Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Progress (at least in some areas)

    So, I’ve had a to-do list on the computer for a while; I’d like to imagine that I was getting through it at great speed, but I’m not. Indeed it’s been the same list for most of the week. Or at least modifed versions. See, sadly as I’ve crossed off items from the to-do list I’ve found new things to put on it; at least, until today, when I found out just how dead the laptop battery really is. I accidentally unplugged my laptop and about 15 minutes later it was dead. Dead as in died without even flashing up the low battery warning. Feh.

    Anyhow, I’ve been plodding through it. Not with a great deal of success, to be brutally honest. But there we go.

    I had stuff to write about when I started writing this yesterday; but I’ve largely forgotten it. Since Kathryn asked about the ‘Things I want page‘ so I’ve updated that. I’m sure I had more of a reason for posting. The past week’s been really quite crappy; I mean, I’ve enjoyed it in some senses of the word but it has been incredibly hard work – and to be honest a lot of patients haven’t got the care that they deserved. Some have got rather more than they deserved too; to be honest. I think my judgement’s been off as I’ve been tired.

    For some reason our poor little department has been flooded with patients, and pretty much every day has been full and really, really hard work. I have a faint feeling there was one nice shift. But I can’t really recall it. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my job, I just sometimes feel that it’s a bit like bailing out a rowboat using a sieve.

    Anyhow, so this week has been a bit frustrating. Brick’s starting problems have returned. I’m going to have a clean of the relevant connector and maybe try measuring the voltage while waving the cable around and see if it suddenly drops to 0 or somesuch. But even applying the jumpleads doesn’t always seem to make it work, which was my trick last time around.

    I finally rang Virgin to find out about the phone, and it’s a no. The street is cabled, just not as far as our house; I did actually put ourselves on the ‘come look and call me if you’ll cable it’, but I doubt it’s worth the hastle for them. There’s only 6 or so houses (possibly as many as 10) that are on the street that aren’t cabled, and most of ’em have Sky. So it looks like I’ll have to trawl through the broadband suppliers and find a ‘good’ one. BT seem to have given up offering me things to try and convince me to stay with their crappitude.

    I’ve done more tiling; Kathryn did some grouting too, so there’s a section that’s more or less finished. But there’s still a lot of tiling to do. But one wall is done bar the wood at the bottom; which needs different adhesive. And the wall the toilet’s on is similarly done. The one with the radiator on is done bar 6 tiles. When I’ve put those last 6 on I’ll start cleaning up the radiator; because once the radiator’s on then we’re very close to calling in the gas engineer. It’s getting fracking cold here now, cold enough that the fire’s starting to be slow to warm the lounge and that it’s cool in the bedroom. So I guess the fact that we’re now not going to Italy is actually quite handy because a solid week of work should see the bathroom finished; and then the happy chappy who is my gas engineer can come and hopefully stop us freezing to death. I’m actually tempted, if I can, to connect up the lounge radiator too. That would be positively spiffy, but we’ll just have to see how we go.

    I’ve also finally got around to filling in the NHSP forms, so I now need a signature from my manager and some lovely photos of me, oh and some photocopies of my passport and stuff. Then I’ll be able to earn the extra cashes required for…

    …the Minor. I’ve also finally got around to ringing JLH – and Rebecca will be heading up there towards the end of November, beginning of December. She’ll be fitting in around other work; and it’s quite terrifying how much she’s going to cost. It’s a big chunk of the original restoration costs. I’ll also be adding recovery to my breakdown cover before we try running up there because she’ll now have not been run for just shy of a year, and is *not * a well bunny. If we decide we’ve had enough on the way up there, then we can stop and call breakdown then.

    Poor old Cherry Red’s been doing the run to and from work; she’s still just as sick as she has been for a long time, with a top speed of about 80km/h to maybe 100 km/h. She’s next on the list, and will have to get taken down to London at some point. I keep thinking about what could be causing it but I suspect without stripping it down I’m not going to find out. She still leaks two-stroke (which I need to get some more of from somewhere – and not the local bike shop who I was very unimpressed with). It’s getting bloody cold though, riding the bike. And my bike gear’s beginning to show it’s age (even more!) – the zipper’s starting to come apart on the jacket. I may have to make a run down to Bristol (since I want to head down and see friends anyhow) to my favourite bike shop and see what they’ve got on offer :)

    Yes, so.

