Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Miscalculation

    It’s not like I can afford to pay off the electricity bill I got after Xmas anyway; but I’ve been trying to creep closer to it. Unfortunately I didn’t twig that it would be ‘electricity bill month’; and thus used the money that should have been there to pay it off to pay off the credit card. So now…

    …now it’s the 6th of the month and I’m broke.

    Bother.

    I also need to get off my lazy arse and write to HMGov who seem to think I’m self employed. I rang them, and they said ‘return the bill with a cover letter’; so I shall…

    I dunno, I’m feeling a bit down today; have been since yesterday. Yesterday didn’t *suck* as such, but it was just one of those days where my lack of experience and lack of knowledge really felt wearing. I have realised that I am actually the nurse with the least experience in the entire department. While I vacillate between putting my hand up or not at training sessions when people say ‘and newly qualified?’, I sometimes (well I do) forget that at work and I do feel my painful lack of knowledge at times.

    But yeah, yesterday we were insanely busy. I kept complaining that people should be out relaxing (gently) in the sunshine (well, Ideally the shade, looking at some of the burns that came in); but instead they kept pouring in to A&E. Millions of the buggers. Well, quite a lot of ’em. And some people seem to assume I’m dumb, which is annoying. I was dressing someone’s arm, and the Doctor had stated that we should send him home with dressings ‘so he could dress it himself’. Uh, no, I think not. But I wanted to check what the policy was on that and the nurse I spoke to assumed that I wanted to send him home like that. Argh.

    And when I came home last night my washer/drier decided to play up. I’m *assuming* that the clothes got all the way through the wash cycle. But I can’t be sure. It seems to have died at the start of the dry cycle and went into a mode which isn’t in the manual (the flash lights very fast mode); having spoken to my friend Dave who fixes these things he informed me that the model I’ve got does have a nasty habit of killing it’s drier element, and when it does so it does the flash lights as if trying to induce an epileptic seizure in the user. At any rate I was all ready to ring Hotpoint and say ‘WTF!’ to them (It is, after all, less than a year old), but I emptied it and stuck it on a cycle this morning and it’s made it all the way through without going nuts, so I shall just keep an eye on it.

    Maybe it was tired too.

    *Sighs*

    Sadly, since I was up ’til late trying to figure out how to get my uniforms out so they’d be dry I am now even more tired and facing a Monday late, never a shift that’s fun; and somehow I’d rather spend the day lying on the bed with a good book (of which I now have several to read) and not-doing-work. Gah.

  • yeah yeah, update blah.

    So, there I was contemplating trains. I was doing this as I sat on the train having failed to find a ticket selling representative to sell me a ticket (given that the machine on the platform was broken, and that the ‘permit to travel’ was  demanding money before giving me anything). I’d looked around for a ticket office, and found only barred windows, a door covered by metal shutters and no signs directing me anywhere else from the L-shaped corridor that led up to the platform.

    After an argument/discussion with the ticket chap on the train I got the return tickets; and he told me I should look more carefully because the ticket office was open.

    When I finally got back from the fun evening of bonding with work colleagues (2 cancelled trains and a fun hour of  in the station later) I found that no; there are no signs for the ticket office when you come in the entrance. The only sign that *might* be present is if you go out onto the platform and walk down the platform… then there *might* be one on the door which is behind a metal shutter.

    I’m reminded of Douglas Adams, they’d not really gone as far as *telling* anyone about the ticket office. And given that there are many small unstaffed stations with ticket machines only; well; I didn’t think I’d have to *hunt* for it.

    Anyhow, I actually had a moderately pleasant evening. I’d’ve been more pleasant if I’d’ve got over my shyness, but it’ll come.

    Today, well, today was odd. Apparently today was the worst day to visit the hospital. In fact, because the media scared everyone away today would have been a bloody brilliant day to visit the hospital. Come my departure time we’d had around 80 people through the department. We’re normally up in the hundreds. I saw 4 patients today who weren’t pre-booked in for a clinic. It was beyond weird. I actually stayed late; just so I could *do* something.

