Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • I’m sorry officer…

    …but the sun was shining.

    It was a gorgeous day as I stepped back into Rebecca after having a good WBLD experience. No, really. The absence of our facilitator made the group discussion flow – the other group’s facilitator actually facilitates and our discussion when the two groups got together was… well… useful.

    So I came out of the session in a good mood, slapped the headphones in my ears and stuck on Moby / Punkawallahs / Ladytron / Madonna – and shoop-shoop-dancie-dancied my way back to the car; chucked my coat onto the back seat, connected the CD player to the Radio Cassette… started the 1275 engine (desparately in need of a service) and pulled out into traffic.

    Only. There wasn’t any traffic. It was quiet. And sunny. And I had dancy music, a willing engine and a Morris Minor on a curvy A-road that I know too well.

    I just kept her on the boil the whole way back, the industrial roar of the ital engine, the whistle of the air intake, and the gentle flutter of me throwing money out of the window… oh, no, that’s just the effect it had on my fuel consumption.

    It’s ages since I’ve been out for a drive like that; all *Graaaarrrrrr*snick*Grraraaaarrrrrrrrr*snick*Grrrrraaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr*snick*grrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh*.

    Anyway.

    Mmm. It was so good. So fun. It was the roads she was built for.

    So as a special gift for her I went to Ashley Autoparts and got all sorts of service bits, a new interior bulb (although I looked and am about 90% certain it’s a connection problem rather than a bulb problem…), some equally yummy fresh oil and some delightful new brake pads. And then I headed on to the junk shop that’s shutting – and picked up my second non-working video camera. More frustrating because it’s a fairly good one – and SVHS-C camera… which so far shows absolutely no signs of life. It was a fiver mind. Well, it was a tenner. Then I added two chairs, which were a tenner for the pair – and the woman knocked the total price down to 15 quid. Since the chairs work, and the camera does not I think I’d prefer to have paid the tenner for the chairs ;-)

    I guess I’ll look at the camera when I get a chance – I want to shoot some video so… But at the moment it’s doing *nada*.

    Then, anyway, I came back home. I came home, and tidied and cleaned and cooked. Tidied cleaned and cooked…. curry. It’s funny, but I really miss the dinners me and my uni friends used to have. Tonight was not on that scale – the curry is one of my ‘standard’ dishes; as opposed to something spectacular made for a special dinner – but it felt good to get the table cleared and laid up – and even if I didn’t get any work done tonight, and scared ‘meriKate with Flanders and Swann songs – I also ended up making Nikki buy a Gramophone player. But still, she’s wanted one for ages and I came across a working one which just needs some TLC.

    I was going to ramble more, but I’ve entirely forgotten what I was going to say, so let’s call that it, eh?

  • Okay guess the topic.

    No, seriously. My life has become disturbing. I’ve just spent 10 minutes finding a ruler, the US adaptor and so on to take these… (more…)

  • A much better day

    I guess the stuff that happened at my mums, that I’ve not discussed (and am not likely to discuss) on here; well; it got to me a lot. It’s quite subtle the way these things work their way into your consciousness.

    Anyway, work has been better, although I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve not managed to get the nerve to discuss it, my mentor always looks so stressed I just couldn’t bring this down. We’ll see how we go, but I’m not actually going to let things get as bad again.

    I’ve just been letting it slide.

    But something happened that made me feel fucking good. It made me feel like I’d really helped someone. There was a person on the ward who’s father’d died. This person had collapsed in the hospital and ended up being admitted. She got handed over to me last night as needing some TLC (on top of some treatment for things we actually found just because she’d collapsed).

    I spent some time chatting to her last night; and some time today. And she pulled me aside earlier and said thank you to me, and that I’d helped. And one of the things I said to her (whilst pointing / shaking my (closed) bottle of water at her as I walked off the ward for a break) was that she needs to make time for herself… and she said “If anyone else told me to do that I’d tell them where to stick it” (or words to that effect).

    I’ve lived through quite a lot of shit, and it really helps me to reach people sometimes. I know that this person, she’s got a lot of stuff to work through, but I’m really glad to know I helped her. I just hope it all works out for her.

    But for the first time in a while, I felt like… I connected with someone and I made their life better. I cared for the whole person.

    Unfortunately work is less likely to be fun. I’ve not touched my dissertation for days, I’ve been dozy as frack tonight so I’ve not looked at it today, in fact I’ve not looked at it for days. I’ve not prepared anything for my WBLD tomorrow, I did look online… for several entire seconds… before deciding that really I’m just beyond caring.