    (And now, thanks to e-bay, I have oil. Ra).

    So, last night we went out to the A&E and Paramedics’ Halloween party (yes, as many people pointed out to us on the way there, Halloween is not for a while yet) – with Kathryn’s help I went as a Witch and she as my familiar :) Despite my shyness I did actually talk to a few people although I didn’t do a great deal of socialising. We also screwed up travelling there; I forgot how crap Firstbus are and we tried to get a bus to the station. Obviously at obscure times like Saturday night, at say 1900ish, you need busses no more frequently than hourly (oh, and let’s make the times the bus run completely unrelated to the online time table). In the end, despite my ridiculous heels we decided to walk there, which would’ve been fine, apart from the fact that my cheap-arse boots had a staple come through the sole while walking, and the balls of my feet feel like they’re working up to revealing some blisters of significant size. I had a good time though, and we headed home after midnight. I may share the picture of us; when I feel enthused enough to put it on the laptop :)

    We had a very relaxed day today though; it’s really nice just to spend a day relaxing, I’ve not touched the house all day, I’ve not dealt with the E-mail to JLH, although I may ring this chap about the Enfield…. and JP about the Enfield also. And that, that is my update :)

  • Retraction

    So, I thought that it was the cable at fault; I now retract my pseudo modern car parts are rubbish rant (although it stands as a general comment) because it turns out that the idiot who owned my car before me (s/idiot/cunning git) failed to put part of the clutch cable mechanism back; when I replaced the clutch I didn’t realise it was missing and so put it back the way it was. It now appears that all of the strain from the clutch has been going onto the pedal box and has snapped part of it off. With some difficulty I managed to sort-of-fix it. It works now, and hopefully should stay working.

    I couldn’t see why the brakes were having issues though, so he’ll have to go to the garage for definate.

    I did however put the cover back in the engine bay so that fumes are less inclined to come join me in the passenger cabin, which was a positive.

    And then I had this great idea; you know those great ideas you get? Well, I thought I’d fix the broken window winder. A while back the window in the passenger side decided it was not going to shut properly; or indeed open properly, or do anything very much. So I whipped the cover off and had a bit of a looksie. Of course, it became apparent part way through this process that neither could I see well enough, nor could I find anything that felt wrong and then I had my second great idea of the morning. I’ll put the new door card in while I’m here. So I got it, and while fitting it managed to unhook part of the door lock. Having spent about 10 minutes cursing I worked out how to put it back together, and discovered the new door panels are *exactly the same* apart from one teensy tiny difference. The door handles are subtly smaller and don’t actually operate the door lock on brick. Having cursed a little to myself I then removed the door panel again and refitted the original one. During which time I again dislodged that fracking bit of door lock mechanism.

    Finally I got it all back together and although I can now say the clutch works, and the fan sucks in air rather than engine fumes, the door lock on the passenger side now only locks with a key, or from the inside. You can’t do the button-down-hold-door-handle-and-slam thing. And the window winder still doesn’t work. Gaaaah.

    Just to round it all off, while I was posting this the laptop’s battery demonstrated that it is, indeed, a bit fubar. ISTR reading that this laptop does have problems with killing batteries fairly quickly, and it was a cheap battery. But still. Disconcertingly, having stopped and died stone dead, the battery now states it’s fully charged. *sigh*

  • And winter commeth

    It’s starting to get cold outside, and the ‘heating’ such as it is is something I’m becoming increasingly fond of. The gas fire in the lounge is really quite nice of an evening, and curling up beside Kathryn ‘n reading or watching telly, or a film is about the nicest way to pass an evening. But, there is one thing that goes with the coming of winter…

    …car problems.