    Anyhow, I got home and then I got irritated by an article masquerading as an article by ‘Feminist’ Julie Bindel, but actually by irritating woman Julie Bindel. While I’m quite happy with my body just the way it is thanks-very-much (no Karsten; short hair and a penchant for oily contraptions are not indicative of a desire to be a boy, but thanks for asking); I would suggest that being in a situation where you’re willing to undergo major surgery to make your body something you’re happy to remain in; risk being left at the margins of society and so on takes presidence over whether it upsets Julie’s concept of what maketh a woman.
    While I was doing research for my dissertation I encountered quite enough information about what trans-people go through in healthcare alone to make me feel quite strongly on the subject (along with what the entire GLBT community go through in healthcare). Anyhow; I could go on at length. Every article I’ve ever read by this woman drives me nuts; and personally I think she gives Feminists a bad name. And the BBC’s shonky reporting on GLBT issues remains as shonky and annoying as ever. Anyhow.

    I tend to feel if what you do hurts no-one but yourself (uh, or consenting others) then you should be allowed to get on with it. But there you go.

    So, having wound down I then finished grouting the floor. It took some bullying of myself by myself to get myself up to the bathroom; but once up there I kinda slogged my way through and finished it. I now need to de-grout where there’s overgrouting that I failed to get off with the sponge at the time. That’s a tedious job. I think that real tilers do a better job of that than me, but I’m not quite sure how.

    And then I curled up to read some more of The Eyre Affair. As a lover of Robert Rankin, and Douglas Adams; it was pretty likely that I’d like Jasper Fforde’s (first) book. As it is I stayed up this evening just so as I could read it. It’s excellent….and I blame Kathryn entirely for me spending the last few days reading it (well, intermittently) rather than doing work :-)

    I have the best girlfriend in the entire world :)

  • Holiday, part 1.

    So, I had this faint intention of writing about the holiday in great depth, because it was a fantastic holiday filled with awesome.

    But I’m too tired to do that. So, rather than wait until I forget about it I’ll sketch it for you shiny people, and then give you a link to some pics…

    Day 1 was mostly spent travelling; the traffic was okay, I think; Brick performed flawlessly, apart from a weld on the exhaust failing as we off-roaded up to the hostel. Actually, it wasn’t as bad as the coniston one by any means, the track up is pretty rough though. We landed up at the hostel fairly late in the evening – and despite failing light took a little wander up towards Red Tarn / Helvellyn… the air was just so clean. It’s amazing, you forget what real, fresh air smells like.

    Day 2 and we headed for a nice light easy walk; easing ourselves in – Kathryn had new (unbroken in) boots, and I am well out of practice with walking, so we walked down the mountain to Glenridding; and after a brief detour to buy waterproofs for me (because I’m a dizzy mare and forgot them) we headed  out to the ferry to get the ‘steamer’ (diesel, these days) to Howtown. From there the plan was to walk back around Ullswater, one of the Wainright walks; sadly there were about 3,000,000 people also with this plan, so instead we decided to nip up Hallin fell. Hallin fell took exception to being ‘nipped’ up; and we got rained and hailed on, sheltering behind the obelisk at the top. Once done with the rain and hail, and my boots having disintegrated, we headed down and (squelched) around Ullswater and the weather went back to being rather lovely.

