Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Having a quick break…

    Last night I laid in bed thinking, not for long ‘cos I was quite tired, but I thought. It’s very odd, being single. I don’t object to being single any more, it’s a bit hard work sometimes because most of the people I hang around with are couples, and I like being in a couple, I like having someone to share life with. But, in general I’m happier single than I’ve ever been being single.

    I thought about it, because I miss having someone to curl up with at night, but for the most part I’m quite happy plodding along on my own; I think perhaps this is something to do with the way Trey and I split up; there wasn’t that… long drawn out death of the relationship. Trey just stopped loving me, and it was over. But I wasn’t in that ‘struggling relationship’ phase, where things aren’t good, but you can’t or don’t have the guts to end it – or you just keep thinking it’ll get better.

    I think it’s left me in a better headspace, where I’m much better able to look at the world and look at myself – I can’t blame her for the end of the relationship, I can’t really be bitter. She wasn’t in love anymore, and it ended because of that. Hrm, I don’t quite know where I’m going with this. I think it’s just that I’m startlingly happy with my lot in life at the moment. I know I’m tired, and I could really have done without the Mog’s starter deciding it needs to come out and be cleaned (I might also replace the starter relay, ‘cos it’s been looking grotty as hell for a while, and it got very hot with the starter being stuck); and I am constantly tired and scared about money, but… overall, things are pretty okay. And it’s kinda nice.

    I’ve got my little routines, and my little life, and that’s just fine for me at the moment.

    Of course, talking about the future isn’t so good, the university aren’t sure what’s going to happen about the degree students qualifiying, on the basis that you can’t let them qualify without marking; so I’m not sure about jobs. And I’ve not heard anything back from Birmingham or Manchester, which is scary shit. I really do need a job. Really. And would quite like one in either of those hospitals, so if anyone wants to put in a good word for me :-)

    Incidentally, if anyone knows people in B’ham or M’chester who wouldn’t mind giving me advice on GLBT friendly areas in which to live; that’d be handy.

  • Arrogant Worms…

    So, yesterday we headed down to Dorset (Bournmouth, specifically) to watch the Arrogant Worms. Unless you’re an avid watcher of the LJ ‘what music am I listening to’ thing, know me personally and thus have had it inflicted on you, or are Canadian, then you quite possibly haven’t heard of the Arrogant Worms. They are fantastic, okay, and you should get some stuff and listen and uh, yeah. I’m a bit tired right now, incidentally (yeah, yeah, shut up) for reasons that’ll become apparent.

    So, we took the scenic route to Bournemouth, me, Chrissy and Lauren in the Mog and John, Kate and Nikki in the Honda, them leading, me following, Me, Nikki and Kate in my design of teeshirt, and with my little GPS going ‘WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING?!’. The route TomTom 5 had was somewhat different to the route that TomTom 3 believed in, not aided by us traveling through ‘The Void’ for a while (new roads built since my GPS’s map data was created…).  We stopped off in an exLittle Thief for lunch (better than a little thief) and finally rolled into Bournemouth around 1530. We mooched, making it to ‘ShakeAway’ (see Liz, I’ve tried them both now, and you’re right, it is better) – who do an absolutely stunning Strawberry Cheesecake / Oreo / Flake / Marshmallow milkshake that is just so unhealthy as to warrant an entire new foodgroup.

    (I’m getting to the gig, okay?). Then we mooched, definately mooched, down to the seashore / beach (incidentally, what’s with Bournemouth; where’s the faded glory? British beach town == Faded glory. It was all ‘nice’ and ‘clean’ and ‘pleasant’. It’s not right); where John / Lauren / Chrissy headed down the pier and Kate / Nikki / Me went seashell hunting on the beach, Nikki discovered that she’d not brought a spare film for her camera and I discovered that my rechargable batteries were flat.

    Woot.

