Category: General

Seriously now, today sucked.

Which is a shame, because it started so well. I relaxed, watched the episode of Dr Who I’d missed while muching on some nice cereal. I had a moderately pleasant shower, at least by my limited standards, flew into town to get my mom’s card, bought petrol, found the ideal card, got home, ate lunch, got changed and headed out into the sunshine. I flew down the motorway, ’twas like the Viva had wings.

Seriously, he flew.

And then, 2/3rds of a mile from my junction I lost power. The engine didn’t *die*, not outright. Just wouldn’t rev. I dashed indicator lights blazing for the hard shoulder. I assumed that this was another instance of ‘I’ve got very hot and I’m now unhappy’. I sat. We retried. After a while we’d got to ‘idle’ but as soon as I put my foot on the accelerator the engine died.

Eventually I had to join the RAC – after admitting defeat. An hour and 15 minutes later they turned up (oh, I’m so impressed *sigh*); on the plus side the guy who turned up used to work for a Vauxhall Dealer. Indeed, he used to service Vivas, and so got right down to stripping the carb there and then at the side of the road.

And there it was, inside the carb. The main jet – that which controls petrol flow to the engine, it was sat – having unscrewed itself – inside the body of the carb. He put it back, and off I went. I am impressed. I’d’ve been altogether more impressed if he’d’ve remembered to put the choke-cable-retaining-clip back on; because, well, I had to do that. When I left work. And the car wouldn’t run right. Fortunately it was still sat on top of the battery (christ knows how, I guess I have some luck). It’s still not quite running right, I suspect I’ve not got the cable in quite the right place, but I was clamping it using my neuro-obs-torch gripped twixt my teeth, in the dark.

*sighs*

It cost me 100 quid though. That’s 500. 500 quid would nearly have reconditioned the engine on Rebecca. I keep having to remind myself that there’s other jobs in that engine bay that need doing, but it’s hard. Hard not to think that I made a stupid, wrong decision buying Brick. Though he’s actually worked out pretty well, and tolerated  the switch from barely used to daily driver with only moderate trauma.

Anyway, that got me down, but the death of another patient at work, that got me down more. Her husband was clearly very devoted, and they were obviously still very much in love. I know that you have to risk your heart if you’re going to get to experience all that there is in this life. But it was heart-rending watching him come in; too late to be with her when she died.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember the ones we save.

i’ve also started to feel a little down, there’ve not been any new exciting emergency jobs on nhs-jobs, and I got nothing, not even an interview from any of my applications. I don’t entirely know what to do about it, A&E is always oversubscribed, but I feel my future plans slipping. I always hated having plans, because I never was any good at making them work, and it was always so stressful when they didn’t. And now I remember why.

But I want to work in the ED, it’s really something that makes my day brighter, I love it. I love it with all my heart. And whilst I enjoy care of the older person – or at least the ward I work on with it’s generally cheery staff and fantastic team – it’s not what I want to do with my life.

James jordax now has a LiveJournal… Ra.

Before we start. Work yesterday meant that I didn’t see Dr Who. If *anyone* tells me *anything* about the second episode of Dr Who I may be forced to kill them. Kill them with pointy sticks of spoilering. Right? All clear? Good. I am attempting to use my usual nefarious means to obtain it, but I’ve not got it yet, so…

I have however watched Tokko. And just as promised it does appear to be what Torchwood could have been. Of course, I never did watch that much of Torchwood, the stupid set for their lair (I mean, office) bugged me loads and their use of the concept that ‘fuck’ and lots of sex makes an adult show in the first episode – well, it looked okay, but it failed to grab me – and what with my shifts not aligning with the BBC’s scheduling – that was kinda the end of it for me. I may see if I can borrow a copy and maybe watch it again, see if it really is as uninspired as I felt by it in the end. Tokko however had me scrabbling for the next episode, attempting to cram in all I could in the hours around work.