    Tomorrow, the weather forecast isn’t too bad and I’m tempted to finally get the service on Rebecca done. She’s sounding horribly clattery when cold – and the 12,000 mile service point rolled past 200 miles ago with not one drop of oil being added. It all depends on the WBLD. If that goes okay, I might service her. Swap the seatbelt for the loaner too. I’ve even put stamps on the letters which I’ve been carrying around now more than a week (it sounds less impressive when I put it that way).

    In other news I’m moderately convinced that there’s something unpleasantly spywarey lurking on this system. I’ve scanned it with various spyware checkers, there’s an uptodate virus scanner on here (they were the first three things that were installed – before I installed anything else, before connecting the network cable); the first thing I did after connecting the network cable was to update them, but still my machine seems to have some bizzare desire to connect to ‘huff data systems’ (wtf?) and if I leave my mail client running it seems to attempt to connect to a random selection of addresses. I’ve now got Peer Guard on there, which seems to have stomped on that, but I’m kind of at a loss as to what else I could do.

    I really want to do anything other than go to a Work Based Learning Day tomorrow. I really, really don’t want to be there. I’m about | | from calling in sick. If I stress about it enough I really will feel ill ;-)

    If I was at home I could

    • Service my car
    • Sort out the heating (or try, again) (yes, I’ve repressurised it, again, it’s still crap).
    • Read through the final few papers for my dissertation and write some of it.

    I’m not saying I would. I just could. I really don’t want to go, but I probably will, because I’m that kind of person, generally. No matter what a waste of time it is I follow rules (so long as they don’t harm anyone); that’s why I spent 25 minutes filling in the admission documentation for someone I was almost 100% certain would be going home later the same day.

    I’m kinda rambly today. I’ll shut up. What I should do is write any one of the e-mails and letters (well, there’s only one letter outstanding). I’ve already watched Episode 4 of Noir  – so I can’t relax and watch Noir ;-)

    Other plans include rebuilding the lounge PC.

    I think that it’s my tiredness which is causing problems. I can’t hold in my head for more than a few seconds what I should be doing, what I think I’m going to do, whatever. Nothing’s holding my attention. Gaaah. I’m driving myself nuts.

    Anyway, so that’s me. How’re you all?

  • Rats Arses

    So, I had this thought. “Wasn’t it the British Colombia Provincial Nominee Programme” as opposed to a whole Canadian ‘get us more nurses we’re fraking desparate programme’.

    Having had a very quick look this morning (I am still not in the greatest mood after yesterday) I’ve found that… well, I’ll have to go through the skilled worker to go to Toronto. It’s one of these frustrating ‘6 of one half a dozen of the other’ situations.

    Toronto’s definately easier post-emmigrating, and I’ve been kind of settling on it as being where to concentrate my energy (and where I was going to go on holiday); but it looks like Vancouver / BC might be easier for me to *get* to. Gaaah. I guess I need to look at the ‘Skilled Worker’ programme a little more carefully again. I did look and reckoned that with 2 years experience it’d be easy for me to get. I didn’t notice that you also get points (I think, quick look today) for jobs you’ve done within the last ten years. That would help my score upwards too.

    Feeeeh. I do, I have a fetish for paperwork.

  • Breasts – do they interfere with addition?

    Why is it that breasts, or even just a female name, seem to cause blokes in the engineering industry to get very confused about prices and addition. I’ve had it before, at a scrapyard where they wanted over 100 quid for the head off a mini engine. My mum had some wanker of a plumber tell her she needed a complete new cistern at over 200 quid instead of, say, replacing the 8 quid part.

    I sent off for a quote for powdercoating; as I did so I thought “hrm, should I loose the ‘kate’ bit of my sig and set it to mail as ‘K Elliott’” but decided against it.

    People suggested that between 40 quid and 80 quid was the price I should be expecting to do both wheels (complete, starting from the wheels as they are now and stripping, cleaning and coating them). Guess the quote… go on, guess. 130 quid. Arseholes.

    So now I need to ring round. Fortunately, if I flatten my speaking a bit, or sound like I’ve got a cold, most auto-shops assume I’m male – presumably ‘cos I know what I’m talking about and a girl couldn’t possibly know about cars or bikes. So, I’ll use that to my advantage getting the quotes, I hope. I’m pissed off though, as I always am when this happens.