    Day 3 – and we headed to Keswick. Keswick is where most of my youth holidays were spent; so feels kinda home-y; we wandered around many bookshops, a few sweet shops, and also did some (of the vast number of) mountaineering shops (to replace my boots and get a knee support and a trecking pole (or stick, as I insist on calling it)). We also found a truly excellent cafe called the Lakeland Peddlar. My, that was some good food… And I also availed myself of Keswick’s exhaust repair facilities. Brick’s re-welded exhaust remained trouble free…but when we arrived to collect Brick there was a chap who, well, let’s say he was very excited to see an HC Viva still on the road. He all-but bounced, and asked to sit in the car (so I opened the door and let him have a sit inside)….
    Day 4 – Helvellyn. The weather looked hideous when we started out; but the report said that the clouds would lift and the rain would stop and the sun would shine. And y’know what; it was true. When we were walking up Helvellyn we stood about 200 meters from Red Tarn and didn’t know it was there; and had to guess at which path was the one we wanted. We didn’t bother doing Catstye Cam (which we were going to do) because, well, we couldn’t see it. Anyhow, 3118 feet up, and the weather cleared a couple of times for us; giving us some truly breathtaking views. And by the time we were crossing Striding Edge it’d become a glorious day. We opted to walk across Grisedale Brow (where I shot my quick bit of abandonment; this dam), and down into Glenridding – where we would grab a pub meal before making the treck back up to the Hostel.

    Day 4 – And we decided on a nice, relaxing day; visiting the museum in Ambleside; and wandering around many bookshops in Ambleside where we chanced upon a very informal, very friendly poetry night. It was excellent, and very friendly; and I deeply wish it existed in Slough. Anyhow, if you’re ever in Ambleside the poetic justice poetry night is well worth it.

    Day 5 – We headed to the Potfest – a place where we could both have spent vastly too much money. There was some beautiful ceramic art and pottery there; some of it very reasonably priced. Some of it while reasonably priced also very expensive, and some of it oh-my-god-expensive :)

    And then we headed to Bristol, but that’s a story for another post.

    Anyhow, here’s the pics…

  • Ah, public transport

    It appears Kathryn’s been delayed, so as I fill time waiting for her to arrive…

    From the BBC news site, they’ve clearly employed some specialists in stating the obvious:

    BBC weather forecaster Kirsty McCabe said: “We have had some quite extraordinary rainfall.”

    Well, I never. Really? It’s unusual to have landslides and have our towns underwater? That’s not normal? Gosh.

    And from the highways agency this startling piece of information:

    “The Highways Agency has warned rain and spray can reduce visibility”

    Good lord, really?

  • It’s been raining

    So, I had one of the most surreal mornings in the ED that I’ve ever had. From kicking out the two patients who were there when I arrived (at 0700) until 1100 I didn’t see a patient.

    I was then, going to rant about the fact that there’s this one nurse at work who while nice to me with everyone else seems to like to attack me whenever she takes over any of my patients; and the 30 seconds with her made me feel like crap for my entire journey home. Hell, I’ve been sat here alternately ranting and wanting to curl up because of what she said. Mostly ranting, because as I’ve thought about it I’ve realised that yes; I didn’t do the bloke’s resps for the 25 minutes he was in my care. But the fact he’d not had obs written on his chart? Well, I’d done them, they’re recorded on the nice machine, and given that she didn’t bother to hand him over to me, nor give me any help, and that I’d done her a favour by ECGing him (he was having some sort of cardiac event), and organised, and moved him to the Resus room; I’d given the drugs he needed and so on…

    …She can sit, and indeed swivel. Yes, I should have done his resps, but quite frankly, he needed drugs I’d never given before and I needed to check doses and routes and side effects and indeed what they did before giving them. The fact he had no obs recorded for an hour? That’s *not* my fault, I had him in resus for 25 minutes. The time before that? She should’ve done and recorded them, thanks very much. ‘course it must be hard being so perfect all the time.

    Anyhow, the whining though is much reduced by the fact that I’ve just discovered that my mum’s house is flooded out and I’ve got to head down there to see what we can save / recover / how bad it is. Wish me luck.

  • Dolls in pram ≠ Brick

    So, today was a bit insane. At least, I thought it was insane.

    I’m not sure why, but the nurse in charge decided I should be 1st in in Resus. This was actually good, in a lot of ways; because I much more enjoy and am much better when I’m thrown in at the deep end.