Being unsure as to whether it was intended to be a multi-series concept I was a bit worried that they were going to pounce on an ending like so many shows seem to; taking all that careful build up and throwing it away in a ties-everything-up-very-neatly-in-three-scenes ending, but they didn’t. So, uh, I’m happy, ‘cept that now I have to wait for Season 2 to appear.

So, Easter Sunday and I’m off. Handy, because I’m not off for another 2 weeks, well, I am, but I’ve managed to cunningly arrange a social life. A complete and busy one which means that even on some days when I’m working I’m actually going to be going other places (generally moderately far away places) after work.

The (very much an) upside of this is I get to see *lots* of Kathryn this month, which I’m dead pleased about, I also get to see friends I’ve not seen for a long time. But expect me to be knackered. Lots of the knackered. Anyhow, so I’ve got *today* and that’s really my day off. I need to clean, that much is very clear looking at the scattering of bits of crap on my lounge floor. Clean and indeed hoover. I need to do the washing up (as per usual), clean the fireplace, and the bathroom could do with a bit of a clean too. I need to wrap prezzies, which is a bit hard, ‘cos I still haven’t found *any* of the 3 or so rolls of sellotape I’m fairly certain are lurking in the house.

Which is annoying, ‘cos it means that yet again things’ll probably be wrapped using the rather more expensive medical tape I tend to also have kicking around. Strangely though, it’s not very good at sticking paper ;-)

I did however, despite it being Easter Sunday, manage to get to the supermarket. Possibly unfortunately, it was a Polish supermarket which whilst it had vegetables (although not the best quality ones) didn’t have any salad. Which was slightly annoying, or at least confusing. But I should have enough food to last out the week. Really though, the annoying thing was not noticing a much better little local supermarket directly opposite where I parked (I’d walked from there to the Polish one), which did appear to have salady stuff, but by then I’d bought more than enough to make up for absence of salad. Fooey. Bloody bank holidays :-)

Anyway, I suppose I should get on, although I’m trying to resist the urge to go and start work on the spare room. Part of me wants to get it done, and part of me knows that my arms hurt like hell from moving my mum’s TV stand and I really should rest them and let the muscles recover.

…to quote Placebo.

Although, actually, of the above only Bitch came into the repertoire of names I got called today. Other names on the list were fucker, cunt, bastard, witch and, oh yes, evil. We currently have a confused patient who’s made mode of speech is to swear, almost continuously. He also attempts to get out of bed, a process which I must admit I do my best to prevent proceeding. That lead to him swiping at me with clenched fists, which to be fair is probably an understandable reaction. Fortunately I was quick today. Actually I tried to get him a special bed. You can get beds which lower to pretty much floor level; thus meaning that people who are prone to hurling themselves on the floor due to an inability to walk, they – well – don’t fall very far. Unfortunately the trust only owns one, and it’s broken. Which put a crimp in my plan, really.
But it’s all good, because the relatives of the patient in the next bay, well, they were nice to me yesterday, saying how they didn’t really realise what nurses actually had to work through – I guess they still think of nurses as mopping fevered brows, which is kinda true – as long as the fevered brow is attached to someone who’s prone to taking the odd swipe at you and calling you unpleasant names… But anyway, today I got the best compliment ever – they said it was nice to have “a proper nurse who cares about her patients”; and lots of other remarks about how I always seem to have time for all my patients. And how I’m very patient with the chap who’s hurling abuse at me all the time.

And that made me feel pretty good. Then I got home and spoke to Kathryn and that made me feel damn near fantastic :-)

The other comment that popped through my head was about music. I appear to now have a more-or-less-working nipod, although I have to say it’s ability to move through the file system appears to be limited by extreme slowness. Anyhow, because I’ve slightly randomly selected albums based on what I think I might want to listen to in the car – and what I’ve already got in the car on CD – I’ve ended up listening to stuff I’d not heard for ages – which had me singing Terrorist Angel today as I flew down the motorway (Sultans of Ping F.C.) (I also got to sing about Zombie Teenage Punks from the planet Sexy Love). Anyway, it’s been weird to re-hear music that I’ve not heard for a long time (Suede, for example) and to relisten to stuff that I’ve not played. So yeah. Nipod, definitely a good choice there.

