Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • The crackling is the static in my life

    Some days you just think ‘oh for goodness sake’, don’t you? I got up this morning, struggled through my morning routine a bit quicker’n normal so as I could pull on my bike gear. Hopped on Cherry and headed out, filled her up with petrol and got to work. Work, fine (Foot still hurting).

    Headed home, and y’know what? Everything was fine…but you know how this story ends. Last set of lights before my house, I filter round the cars, shoot through the lights as they change to green and as I’m riding, I think ‘hrm, the back end is getting awfully squirrelly, I wonder if I’ve hit some oil’. Over the next couple of seconds it gets worse, so I pull over and look round and lo, I have a puncture. Glass? Nail? Who knows, it’s nearly flat. Tubed tyres do not maintain their state well when they have a hole. I did *try* and gently ride on, but it was somewhat like having a sumo wrestler leaping about on the pillion seat as I attempted to make forward progress.

    Admitting all forms of defeat I pushed my sad little cherry red bike back to the house. It was not fun. My bike remains ‘heavy’ – especially with a flat. However, it was good that I rode the bike to work. Why?

    Well, obviously the flat tyre puts the bike out of action until at least the next early, so I looked at the ‘new noise’ situation on the moglet.

    The starter motor, the one that had inconveniently cracked the cast metalwork? Well it’d managed to work loose, so it was more sort of decoratively hanging than actually attached. I’m shocked that it worked, and shocked that it didn’t fall off. Very lucky is what I am.

    I’m a bit nervy now though, the moglet is obviously not a happy creature if she’s shaking ancilleries loose, and the bike is out of action for another couple of days. I may, if I’m feeling enthusiastic and it’s dry, attempt to get the wheel off tomorrow, then I can run it to a tyre place. I am however in another ‘argh’ type situation – the tyre’s not worn out – it’s probably got a good few hundred miles in it… ‘cept… well, if I’m paying for someone to remove the tyre and put a new inner tube in… well, aren’t we into the arena of ‘might as well replace the nearly worn out tyre’. Hrm. I guess I’ll see – if they’ve got something nice and mid-range in stock then it’s probably replacement time, otherwise we’ll go with the tube.

    My life is just too exciting for you all I expect…

  • The problem with lates

    Late shifts are not quite so hard, in that you don’t have to wash all the patients. They tend to go slower, as a rule, and there’s a bit of an opportunity to get caught up with all sorts of bits and pieces – you can usually get a chance to look at the notes (so long as you’re not short staffed). Apart from the weird way they tend to run – not much to do (catchy up things) and then suddenly a rush on at the end (I must remember to write notes on the fly, rather than all at the end, I have a terrible habit of doing that). No, the problem is a different one.

    It’s that at home, before a late, you just can’t get that much done. I mean, I have been known to work my tail off in the morning when I’ve been really in a hurry – but basically if you have a task that needs to be done that involves, say, going to the post office – well that means that your whole morning has to be shifted to take account of it (especially ‘cos I can’t walk there at the moment – my foot is still killing me for reasons which have yet to be explained). So, all I’ve done this morning is shower, a little teensy bit of finding (managed to find my BNF; I’d link so people who are not medical can see what a BNF is, but my BTHomeHub’s lost it’s DNS again. And it’s wireless is playing up. (I am still waiting for the new one to arrive. If it’s not appeared by thursday I’ll be shouting at BT, because this is ridiculous). Anyway, a BNF is the National Drugs Formulary – it lists all the drugs we prescribe in the UK, what they do, what their side effects and contraindications are, and because I’m way out of practice on drug rounds I’ll be reading bits and bobs over the next few days to get myself back up to speed for the drug round assessment. Sadly my BNF is hideously out of date and I’m too cheap to buy a new one. Wards each have their own, but it should do for groups of drugs, just some new ones won’t be in there), and I’ve rung my builder to see if I can get a quote – only he’s not about, so I’ve left a message, oh, and some laundry (this is a hideous run-on-paragraph/sentance, but I can’t be bothered to fix it having written it).