    But it was scary++ because, well, not only do I have only a limited clue as to what I’m doing; but also I’ve got next to no Emergency skills. I can’t take blood (although hopefully I can do my assessment this week), I can’t give IV’s unsupervised, I can’t cannulate, and I can’t plaster….

    So it was a bit interesting. I got very good at saying “could you possibly…”

    And “no, but I’ll get someone who can”.

    Thankfully someone much more experienced came in for the Trauma call (a chap with extensive burns). And I stuck to my chest pains, and self-harmers. I did meet a genuine bona-fide gangster; at least according to himself… I must admit when he self discharged I really didn’t care that much…

    After my shift I drove home, although there was a brief pause because Brick randomly decided he didn’t like the rust syrup masquerading as coolant, and thus spat it out. I’ve only seen a car-spitting-out-coolant-old-style once before (Nikki’s Mog) and it’s quite impressive. There was steam pouring (and I do mean pouring) out from the bonnet, from the back of the bonnet (where the vents are) and when I opened it there was a whoosh of more steam. So I shall *change* the coolant before heading up North; although I shan’t flush it.

    It seemed fine after slopping some fresh coolant in so it was probably a stuck thermostat. But I shall be paranoid’ly observing it.

    I finally, incidentally, got my shot in for Snapshot Hunter; ‘ve stuck it below, and I’m quite pleased with it… I’ve got a whole bundle more from the weekend with Kathryn, but I shall maybe upload them tomorrow.

    And to take you into the evening, here’s some links: Funny. Scary.

  • Demonstrable progression

    So, I mentioned the oil leak, but I didn’t mention the coolant. The coolant in the Viva appears to be made by a careful process of combining iron oxide and stale water, and then leaving it standing for; say; 5 or 10 years.
    This is obviously less than ideal. i have, in fact, since I had the car, been intending to flush the cooling system with some coolant flush and then change it for nice fresh shiny coolant. I may even do it twice.

    However, doing so before the trip to the Lakes whilst it seems in many ways a great plan (big stressful journey) invites my paranoia gremlin to pop out. See, last time I took Rebecca to the lakes, and just prior to the trip I flushed the coolant. The car then developed a leak (presumably some shifting bit of rust free’d it) and then in desparation I threw rad-weld in. Rad weld combined the remaining rust to clog up an already knackered coolant line and I got a very dead engine.

    So, paranoia says ‘don’t fiddle with it, it’s working’. So I’ve decided not to. Who can say if it’s the right decision. But since the coolant will probably have to be drained for the oil-leak-solution then I may save it for then.

    Completely unrelated to that is the fact that I made Raspberry and Apple crumble. Well. We’ll see if I made it, if it’s hideous I’ve just wasted nearly 500g of Raspberries. Sadly since they were picked at the weekend, quite a lot of them had gone manky. I think actually it’s because a few of them were just beyond perfectly ripe; and having turned into moudlyberries they were in close contact with many other berries. In the end I think almost 1/4 were inedible. Or at least, I chose not to trust them. Hence it becoming Raspberry and Apple crumble.

    I’m just waiting on dinner coming out of the oven; then the oven needs to cool down a bit; and then I shall have pie!

    Well, crumble.

    It’s weird to cook after so long not cooking. And nice. I miss having a nice kitchen; but frankly I’ve got sod all to complain about really. In fact there’s been some good house news; the woodworm is apparently not active enough to be worth treating. He reckoned it’s an old infestation with some residual activity; basically. And that all houses this age will have that kind of level of activity; most of it where you can’t see. Given the doubled joists, it’s not worth treating it, apparently. I may treat the bits I can still get to,  anyhow.

    I’ve also started grouting. I’d forgotten that I really don’t enjoy grouting much. How I could forget this I’m not sure, but I had. Still, about 1/3rd of the floor is grouted, the last tile is cut and down… So, all is good.