Uh, Alanis, you rock.

XKCD, you are inside my brain…

And everyone wish Kathryn a happy birthday, because it’s her birthday :-)

So, I did my shift today, and despite it being a completely exhausting day (oh look, short of staff again) I headed into London for a variety of odds and sods.

I managed to pick up a Jeanette Winterson book – (Kathryn – have you read  The PowerBook?) – I ended up buying this mostly because the nice bloke at Gay’s the Word kept the store open for me so I could look around (I had been planning to get Jeanette Winterson at the library, but there I was feeling guilty). Despite it being after closing time. This was largely because it took me ages to find a space – and in the end involved me ignoring a permit-zone sign (It’s Good Friday ffs!) (and spending the day paranoid about a parking ticket).

Anyway, so then in the conversations with James on IM it became apparent that CCK – who I was intending to visit, they’re closed because it’s a bank holiday. But I made it in my hunt to get prezzie-components, which is goodness.

Finally me and Brick headed to Ikea – with me thinking – how bad can the north circular be? Apart from a brief hiatus – I think that the carb isn’t set up right – the idle is too low and I suspect it’s running just a teensy bit lean (basically, it needs the choke out to not stall, and to restart, when really hot). Thanks to the bank holiday the traffic wasn’t too bad, and impressively I pulled into Ikea with an entire 10 minutes to spare. For the first time in my life, Ikea was sprinted through – grabbing only the picture frame I’ve been after (well, actually, a rather more expensive one because it turns out they don’t do RAM in the size I wanted).

The journey back was unremarkable, apart from Brick demonstrating that he has a witty humourous sense of timing. The light switch, which has been a bit ‘crunchy’ well, it decided that it would need a lot of wiggling to work at all. So headlamps were – well – a bit iffy tonight. Of course, they did *actually* work while the police were around, but the junction prior to encountering the police they decided to flicker out requiring a wiggle of the switch. I’m waiting on a new switch….

The only bad thing about today was that I didn’t drink nearly enough, or indeed eat anything much. The cold that appeared is on it’s way out – quite quickly really – but the cough which follows seems a little more persistent. I’ve got home and the not-drinking’s left be a bit of a headache. Still, I got the furniture for my mum, prezzies that I wanted and a book that I really had no excuse for buying :-)

So, I freely admit to being a Mac junkie these days. But; despite that, there’s still a part of me that wants to love Linux.

And so I bring forth to share with you all this: Get a Mac Spoof and Get a Mac spoof 2.

And in the kind of news that actually disturbs; I had a good day today; nobody died…

This was going to be a bit of a review of the nipod, but at the moment it’s a bit of a damning indictment of the poor thing. I don’t know if it’s a dodgy cable, or a dodgy nipod, but it’s not working.

Well, that’s not strictly true. It *is* working, however it isn’t connecting to the PC. Annoyingly it’s now got 4 gigs of music on it, more or less, which – if it goes back – I won’t be able to delete first.

I’m hoping bloke from e-bay will send me a reply today. Currently my opinion of it is shaped around the fact that it’s phenominally slow at dealing with a directory simply filled with the equivalent of 4 gigs in folders of albums. I can’t *actually* use the menu to select an album at the moment, because it flips out having listed them. So I can only listen to the tracks in order. Which is annoying. I also, because I was having a fiddle, disconnected it, and wandered about with it before going through and making the folder names all make sense (so some are album names, and some are artist names).

Its power on time is a bit long too, but, well, until I’ve actually got a 100% working one I’m a little unwilling to go any further on the whole, what’s it like. It looks a lot like an ipod though, which is fun :-)

How come you never visit? I mean, all you’ve got to do is swim the atlantic…

Appologies for the spamming today, but I’m at home and doing some odds and sods, and keep proding the computer. I’m gonna go bath and watch BSG in a bit though, so you should be safe for a while.