    Brick seems to have heard the call of the winter somewhat early and has had a little bit of a quirk with his brakes for the last few weeks. That is, namely, that pressing them leads to smooth application of the brakes until about half way down when the brake pedal will sink about a quarter of an inch with very little effort and the brakes will come on incredibly hard. It seemed that flicking the brake pedal upward (it would stick slightly down) would remove this tendancy, but it seems to be getting worse and worse at a rate which means I’ll have to fix it rather than wait for the service. I’d been intending to do that this week but it’d got lost under the battle to get the radiators in (2 out of 3, the third needs stripping and painting before it can be fitted), then all the heating-plumbing is done upstairs. It’s just fitting taps ‘n the shower mixer now for the other plumbing. Mmm.

    But this morning we got the ‘won’t start’ quirk back. Fortunately I recognised it quickly, but I’m now at a loss as to what’s causing it. The voltage seems correct at the coil, so the resistor clearly is working correctly… bypassing everything does work, but it’s a touch tedious. And the coup de gras today; a while ago the clutch-end of the clutch cable disappeared through the plate into which it is mounted. For reasons best known to themselves the cable appears to be slightly smaller than the original and the hole into which it is meant to rest is big enough that it goes ‘whoosh’, straight through. My lovely local garage sorted this by sticking a nut on the end of the cable so it can’t go through the hole. As if to torment me, today as I left the railway station having dropped of my beloved, the other end of the cable went *chunk* though the top of the firewall and approached the pedal. Fortunately, it still had enough length in it to work, but it remains irritating.

    Far be it from me to suggest that this cable is not correctly manufactured and to utter a rant about the quality of modern parts. It would never occur to me even to consider suggesting such a thing, but now I have to disassemble the clutch cable mechanism and see if I can persuade the bloody thing to go back through the hole and sit, correctly, on the correct side of the firewall. I’m meant to be tiling, but I’m just steeling myself for a cold day outside covered in oil. Whether oil is worse than tile glue is something you may debate (yes, is my opinion incidentally), but it’s not something which makes me happy. Especially when I’ve forked out the first 50 of around 150 – 200 quid to have brick’s engine converted to unleaded.

  • Frustrationsville

    Today’s just been one of those days; you know, one where whilst nothing goes horrendously wrong, nothing quite goes right either.

    I couldn’t sleep last night, and so instead of being up early I curled up with my head on Kathryn and went back to sleep this morning.
    The plumbing shop had the bits I asked for… but I asked for the wrong size (I’ll have to change them tomorrow).
    The clothes shops didn’t have anything for Kathryn to wear to work (Slough has astonishingly poor clothing selections).
    I didn’t see any trainers to replace my worn out and disintegrating Karimoor ones (which I rather like, presumably why they’re disintegrating).
    I couldn’t remember where the garage I need to leave the deposit at is – making it hard to leave a deposit – but we did spend about 15 minutes circling the streets trying to find it.
    We forgot items at the supermarket.
    And I cooked too little rice for dinner, meaning that I had bread instead; not that I particularly object to bread, but I did have to sneak the plate in after Kathryn started eating so as she’d eat the rice I’d cooked without forcing us to share the measily amount I’d made.

    All in all it’s been a really quite frustrating and disappointing day.

  • Nights

    Whilst during the day we have our regular clients; people who’re lonely, people who’re not really sick but call an ambulance for the company, people who’s GP can’t be bothered to go out so sends an ambulance instead. During the night we get a different group of regulars. There seem to be several varieties, but as you may’ve guessed by now the most common of these is the pissed-and-fell-over group. Usually, pissed, fell over, ‘friends’ abandoned them on the street. At the beginning of the week they’re not too lectured-to, but at least for me, by the end of the week they get a free long lecture on drinking sensibly, and a marked lack of sympathy.

    This set of nights’s been hugely varied; some days I’ve had dross, some days I’ve had some truly horrific injuries, and seriously unwell people. I’ve spent much of my time practicing my suturing, pulling bits of glass and grit from people; a little of my time applying plasters (as in plaster-of-paris plasters) which is definately something I enjoy but also something I need to work on. Though apparently the two plasters (when checked by people who can plaster) were adequate, they both needed some trimming (before I got them checked) and the second one I got the plaster vastly the wrong length; and had to wait for it to dry before chopping off a great big chunk. Not that I mind, but I think the patient was a little nervous.