  • I must have been busy

    I thought to myself, it’s a while since I’ve updated; I’ve been reading but for the most part been too busy or too tired (or most commonly both) to get around to actually updating. Thing is, my life has become insanely normal. I go to work (knackering, but exactly what I want to do); I come home and do DIY and I talk to bluwyngz. I’ve got tons of work that needs doing, bills that need paying, forms that need to be sent off, and I struggle through doing them.

    Brick continues to ferry me to and from work; although the oil leak does seem to be getting worse, which is faintly concerning. I shall soon be getting him steam cleaned so we can work out where the engine oil is leaking *from*; and from there hopefully work out how to fix it.

    Kathryn came back from Romania and we had a fantastic time together; she was incredibly patient when the batteries in my mom’s EV died, and we had to come back on the back of a recovery truck. We went out and picked Raspberries; which I need to cook today; and we made it out to another bit of Slough area green space. We were also quite homey, and went to B&Q (think Home Depot) to choose the paint for the bathroom (and the lights for the kitchen).

    But really, while my life has been mostly delightful; the busy hasn’t been that exciting :)

    At least, unless you want to hear about my progress with taking blood, or with giving IVs….

  • Patient’s buying me underwear…

    Well, indirectly. So I went in to be a good little consumer today, and I spent the voucher that the nice patient gave (lots of staff) on my old ward; I now have two new bras which, unlike my other white bras, are actually white; and unlike all my other bras are not yet misshapen strange bits of rag. This was partially prompted by my ‘good’ black bras developing a strange quiff affair at the top of the cup, I’ve tried everything to get rid of this, but it seems permanent.

    I also spent the 30 quid that my rather nice old ward gave me before I departed for the shiny Emergency Department. Frustratingly HMV Shoppe was more expensive than HMV Online – but amazingly they had one copy of the Lucky Soul album. Which I relieved them of; and which is sounding very good. I was going to buy Green Wing, but their Green Wing DVDs were also 4 quid more per disk than online. Having accepted the 3 quid extra for the CD I was a little loathe to do that; and it would have meant I couldn’t afford the whole series. But there, lurking on the sale shelf was Black Books, Series 1-3; which is now mine. Quite a haul really.

    I then attempted, well, I’d attempted before without success, but I then attempted (after my purchases) to give my books which have been (hand) picked for disposal to a charity shop. Any charity shop (within limits). But I couldn’t find any that were reachable by car. Or more accurately after touring incessantly, I found one, which I couldn’t stop anywhere near.

    So the books are still in the back of my car.

    I’m hoping that when I go food shopping the shoppe will be less busy (a bit of a faint hope, really). This shopping however has put me in mind of what I watched yesterday; The End of Suburbia. It discusses what’ll happen to suburbia when we hit and pass ‘peak oil’; which either is soon or has happened, depending on who you ask.

    At any rate, it’s fairly much a warning of what is coming. But one thing which interests me is that people don’t really get how much of a change will occur. And a lot of EV people seem not to have realised that plastic’s going to be hard to get hold of when the oil’s run out. It’s all very well saying we’ll build our EV’s out of lightweight plastic; but…. What when there’s no plastic. I do wonder about our society and what’ll happen when we no longer have cheap  plastic, cheap goods, when the medicines start to run out (how many of these things are derived from oil?). The End of Suburbia also raised various interesting questions about power generation. I’m intrigued to know who’s right though; they reckon biofuels are not likely to be a successful widespread solution, and I’d been kinda seduced by this Google techtalk on E85. So.. Mmm.

    Anyway, makes you think. Or makes me think. I’d always intended that wherever I settle down would be more environmentally friendly than this place; if it’s a build it yourself place then all limecrete and such; and with wind/solar generation (solar water heating, particularly). But yes, anyway, so I’ve been left thoughtful.

  • There’s good news and uh, some bad.