    Yeah, so, I feel like my morning’s mostly consisted of not doing much. I sometimes wonder if my definition of ‘not much’ is different to other people’s. I’ve been debating losing a few more books, actually. And one day this week I need to get sorted and get the books that are going off to charity. I’m going to stick a few on bookcrossing which could be interesting. I just need to decide where to leave them, and which ones to give away.

    I’m thinking though,I’m going up to Norwich in 2 weeks time and there’ll be some opportunities either on the way up, or on the way back to leave a few books lurking. And maybe I can drop one off (or get my mum to do so) when she’s flying out on her plane. Let’s get these books out and off and running.

    Anyway. I should make food so as I have something to take with me to work, and then get changed and head off. Hopefully my foot won’t hurt too much today, but I seriously can’t afford any more time off sick. I don’t even know *why* it’s hurting for so long, it normally disappears after an hour or two. Meh.

  • Another quick house update

    Yeah, no pics today… I finally made some more progress on the house; much of today was spent doing the hunt for where I hid things before the party. Tools and so on are all lurking randomly around the house – and finding them again has taken a while, and suprisingly I’ve not ended up ranting about it.

    Mostly I think because the early part of the afternoon was spent with the sparkly hazy stars around my vision from serious pain from my left foot. I’ve done whatever I’ve done to it before, and normally it goes away again just as quickly as it appeared. But the whole day today has been a bit sore – it just started hurting yesterday and I probably should have rested it a bit more – but, uh, didn’t.

    Anyway, the stairs are now painted – top to bottom, I’m quite pleased really. It mostly needs another coat (what with this being the first colour coat), which I’m not hugely looking forward to doing – mostly because it took quite a long time and I was really quite tired after doing it. On the plus side it looks like the colour combination works well, and the lamp is gorgeous up on the wall. For once the Lath/plaster worked well for me – because I didn’t have to try and attach the lamp to plasterboard; I just went for screwing it into the lath. Which I’m sure is dubious, but I suspect works better’n trying to use rawl-plugs on lath/plaster.
    I also fed the wire up into the loft – I need to get some neat sort of wire clips to hold it to the wall, and a junction box to go in the roofspace, and some lighting-circuit-rated-cable.

    Incidentally, my foot still hurts.

    Yeah, there was a brief moment of panic – while I was trying to work out where the internal bizzaroid wall went, and thinking that I may have put my wiring through into the neighbour’s roofspace, but it just proved my 3D thinking was lacking. So anyway, the light’s there and ready for the picture…
    …the picture that’s going to go on that end wall – It’s an abandoned places print and I think it’ll look just gorgeous there. I don’t want to over do it on artwork on the stairs, but there’s a few prints I want to put up in there. We’ll see. I also want to put up the ones in the lounge…

    So, in other exciting news I’ve been trying to catch up on paperwork, oh and my Dyson’s stopped sucking. Or started sucking. Depending on how you’re using the term. At any rate, I need to find my torx-drivers, which I assume are at my mum’s so I can get the bloody thing apart and find out why it’s no longer sucking up dirt. It’d not be quite such a problem, but I’ve still not found hoover bags for the Goblin, and I’m not sure how long the tape that’s holding that hoover bag together is going to last ;-/

    One day I’ll stop bodging things…. but not today, eh.

  • Pointless rambly thinking aloud.

    So, those of you who know me, know I went out on Friday night to meet someone I’d met on the internet. I had an excellent time and spent most of Saturday irritating my work colleagues by being revoltingly cheerful – despite us being incredibly short staffed (someone’d forgotten to book shortfalls, so we only had 6 (instead of 8) staff). Next time I go out and intend to come back late I’m going to take a train timetable with me, so that I have a better idea what time the trains run ‘cos it’s really quite chilly in Paddington at 2 in the morning. Although I’ve discovered that the lights around the side of Paddington are really quite warm, if not ‘outright hot’, so that was quite handy…

    So, on to the rambly thinking around. I really don’t know what to do about Rebecca. I’ve had one quote for the engine which is about 500 quid. A bit over, actually, if I get everything done. And that doesn’t include getting a new head – although I should be able to get one from a scrappy, or off e-bay for not too much. But it’s more the degree of urgency. The rocker gasket has now failed (I had to switch rocker covers for some reason when I serviced the car (there was a good reason)) and tried to get away without changing the gasket (‘cos I didn’t have a spare, okay!). I’ve not got away with it – and she’s peeing oil out like it’s going out of fashion.