    It’s a funny week really, now it’s over it doesn’t seem like a week – although I feel rough as sin for only having an hours sleep in the last 26 or so. And having been on my feet all night; and I really was busy for much of the night. I worked in the Resuscitation bay and we had it full several times last night. Majors, Minors and the Observation ward I’m fairly happy with. I need to get up to speed on cannulation, but on a good day with a following wind I can pick up sick people; I do all the appropriate tests; etc, and during this block of nights the doctor was strongly suggesting a woman who I felt was unwell should go home. Having basically disregarded the doctor’s input I did a bunch of blood tests, threw some oxygen on the woman and lo, it turned out that she probably has a blood clot. Probably a PE. She was admitted when she was seen… by one of the other doctors :)

    So, that made me feel pretty good about myself. I seem to be becoming more part of the team, which is nice; and settling in happily and being part of the furniture. Although people still ask me how I’m settling in. But it’s kinda nice.

    And now I have a week off, well, it’s really not quite a week off because today is limited in it’s usefulness (because I feel faintly sick and incredibly tired) but I’ve got a few bits and bobs done; I’ve watched Peter’s Friends (which I’ve not seen for years and is still an excellent film), done two loads of laundry, the dishes, sanded and primed one of the two remaining bath feet, removed the incorrectly laid tiles from the bathroom and removed most (not quite all) of the tile adhesive, put out the recycling and had a bit of a nap. Perhaps it’s little wonder I feel like crap :)

  • Running a little behind with updates….

    As you might have noticed I’ve been a little slack with updates; this is because of nights. Well, that and actually doing things with my time when I’m not working, which makes updating somewhat less easy.

    Anyhow, so here’s a bit of an update: Computers, still not working properly. I reinsalled OS X on the Hackintosh, but it’s still not happy (I can’t get it to recognise the network adaptor); the downstairs PC is still in the throws of disconnection frenzy; and the laptop is still sick. So, to appease you all, I’ve uploaded photos from the Laptop. My camera’s nearly full though; although I think I can get the photos onto the Mac, now it’s booting anyhow.

    First up, from way back (excuse the lazyness) – here’s the Pari and Clare’s Wedding photoset. I have a vague feeling I posted about it at the time; either that or Kathryn did and I linked to her post :)

    Right, what else? A while back we went to the VVOC and I got to meet the oldest Minor…

    It actually made me rather fancy a lowlight mog, but first I need to get Rebecca sorted. We’ve got the majority of the payout from the insurance company and there *should* be enough there to do the engine (they didn’t pay for the engine, but I’ve decided not to replace some of the tools that we claimed for, because plan is move -> canada, and I’m unlikely to need them before then). I’ve also found a local motor engineer who looks like a proper old fashioned engineer, and seems cheaper than the big companies. He’s doing the unleaded conversion for Brick when he gets back from his holiday (well, the actual work on the head; I’m not sure if they do actual engine work, I may find out or may get my pet garage to do it) but either way we’ll be testing the quality of his work :)

    Anyhow, the main purpose of the post was to update after meeting Lauril; one of Kathryn’s friends who stopped over on her way to Spain. We mostly had a relaxed Friday evening when she arrived – curry was eaten, films and TV watched and we all chatted… Saturday morning was a trifle slow, and Saturday afternoon was the world’s quickest tour of London. We did a slightly off-norm collection of tourist hotspots and at the same time doing totally non-tourist places. We also did them at speed, and as the light of the day faded…

    We headed into London with the intention of getting lunch – quick discussion and we’d decided to head to Camden Market and get lunch somewhere around there – being as it’s not peak tourist season even on a Saturday that shouldn’t have been too cramped. Unfortunately we’d not bargained on the words that strike fear into the heart of any public-transport user. “Replacement Bus Service”. As we’d not really sprinted through our morning we were quite hungry – and in the end headed up towards Soho rather than endure the bus on a Saturday in London. This, it turned out was an excellent idea. We located a well reviewed little Sushi restaurant with a conveyory thing. After several minutes of embaressed European and American ‘uh-how-does-this-work-exactly’ness we managed to order food and then had some really very nice Sushi…