    So, the good news is that I’ve started making, albeit small, inroads into the chaos in my endeavour to make the house bearable when Kathryn comes back. It’s hardly be welcoming if it still had a Kate-sized hole on the sofa where I’ve been sitting surrounded by bills. I’ve even cleaned the stairs – it was quite horrendous how much shite there was on them. Seriously, it was revolting. Granted it was mostly sawdust and plasterdust, but still.

    Obviously, in my posting frenzy you’ve had the ‘lookie, tiles’; but I have pictures (you’re all thrilled, I can tell)….

    See, tiles!

    I also have proof that there’s a shower door in my bathroom; or at least, a shower door in someone’s bathroom, but I maintain that this is mine and that I put it up. Believe me, no one else would want to claim that they put it up…

    Anyhow, because I took it, and also because it slightly freaked me out when I realised how badly worn it really was, here’s the Viva’s clutch cable (I imagine you’re all barely able to contain your excitement at this point)…

    Yes, it’s frayed. Really frayed. If that had snapped it could have lead to embarassing ‘crunch’ type noises; although I’ve been awfully careful the last week not to sit with my foot on the clutch, as I might be wont to do if I was expecting a light to change… I’m quite proud of that shot, actually, it’s a really nice bit of macro photography, if I do say so myself (and I do). And it stands out really rather well against the aluminium carpet strip. That, incidentally, is my pile of metal that’s waiting for me to make a run to the tip. That run is approaching with some enthusiasm now, as my entire front garden is full of woodworm eaten floorboards.

    So, continuing the good news; the hoover survived. The builders used my Aquavac/Goblin (with my permission), however they neglected to mention that they’d run it ’til the bag split and the entire filter inside gummed up. I’m hoping it’s not toast in motor terms, but it doesn’t smell of burned motor. The filter at least saved it from sucking an entire base full of crappy builder’s rubble through its motor. And in other good news, with substantial effort I managed to retrieve the box-of-filing from the pile of crap. Having cleaned the filing cabinet (it’s still somewhat oily inside), I then spent a “cheerful” hour transferring stuff from the box into the cabinet. The box contained everything that *was* in the cabinet from a looong time ago. I have become aware that I need a shredder, again. I can theoretically shred up to 2002, now; and I can dispose of lots of old utility bills. And looking at how much paperwork I’ve got, that would be really quite useful.

    Anyhow, I’ve not yet started making inroads into the evil that is the ‘to file pile’ (which is in two parts):

    It’s amazing how much paperwork I’ve accrued in 6 months. Obviously there’s buying a house, two jobs, moving, purchasing endless appliances and bits for the house…. Lexx is out, incidentally, because I did the tinyest bit of sorting while I was shifting boxes – and found Lexx 1.0,  which means I now have all the Lexx videos. I think I’m going to sell them because, quite frankly, I can’t be arsed with video anymore. I loved the first season of Lexx, but never really loved it as much after that first season; the original actress (Eva Habermann) was fantastic…and not that the second actress wasn’t good, she just wasn’t Zev.

    Anyhow, so, that’s the good news.

    There is however some bad news.

    The house has woodworm, live doing stuff woodworm. I’d kinda disregarded the woodworm upstairs on the basis of my monitoring station downstairs being, well, unaffected. See, I’d read (somewhere) in my research that the lifecycle was around 3 months – having repeated my check I now find ‘a year’ is more accurate. But anyhow, I’d assumed after 6 months of staring at my masking tape that there wasn’t any activity and I was now safe. Unfortunately, I’ve now found two dinky little round holes in it, so I shall be calling in a woodworm company forthwith to see about fumigating the house. This is, how shall we put it, rather upsetting. At least the joists upstairs were doubled, because I know some of them floorboards that came out were completely rotten, so one must presume some of the joists are infested badly too… Ach.

    And finally, on a rather smaller scale, things continue not to improve on the laptop front… it’s still doing pretty well, given that it’s 8 years old, but at some point I fear it is going to have to be replaced…