    At any rate, it’s another issue – one that’s quick to fix, but needs me to go and source a gasket – and given that she’s not really starting well, and vibrating like hell I feel like I should let her get off the road as quick as possible. But at the moment I don’t really know what to do about it.

    I’ve got Howard – friend of a friend – being asked if he’s got something in the 200 quid range (i.e. sheddy but MOTable) that’ll keep me able to get to work. The problem is I really hate driving modern cars, really do, I just get bored and meh about them. And financially, they’re more likely to be more of a drain. I’m not good with front wheel drive vehicles – rear wheel drive is just so much simpler – so if it’s fwd I probably won’t be able to look after it myself. But I’m starting to stress, faintly, about the whole ‘will it be sorted before Rebecca’s engine packs up’. That and, well, I’m slightly concerned about what damage the vibeyness of the engine might be doing to my car – or the rest of it’s transmission. Rebecca’s gearbox, apart from an occasional very excessive whine on first appears to be pretty good (very, actually); and I’ve got no other real problems with her transmission – so running with an engine which feels like it’s trying to shake itself to pieces isn’t going to be doing a great deal of good to all of that.

    I guess the ‘sensible’ solution is to ride the bike when it’s warm and dry enough and keep Rebecca running only as long as I have to. But it’s been fracking cold, and frequently wet recently. That and… well… the bike really needs sorting too. Meh. It’s all a bit, well, shat really. This they don’t mention in the student brochures – 3 years of bodging everything on everything I own has started to come to a head…

    Anyway. Didn’t really help, no solution is in sight… I’ll just have to see if Howard gets back to me with something simple and look-afterable that I can nab. Depressingly it’ll be the most I’ve paid for a car.

  • Wonderfalls

    So, I started watching Wonderfalls again. I could read, but at the moment, with the whole verticality thing I find that I don’t really enjoy reading. I’m still aiming to head out tonight – on the basis that I can sit down most of the evening. Not too much dancing for the Kate Creature.
    Anyway, it’s weird watching Wonderfalls having been there. Niagra I mean. And indeed to Toronto, because some stuff appears to rather randomly – and very identifiably – be shot in Toronto. What’s weirder is that despite being set in America, the only way to get the perspective on the falls from which Wonderfalls is shot is to be stood firmly on Canadian soil – I actually find myself trying to see places I’ve been.

    It’s odd, anyhow. It’s still an entertainingly good series, and it’s keeping me distracted from the fact that the day is marching on without me doing anything useful. I was going to paint, but still, the whole ‘vertical’ thing remains a bit of a problem – and so spending ages stood on the stairs seems to me like a recipe for me falling flat on my ass.

    Anyway. That’s me.

  • Pics (and not just house ones!)

    So, I should be asleep. I will be asleep in a few minutes. First up – when I said it rains in my bathroom I wasn’t kidding…

    And – due to flat batteries, *really* flat batteries I missed taking pictures of the prettyness that was snow, but I did just take some slightly odd nightshots of the snowman. I hate being easily distracted sometimes.

  • It’s unpleasantly like being drunk

    I think we can say that I definately do have a mild mid-ear infection. My balance is not all it could be. Verticallity has been obtained and with care, I made it round tesco. I think plans for tomorrow may need to include ‘handling Kate with care’.

    It’s snowed. Sadly it’s now raining, but I did briefly enjoy the 2″ of snow that we got. My little mog demonstrated that she, despite her ailing engine, can still quite cut it through snow. I knew that the bizzaroid not-quite Town and Country’s had a purpose, and actually, they were really good on the semi-frozen roads this morning. And whilst others slid about we pootled in the direction we desired (i.e. tesco). I now also have food. This is good.

    I finally attempted mould reduction in the bathroom. To give you an idea how damp it is in there, it rains. It actually rains if you have a bath – there’s permanently a pool of drops on the ceiling and anything that tips it marginally over that balance makes it rain in there. Which is a bit, well, unpleasant. Especially because the ceiling’s got big gobs of black mould on it.