    Having been well fed, and decided to leave Kink, Cake and Coffee for later we headed out in search of the Travel Bookstore (Stanford’s), making it there despite the alien invasion…


    Stanfords is, I think, the oldest Travel bookstore in London, and is ace, quite frankly. Filled with maps, books and uh, more maps and books, oh and a very very large globe. While Lauril hunted for maps (and found rather a lot of them), Kathryn and I wandered about going ‘ooh, books’. Taking myself and Kathryn to a book shop is a dangerous experience limited only by the amount of money we don’t have. And even that isn’t always a strong restriction on the amount of books that we come away with.

    Lauril managed to escape with less maps than she picked up initially, and rather more books than she initially picked up… Kathryn and I split the cost of a book – which I think is called Tuk Tuk to the Road. Having exhausted ourselves with books and maps we headed to CC&K, for our required dose of Coffee, Cake (oh, such good cake) and Kink. Sadly I can’t find the image I fell in love with the first or second time I went, now I actually have an excuse to buy the damn photo. Gah. The Coffee, the Cake and indeed the Kink were of their usual high standards and I’m very glad they stayed open. Somehow it makes me feel more like I belong in the city to know a awesome little coffee shop to go to.

    We then headed down to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson on the Lions, there was the Journey (People Trafficking) display / protest in the square but the queue was waaay long, and knowing we only had this one day to show Lauril all of London, it didn’t seem like an great use of our day. If I weren’t on nights this week I’d’ve liked to head back see it before it disappeared off, but I’m on nights this week, which is somewhat unfortunate.

    We got to be very touristy, which is quite fun; having lived near London for much of my life somehow I’ve never really done the Tourist thing. I’ve visited the museums, which is I guess, touristy? And I’ve been through most of the touristy places, but not really done them as tourist locations. Anyhow, we clambered up on the lions (you have to!), and took pictures…

    We then made a headlong sprint down to see Buckingham Palace, which left Lauril rather disappointed. I think she said “That’s it?”. On the way there we passed the rather dubiously named Minstry of Justice; I paused a few seconds to take a photo of the sign – apparently the Security Guard was unimpressed, but we made our escape before he could say “No photographing public places”. It continues to make me worry where this country is headed; but hey. I don’t plan to be here that long.

    We spent some time snapping shots of Buckpal, despite Lauril’s lack of impressedness; the fading light was quite fun to play with. I spent some time playing with the monochrome setting on my camera :)

    Long exposures and water are also fun to play with…

    We walked back through St. James Park; pausing to spend several minutes attempting to photograph big ben; the lightness of the sky and the darkness of the park some how prevented me from getting anything but blur. Even with propping my camera against things.

    Having trundled through the park we found the London Eye glowing away…. very pretty it was too.

    And then, on the way to find food we wandered through Trafalgar Square again and the protest was doing giant puppetry things which were incredible to watch. Had we not been hungry, I certainly could have stayed and watched for a long time.

    So, then we sorted out Lauril’s need to try Ale; Kathryn and I partook in fine Cider (incidentally, aren’t pubs much nicer now they’re smoke free?), which was impressively effective mostly due to a lack of food – so we made good our escape and headed to EMM – where we had some shockingly reasonably priced food (there was such a lot of it).

    And then we headed home…

    ’twas a good day…

    I’ll write about nights some other time.

  • So, thoughts.

    I know, I’ve become one of those become one of those people who rarely updates. I think  that’s because, well, most of the time I’m busy and really any of my spare time I want to spend with Kathryn. I don’t hugely want to spend time writing about what I’bve been doing. Because at the moment I’m sat waiting for MacOS to install on the ‘main PC’; purely because I want to install Linux on the laptop – and I’ve reached my tollerence for my laptop’s pause every few seconds to go to 100% processor usage, then resolve. It does it when it’s running firefox, not when it’s running anything else. But at the moment there’s not enough space on it to download the install of Gentoo – not that I could burn it, because the PC in the lounge / the homehub seem to be locked in a perpetual battle of wills – one of  them tries to connect, the other will work for a while, then they fall off. I can’t help blaming the homehub – it being so crap in every respect means that even if it isn’t it’s fault I’m gonna blame it for this problem.