    So a quick run to a beachfront store and we headed up to the pub next to the club where they were performing. Me with a new pack of Duracell and Nikki with a roll of film. Pubsnacks, chatting to other Arrogant Worms fans, and generally chilling out. We nipped out to check, the doors were open at the club so we headed in and got the best table ever ever ever ever. We weren’t just close to the stage, we were virtually on it. Right in the centre. Rarrrrr.

    Then they came out to do a soundcheck, complimented us on our teeshirts (or were they scared? It’s hard to say), we chatted to a nice lass from Canada (Halifax, Nova Scotia – see, I do have a memory) and I set my camera to pretend it had extremely fast film in it. We kicked back and relaxed, the room filled and Lauren and Chrissy arrived (having visited the oceanarium). Before the Arrogant Worms the were the front-people of a group called Djambo; who were excellent. Sadly they don’t make it over Brizzle way, but I shall be buying their CD.

    Anyway, I’m not going to talk about them, ‘cos though they were very good it’s late and I need to get ready for work, and I shouldn’t be writing this now, I should be doing my dissertation. Ha.

    So, then the Arrogant Worms came on. I’ve never seen them live (what with this being their first UK tour) and I have no words for how excellent they are live. I’m sure the small venue / intimate atmosphere helped, but they were wickedly funny, and the whole evening was spent laughing and doing Rippy the Alligator actions, and singing along with the Mounted Animal Nature Trail.

    It was so good I squee’d. I don’t often Squee and bounce around like an overexhuberant 6 year old, but I did. I Arr’d and clapped and cheered and… just had a truly *awesome* time. Now, I know, I suck at writing up gigs, I suck at reviewing things, that’s because all the excitement and fun just washes over me and I want to say *IT WAS FUCKING EXCELLENT*. And that’s all I have to say, generally.

    So I got their new CD (Beige) (I was wearing Beige, specially); I got the Christmas Turkey album too; got beige signed, took (blurry, very red tinted) photos of the gig and the band (discovered what my camera thinks of normal Alkaline batteries (not a lot; the ones that ended up working through the whole night, apart from brief breaks were the NiMH ones which said they were flat)), generally had an awesome time and then came out to find my car wouldn’t start. Half an hour later the AA came, bashed the startermotor (which’d stuck, which is what I thought, but I’d not considered bashing it) and we headed home – using Lauren navigation as for about 70% of the route my GPS was going ‘all the satellites are in a line. I cannot calculate my position. Damn them’.

    All in all I had an *excellent* evening….

  • Progress

    So, I’m most of the way through section 2 of chapter 3 (“Where prejudicial experiences have occured, how do they affect the individual patient”) – although it’s one that I could write lots more on, actually. But I’ve written enough, I’ll probably tack on a summary paragraph for that section and then set to on re-reading the papers (the n’th time) to answer the final question  (“What improvements are suggested by the literature to enhance nurses abilities to appropriately support and care for patients”).

    In other news I picked up some dubiously cheap DVD-R’s yesterday, which means that I can now send disks to Rachel in ‘merkia, bringing the actual sending of her letter a step closer, and I spent an age attempting to beat a creative idea out of my head which is something to send to Trey. I didn’t succeed. My uni flatmates’ll remember the ‘after midnight rule’ – essentially: Don’t suggest anything to Kate after midnight, because if it’s a creative / bizzare thing, it’ll happen. Unfortunately, the idea hit me as I went to bed… at 23:53, and by the time midnight rolled round it was firmly embedded in my brain. Hell, I nearly had to get up there and then to do it. Feh. Anyway, it’ll give me something to do when I need a break…

    Damn my stress == creative streak.

    I also, last night, had a rocking chat with a friend who’s in the middle of writing; and she actually found a use for my biochemistry ‘knowledge’; it’s probably a bit out of date, but close enough for the story. I’m dead pleased, it felt really good to be able to provide some information – however rough and ready it’d be. I’m glad I kept one of my Biochem books now (the rest have been freecycled).

