paper everywhere); I also got rid of another bag of our ‘generic landfill waste’ that we generated while decorating. It’s not suitable for use as hardcore, so rather than beat the poor cars with carrying it to the tip; the council can take it away – one small bag at a time ;)

    I’ve quickly stuck one load of washing through, and hung it up. There’s another load I’d like to get through and washed, and quite frankly, I’d liked to get the sheets on the bed through and dried too :)

    Next step is to tidy the kitchen, though, I think.

    Then the lounge.

    Then the office (which will take some time ‘cos there’s paperwork to sort)

    Then the bathroom…

    And if I get a chance, the bedroom could do with a once over with a broom and a wipe of the horizontal surfaces.

    When did I get to want to clean so much? I’ve always been at least vaguely tidy – that’s a complete lie. Since I left home, I’ve always been vaguely tidy. I think it’s wanting to have pride in our house :)

  • Damn DJing

    I never did it that much or for that long, but it’s embedded in my soul like some sort of splinter. One that won’t bloody come out.

    I’m lazing on the sofa with too much Bass being transmitted by the solid flooring, listening to what unintentionally became a playlist. Because I heard one song and though “y’know, this song would really benefit from having that song after it…” and this was repeated several times. I could happily have sat and made a playlist several hours long…like we did for our wedding :)

    Annoyingly I’m not well enough to leap around the lounge in my usual parody of dancing; perhaps I should poke my nose back in to SGN and see if they’re going to need a DJ. I did say I would :)

    I’m not sure I’m made for DJing a gay venue though. I’ve encountered essentially two types of gay venue. The cheese venue or the hard-core-dance venue. I play mostly (what I think of as) indie with leanings towards some cheese (and of course, Dracula’s Tango) – so I’m not sure I’d go down that well be that popular.

    That and I do tent do err on the side of the late 90’s / early 00’s. Still, it’s fun. If only it hadn’t burrowed deep into my brain such that it can pop out in at unexpected moments.

  • Blurgh

    Gargling with salt makes me retch; at least, it fairly frequently makes me retch. On the plus side; unlike the last few days I’m actually feeling moderately human like. I’m very tired from last-night’s hourly (or less) waking up cycle; but the rest of me is feeling more or less back the way it should. I even made it to the shops to get paracetamol and ‘brufen. Of course, while there and feeling astonishingly tired I ended up being the only witness to a (very minor) car accident (car vs car in car park) – and despite trying to escape my guilt got the better of me – and when the cab driver flagged me down and asked if I’d seen what happened (and I had) I admitted it, and in the end gave my name.

    My throat does still feel like I’ve been munching on sandpaper tho’, even despite all the gargling.

    On the plus side – I spent some time playing with Garageband. I’ve got a whole bunch of jobs that need doing; but playing with Garageband comes first ;)

    More accurately, I’m really tired and not feeling great and can’t get the energy summoned to deal with the mounds of paperwork which are accruing. I’ve spent the morning reading and the later morning and lunch time area creating bizzare tunes in Garageband and now, the afternoon’s contined with some Yes Minister and some Big Bang Theory.

    One thing which is disconcerting. The EntMac in the lounge has a 500Gig disk in it. 500 Gigs of storage. That should be quite a lot, I thought, when I bought it. It has 60 gig free. I know I’ve got 35 gig to put on it…

    This is ‘inconvenient’.

    I’m thinking I might have to burn some of the lesser watched shows onto DVDs to clear space on it. But it’s somewhat of a pig, the idea was that the 500 Gig drive’d do to store ‘most all the TV I (now we) wanted. At least ’til we were over in Canada. But it’s getting a little cramped on there. The other thing I ought to do is get rid of some of the stuff which I’ve got which I don’t actually like/watch. I’m saddened to find that as with Monty Python, the Kids In the Hall suffers from the ‘there are plenty of great sketches but they’re interspersed with a greater quantity of not very funny things than I remembered’. Season 5 appears better than Season 2 anyway :)

    So that’s my day so far :)

  • Sickness

    So, I had a busy week planned post nights. Paediatric Immediate Life Support, Manual Handling, and then a couple of days of Agency work before celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend.

    Unfortunately, on Sunday I didn’t feel very well – and by the time I got back after my nights… well, I felt like crap. I curled up on the sofa and slept – and I never do that after nights.

    And when I awoke I felt worse. I assumed it would be a run of the mill cold – I’d had a sore throat and it felt like it was developing into a common or garden cold, and the day before yesterday I thought I’d hit the home stretch. See, I have a normal-flow-of-symptoms for a cold. Day one – sore throat. Day two – Cold. Day three – Cold and a cough. Day four – Cough. Day five – more or less better. Unfortunately, yesterday, as my temperature spiked as high as 38.6 degrees C (101.5F) and was sitting above 37 Deg C it became apparent that home stretch wasn’t where I was at.

    Today I’m taking a more pro-active approach to tackling this cold – well, actually, it’s the sore throat that’s got me attacking it. I’ve been salt-water gargling every half hour – to hour. Last night I was fighting a fever which kept me awake most of the night – Kathryn very sweetly brought me a flannel and some cold water – which I slathered on my forehead. I kept limbs out from under the duvet. I didn’t cover my body with the duvet. I still couldn’t get cool.

    Finally, this morning I took a tepid shower, downed paracetamol and ‘brufen and I feel the best I’ve felt for days. Not well, but not so atrocious that the only thing I want to do is lie in a puddle being a swamp-being (emitting a foul smelling fug ;) ). I’m annoyed that I can’t make more money this week – which was my plan – because even if my assault on the throat-soreness works perfectly and I’m feeling absolutely 100% tomorrow I won’t feel it’s a good idea to subject my body to work.

    In other news, I’m not sure if I mentioned – but my Grandmother (on my dad’s side) died a couple of weeks ago. We weren’t close (quite the opposite) – I debated whether I should be at her funeral (simply to represent my dad) – eventually siding on ‘no, I’ll send a card’. And had been contemplating that I did need to get out and get a card sent to their address; only to find out that my Grandfather’s died now, too.

    It’s weird to know that you’re the last in a line. I don’t know if I’m actually the youngest; my dad never got on with his sister particularly well; and I’ve little recollection of meeting them (ISTR we met one Christmas many years ago). I’m the last Elliott. Well, now I’m a Walton-Elliott, but my point still stands…

    It’s odd, anyhow.

    I’m very disconnected from these people. Notionally they’re my relatives – they’re my grandparents – but I’ve not seen them for years, and I’ve little or no knowledge of them since what I learnt from them as a kid. And let’s just say I wasn’t that keen on what I knew.

    So it’s very odd for them to be gone. What isn’t good is that it appears my sister – who was closer to them – has taken it very badly, and is upsetting my mum :(

    Ach. Families, eh.