    At any rate, it’s left me sat upstairs with the laptop in my lap to keep me company while Kathryn is applicationifying and showering and doing morning things. I can’t help but have paranoia that it’s some sort of keylogger – but I’d presume it’d be better written than this is. Anyhow, so I’ve been working with kids a lot recently – not through choice, I hasten to add, but just because. I’m increasingly of the opinion that I’d quite like a kid sone day. They can be terribly sweet – even in the incredibly stressed environment of an A&E department. That doesn’t stop them being horrendously scary – not least because I don’t know enough to look after them as well as I’d like. But still. Not yet, I also hasten to add; but at some indistinct point in the future.

    So, yes. work yesterday was tiring. We cleared out the Resus bay only for it to more or less instantly fill up again. And these were sick people; not desperately desperately sick people. Thankfully I’ve only had one of them in the Resus bay, once. Although, that said it’s probably good to get the skills down. But, yes. I may book myself on the ILS course. But I just feel so much out of my depth some of the time.

    I’m worried that I’ll go on the course and I’ll still be out of my depth, surrounded by nurses who are way more experienced and way more knowledgeable than me. But I guess learning is learning :)

    And actually it probably makes sense to do it now, just so I can apply the principles.

    Kathryn and I (mostly Kathryn, actually) have been attacking the bathroom some more; she’s painted the top section white, I’ve filled the ceiling, so it now needs sanding and then painting with some of that smoothing paint. I’ve sealed around the shower too, so that’s now ready to be tiled. And finally we’ve both been tiling. It’s only a small section of tiles that’s up and on the walls, but it’s a good start and it does make a difference, at least mentally. I shall pounce and attack them tomorrow – try and get a chunk done. We’re having a friend over to stay, so it’d be nice if it was nearer finished. Not least because the less stuff there is being stored in there relating to building the more space we have that we can clear stuff from the spare room into.

  • Update

    Um, somewhat of a lazy title – but lots has been going on here. The last week has flown past; I’ve had a lot of hard shifts at work, and a very good shift – I’ve finally started suturing. I can now officially say that I’ve put people back together. Not necessarily very well… But they seemed to think it was neat enough. I had a good old wash out of the wounds and my suturing seems remarkably neat. Given my complete lack of sewing abilities the fact I can sew people back together has come as somewhat of a shock.

    I’m really pleased to have got started on that though.

    I’m told that I can go into minors again on Thursday and if that’s possible then I can do *more* :)

    Kathryn and I spend a really nice day in London yesterday; I felt very decadent, somehow. We went to drop off some applications for her, well, that and some errands. And made a day of it, she posted about it here… I was just going to comment a little on Venus as a Boy – the play we went to see. I am still surprised at how the tale of a male prostitute’s descent into prostitution and eventual demise – a tale which centred around basically all the unpleasant and awful things which happened in his life – remained an incredibly positive feeling play. And the ability of the performer (who’s name escapes me) to carry me (at least) to the places he described; and to portray ages very different than his own – and multiple different ages though the play really impressed me.

    So, that was us, last night, at Soho Theatre.

    Today we got some of this… and put it here. It was a hideous job, it’s not quite finished, because a small section of the loft is floored – and rather than take that up, because we want to floor it anyhow – so there’s just that small section to be insulated. But it was filthy up there – and the guy and insulated it using randomly selected carpet and underlay, and apparently the lining of a mattress. All of that’s come up now and been relayed with 200 mm of glass fibre. Glass fibre is itchy, no matter what it might say on the packet.

    And in final other news; my laptop also needs reinstalling. It’s regularly hitting 1005 processor usage. By which I mean, every few seconds. I can’t actually type and have the results come up on the screen at the same time as I type. They come up in floods after I’ve typed entire sentences – and correcting mistakes takes minutes. But I need to retrieve the files off it first…which means getting either the Mac or the Windows box working well enough to copy them. Gah.