    I’m sure they weren’t there when I arrived. But having checked the grout, the white on the walls around the window – it’s all heavily mouldy. I sprayed it with gallons of evil nasty chemicals, scrubbed it and washed it with mains-pressure water through the shower tap. It’s cleaner, but not ‘clean’. I really, really can’t wait to be ripping that bathroom out – terrifiying electrics, crap shower and all. I can’t wait for it to be gone.

    I slept funny last night – probably because it was pretty nippy – and my neck now has a krick in it. I’ve smeared deep heat on it (with no impact whatsoever), so now I think it might be time for ibrufen gel :-)

  • The problem with promises…

    I promised my GP I would spend my time off relaxing and healing. I’m unfortunately at that frustrating level of ill where – whilst I’m aware that I’m not well, and standing up for long periods definately leads to woozyness in the head department; I’m also terribly, terribly bored.

    I’ve got plenty of books I could be reading, but there is an insistant desire to be *doing* something after days and days of lying around.

    However, I’m being good, mostly though that’s ‘cos my head feels like it’s attached to my body by wobbly string. The new remote arrived – cheap and cheerful as it is, I wasn’t expecting it to be quite such a behemouth. Still, when I’ve got 4 charged batteries then hopefully I can get it all set up. I fear it’s battery usuage too. I’m quite looking forward to being able to watch all my DVDs though.

    In other news, I’m debating another minor – if I’m offered it at a price I can afford. Rebecca’s engine really sounded attrocious yesterday, I’m not certain how long it’ll last – so a cheap second minor to run me round while I get Rebecca properly sorted would be handy. The one I’m considering though, has somewhat of a reputation, so, we’ll see. It’s not been a bringer of great luck.

    In other news I finally worked out how to get coverflow up on the Windows machine’s iTunes. Okay, it’s obvious – but if you don’t *know* it’s there. What’m I meant to do, click on random buttons? *sighs*. I love macs, I love my mac, but sometimes *get a clue guys*. It’s not, incidentally in the help file anywhere.

    Does anyone know (before I spend hours hunting) of any utilities that allow you to add more art for CDs it doesn’t recognise. I don’t expect it to know about AM / Underground or AM / This is me dancing. Or indeed quite a lot of my more eclectic music, but I’m sure I can dig out covers (or at worst, photograph the originals (yeah, yeah, I’ll get a scanner again one day)). I can’t see an *obvious* way to do this, and I’d rather not do each and every one manually. The original coverflow pulled covers from various sites, but the one embedded in iTunes can only use the iTunes store, which is a bit pants. That and the embedded one won’t go full screen. Come on Apple! Give me fullscreen album art lovin’!

    What else? Hrm, dunno. I’m meeting someone on Friday – and as is normal for meeting someone new for the first time my body has responded – it’s produced a spot the size of frickin’ Mars on my bloody nose. Am I not old enough now to not get spots? Seriously.

    *sighs*

    I guess that’s enough of an update for y’all.

    Oh, but before I disappear, falling into the ‘humour’ catagory, just like last year – severe weather warnings…

    Snapshot of the BBC website's severe weather article

    Oh my goodness no. Not 2 entire inches? Good lord. What will I do. I best break out the snow plough, the snow machines and start preparing to shovel my drive ;-)

  • Well, a British Concorde may not fly…

    But stuff BA. They vandalised planes that don’t belong to them (incidentally – don’t fly BA, anyone…). Well, *technically* they do, but when you buy something for a quid from the British people? That the British people paid for? We kinda expect you to *LOOK AFTER IT*….

    Anyway, the French, apparently, know how to look after the old girl properly. Which gives me some hope that I’ll see another one of these beautiful birds flying again one day.

    In other news, throat – pain much reduced. Nausea – much reduced. Temperature – much reduced, periodically normal. Dizzyness – still very very present. GP tomorrow at 11.

  • I just got asked…

    …if my mum was in to take delivery of the shopping… How old do I look? 12?

    I’m not sure whether I’m flattered or insulted!