    In addition to writing section 3.2, I also threw together the Arrogant Worms Teeshirt Nikki and I’d planned to make; because my transfers are 10 years old and ‘knackered’ I didn’t want to waste a good teeshirt, but one of my tops recently developed a small stain (I’ve no idea what from) which nothing would remove. It’s conveniently covered by the letter ‘A’ in “Britain’s”:

    And, as I was feeling productive I also installed TomTom 3 onto the iPaq again – and installed the map onto my 64 Meg flash card; of course what I found out (and hadn’t previously realised) was that a 64Meg flashcard, like everything else in computing, is missold. It’s not 64 Meg at all. 62 exciting meg of space is yours for the price of 64, which means that the 64 Meg map won’t fit on the card *sigh*. So I’ve got the 32 Meg map though, which is better’n last time when I had the 16 Meg teeny-map. I shall however purchase a ‘huge-ass’ CF card at some point, thus enabling music and map storage. I’m glad that I went for the single slot expansion in the end, because it’s fracking huge. It’s like a brick of doom. Never mind – it’s also got good battery life now.

    Finally I watched Dr Who; which rocked my little world. It, as Chrissy said, felt like a real Dr Who epsiode, and Maureen Lipman is freaky when she’s scary. The BBC are doing evil things to my childhood memories, first the Testcard in Life on Mars, now Maureen Lipman being evil. It’s not right.

    So that was my yesterday, how was yours?

  • Surrounded by the infinite beauty of the lakes…

    I take a picture of… this:

  • Overstretched (and underpaid)

    Gah.

    So I’ve got:

    My dissertation
    Trying to get a job
    Trying to find a house for myself
    Trying to find a house for my mum
    Maintaining the car and bike myself
    Full time work
    Pride
    I’m starting to feel a bit overstretched. When my mum rings and says “when will you be free to take me back up to look at more houses?” – I know she needs to move, and I really do want to help, but I’m still feeling the 19 hours of driving. I’m tired, and what she’s asking for is, essentially, three days of my time. And at the moment I can’t see when I can give three days. But she can’t navigate for toffee and even I struggled the first time around Kendal – all one way and whatever, and houses out in the middle of no-where which she’ll have no problem with once she knows where they are; but which we’ll have to find.
    I’m just tired, I know it’ll look better in a bit, specifically the bit when I’ve got more of my dissertation finished and when I’m less tired. But *sigh*. Right at this instant it’s a bit much.

  • Freecycling

    I’ve just freecycled a moderately vast quantity of stuff (can something be moderately vast?). Shockingly it’s nearly all gone too; only the dead CD-Player, tents some PII Processors and the dead mobile phone languishing unloved.

    Even the 21″ TV set of crapitude has (or at least should) head off on Monday. It’s not helped with working though. And getting rid of stuff is shockingly addictive. I started to think ‘what else can I freecycle’?! There is, I suspect, plenty more to go. I was debating losing the Biochemsitry books, really, since I’ve no interest in the subject anymore and I’ve not looked at them forever. I’d keep Recombinant DNA and ‘The World of the Cell’, but the slightly out of date Molecular Cell Biology and Biochemistry (Stryer) and Review of Medical Physiology could probably all go. Really. Meh. I should work now.

  • I know, it’s becoming my mantra

    I’m knackered. See. Didja guess.

    On Tuesday, despite being still fairly ill I headed to Tesco and bought my mum a new TV. The 21″ Philips from the mid 80s having got ‘a bit tired’. It weighed 44.1 kg. It went on the roofrack with some help from Tesco.

    I got home, I unloaded it (with some difficulty) and put it in the house. The next morning, I prepared to go to the lakedistrict, househunting, with my mum. In the end I managed to coax it onto the roofrack, realised I didn’t have anything sensible to waterproof it with, glanced at the clearish blue sky and headed out. Torrential rain. 2 hours of it as I crept up the motorway at 50mph.