  • Apparently I’m in the wrong job…

    Since everybody else is doing it :)

    1. Sprinkler System Installer
    2. Chiropractor
    3. Massage Therapist
    4. Dental Hygienist
    5. Physical Therapist
    6. Kinesiologist
    7. Optical / Ophthalmic Lab Technician
    8. Audiologist
    9. Welder
    10. Tilesetter
    11. Boilermaker
    12. Automotive Painter
    13. Dentist
    14. Orthodontist
    15. Autobody Repairer
    16. Nurse Practitioner
    17. Tailor / Dressmaker
    18. Pet Groomer
    19. Security Systems Technician
    20. Acupuncturist
    21. Nurse
    22. Cabinetmaker
    23. Plumber
    24. Sign Maker
    25. Electrician
    26. Dental Lab Tech
    27. Electronics Assembler
    28. Race Car Mechanic
    29. Appliance Repairer
    30. Motorcycle Mechanic
    31. Automobile Mechanic
    32. Aircraft Mechanic
    33. Diesel Mechanic
    34. Heating, Air Conditioning, Refrigeration Tech
    35. Respiratory Therapist
    36. Elevator Installer and Repairer
    37. Hairstylist
    38. Small Engine Mechanic
    39. Esthetician
    40. Millwright

  • 1 Week, 1000 Miles

    This past week’s been a really interesting and incredible one. Kathryn finished her course and moved down to Slough last Tuesday; and y’know what I’m very happy. James commented that we smile a lot (“You both grin like mad things”) – and y’know what, it’s true. Somehow I just feel happier.

    Sorry, I realise that we’re also sickly sweet, but hey, we’ve only been actually able to see each other for more than a couple of days at a time for one week, tomorrow. So, yes. So that was Tuesday; I’d just come off nights and have to admit that the whole thing was kinda blurry for me.

    The rest of the week’s been made up of working on the house (the bathroom ceiling’s flakey paint has now been largely resolved; Kathryn revealed a continent of plaster, and I increased it’s size tonight before slathering the whole area in dilute PVA before applying lots of filler. Much sanding now awaits), helping out at my mum’s house (and here’s another example of where being with Kathryn is just better’n being by myself. Not only do I get her awesome company, but she reminds me to take advantage of being out in the countryside).
    Having wandered around we picked blackberries to go with my mum’s home grown apples – which on getting home we made into a really rather nice apple and blackberry cake. It didn’t quite rise right, but next time we’ll use the oven not-in-fan-mode.

    Then we headed up for Pari’s 2nd wedding – which was just beautiful. It was really great to catch up with some people I’ve not seen since university; I was actually incredibly nervous – having not seen them for 7 years; but in the end it worked out well. Kathryn’s posted about the wedding here – and when I get the photos off my camera, if any of them are any good I’ll flickr’em, but that means getting my Mac working. Which I could’ve done tonight, but didn’t. Instead I watched the IT crowd :)

    Finally we headed back via the Gaydon Heritage Motor Museum, which was hosting the VVOC’s AGM – and I got to meet (briefly) some members of the VVOC, drip a lot of oil on the car park, collect a new head (which will be made unleaded) for Brick, and also got to spend some time looking at the world’s earliest production Morris Minor. Kathryn too pics of me next to the Minor, so expect them too; I also took a fair few pictures as I wandered round.

    We also sat in a Think, Ford’s acquired-then-sold EV – it was interesting, but also disconcertingly dull. I guess that’s what we need, dull EVs for people to just buy and use. It appeared to be built to Ford’s usual standards and it was interesting to see moulded plastic door panels with the kinds of door gaps I’m used to on the Minor. (I have to say, looking at the photos of the newer ones, it looks like they’ve improved somewhat on the very early one we were sat in)
    Anyway, Brick brought us home despite atrocious traffic on the M40 – and the temperature gauge hanging around just before the “I’m letting all the water out now” marker. There were quite a few modern cars with the traditional pool of green water underneath them sat on the hard shoulder, so I am quite impressed with Brick’s performance, especially given the stuff that’s passing for coolant in ‘im at the moment.
    1000 miles in a week not bad for a 35 year old car :)