    Having got there, I unloaded the now sodden box and wheeled it into my mum’s house. The TV, incidentally, was dry :-)

    I discovered it was an inch deeper than my mum’s old set, and wouldn’t fit on the shelf. The shelf was held on by 2 screws, so I decided I’d sort it when I got back (with my mum) from the Lake District. We piled into my mum’s Skoda (not a light traveller she); and I then drove 6 hours to Kendal. Having found the hostel we unloaded, munched on sarnies and wandered round Kendal looking at estate agent windows.

    We headed into town the next morning and bought a Cumbria Street Atlas (very helpful) and arranged two more viewings (on top of the two that she’d already organised). From 9:45 to 12:30 I drove around and we looked at 3 houses… and she fell in love with a gorgeous 1740’s house with a chunk of an orchard and no hope whatsoever of her offer being accepted, because she’s not sold her own house yet.

    *sigh*

    She did look so happy though; I could see her mind doing the ‘I could do X and Y’ thing. Gah.

    Anyway, so, we then drove home. 7 hours… and I set to on the shelf. Two screws held it in. 2 screws which whatever I did would not come undone. Eventually I beat them to death and wiggled and managed to get them out. Then strengthened the shelf, then put in 4 screws to hold it to the supports on the wall. It’s still only *exactly* the minimum depth it could be… I think it took 2 hours. Ate dinner. Loaded up car with 2 PCs, Printer, old tv set, binder, books. Drove home (hour). Unloaded car. Freecycled most of it.

    Went to bed. Woke up. Freecycled last few bits.

    Am now exhausted. 19 hours driving I’ve done in the past 3 days. I’ve lifted 44.1kg repeatedly (that’s heavy, incidentally). I’ve moved a 21″ TV and a 17″ CRT monitor in and out of the back seat of a minor. I really *am* entitled to be tired.

    Oh, and I’ve still got a cold. :-P

  • Statements we have made which are illconceived and foolish…

    … number 20 in a series of ∞

    “Yes mum, I’ll sort you out with a widescreen telly; I’ll bring it down next time I’m down”

    I’ve managed to get the 28″ behemoth into the house, but I can just and barely lift it and am really unsure as to how to go about getting it into / onto the mog tomorrow to take it down there. Flibble.

  • Notes on me

    So, I know when I’m still ill; despite feeling better (not well still, but better) I have the concentration span of a flea (or a fela, if I’m following my typos and vaguely insulting a 50% of the population). This is not abnormal for me; in general I have a very limited concentration span these days, and flit like some moth between shiny things that entertain me.

    However, when it comes to the crunch I can put my mind to it and work. Unless I’m remotely unwell, in which case I can’t. I find myself struggling to retain even a vague semblance of organised thought; each sentance ending halfway through; each thought interupted by another. It’s really quite frustrating. It’s probably why I’ve got on well with Azumanga Daioh and The Fast Show. None of them require great concentration, and both of them leap about like frogs on ecstasy.

    Aye, so despite prodding at my Dissertation for the last few hours, I’ve done it with the enthusiasm with which one might go about unblocking a drain; and with a complete inability to formulate decent meaningful sentances, or hold in my head for more than a few seconds at a time which papers have what features.

    So.

    I have however, wrapped my little Nephew’s birthday present, which I shall send tomorrow (having double checked, due to my paranoia, that he is 3 and that his name is spelt with a k); I’ve also found out where the houses my mum wants to look at are. I’ve also made vague and hopeful plans to go to Tesco in a bit and see if they’ve got a TV for my mum. I’ve e-mailed uni to say “I was off sick, sorry”. And spent an inordinate amount of time waiting for people to update LJ or the MMOC website. Um. So. Yes. Oh, I’ve failed to go to B&Q and get new blades for the mower, which is bad, because our back garden now looks like a field (if Trey had her horse, it’d be happy there, I promise). Um, I think that’s it. Oh, and I applied for two jobs in Manchester. So go me? Yes, go me.

  • Unreasonably trabanty

    1968 I tell you. 1968.

    Look, look, it’s calling to me from Germany…Â