  • Great shift^w^w Shit shift

    So, life continues apace. Mostly at an apace I can barely cope with. I was exhausted today, I crawled out of bed, cursing the alarm clock, the shower, the morning, my eyes for being so sore…

    I made it in though, I think I was even reasonably awake while I drove in. And then the shit hit the fan. For reasons I shan’t go into, there was a lot of work with very little information this morning – and despite it all – and despite working with my mentor who I struggle with (she does *stuff*; she doesn’t leave me to my patients, or my patients to me and prompt me. She just does things. I never know what’s going on. It’s something I need to tackle…) I felt like I’d actually done okay this morning.

    It was all together – more or less – by handover time, but I’d still not really got a grasp on who I was treating. I’d only got bits of the doctor’s round. The whole thing was kind of thrown together. So I started handover – with the warning that I really didn’t know the patients that well and it might have bits missing. Of course, I was talking to the guys I was working with yesterday who’d had those patients, and who were far better versed in what they needed and wanted.

    I started to feel like crap.

    I got interrupted part way through a patient. I missed out her past medical history (somehow) and then ended up with my mentor constantly interrupting me. I left feeling like utter shit; I didn’t know the people – and I’d become aware as I was handing over just how badly I knew them; I can’t work like this. I need to either be doing everything (and delegating tasks) or being delegated to. Having two people trying to deal with patients independantly just doesn’t work. I still feel like crap. I know that a lot of it is just tiredness, but the concept of more of this – I can’t face it. So I’ll have to talk to my two mentors and say “I need you to stand back more” – because when I work with the people I *like* working with that’s how it’s done. They supervise and advise and prompt. *sighs*.

    It’s not like I don’t like my mentors, that’s not it at all. But if they aren’t able to let me actually practice as a nurse then what good is me being there?

  • Apparently it’s Toronto’s Birthday

    So…Happy Birthday Toronto!

  • When I get going…

    I can be pretty effective. Managed to get my essay submitted (despite my uni’s incompetence); I got the most insane response from the admin bloke. “Thank you for your concern”. WTF?! He ‘believed’ it was fixed.

    *sigh*

    When I was (young, all this was fields, blah, blah) working as a Sysadmin, when I fixed stuff I knew if it was fixed. I didn’t guess it was fixed, and I actually read the e-mails people sent. In this case it’s a final year submission; if it hadn’t have been fixed it would have been a major issue – because the uni are so feckless that I wouldn’t put it past them to say it was our fault for not checking that e-submission was working before the submission date.

    I do wonder how much training these guys have had in admining systems, because they’re lousy as hell at it.

    In other news, I’ve found that the government body I’m dealing with are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Actually, a chocolate teapot would be more useful because you could eat it. They just suck. Really, no, they suck. A lot. I’m not quite sure what people (not me, fortunately, because I’m too poor) are paying them for – because the entire process seems to revolve around me ringing them; finding out they’ve not done anything, me ringing the people that the need to talk to, and trying to get them to write back. Exactly what they’re actually doing in their dinky little office I’m unsure of.

    I’ve also (god I’m good, I’m also tired) been shopping this morning. So I’ve now got food; drinks; milk… I’ve found my mum a huge list of estate agents. What I’ve not yet managed to do is locate the stamps. I’ve now got two letters to go, and no fracking stamps. Grrr.

    In other news, I’ve still not had time to fix the broken seatbelt. Maybe if I’m not utterly shattered tomorrow after work, and it’s dry and stuff, I’ll get down there and get it changed. It would be nice to have a seatbelt I trust. Anyway, it’s food time in Chez Kate. I realise this has been another dull ‘I’ve been doing this’ entry, but I have got stuff I want to talk about; maybe when I’m less… busy. Hah.

  • If you happen to come across my weekend…

    I’d quite like it back. I believe today was my day off.

    Actually, today was my mum’s birthday. March 5th. She was shockingly ‘up’ when I arrived having hauled my washing out of the machine and hung it up, crawled through the shower (almost literally), heaped stuff in the car and headed out the door – carrying with me electrical repair stuff and plumbing stuff. Why would I need this for a birthday trip to my mum’s?

    Because the toilet overflow had been running long enough to generate a 15 foot long 6 inch diameter icicle from the pipe to the bottom of the wall (I knew I should have taken my camera!) and my present to my mum this year was (mostly at xmas so instead I offered) to put all the lights in her dolls house.

    Most of the day was spent driving, however. I drove there. I had some coffee. I fixed my mum’s car door lock. I stripped down the ball-valve in the toilet. I drove to B&Q and got a new washer, drove to the garden centre, resisted buying funky plants, drove back. Discovered that replacing the washer wasn’t enough. Realised the thing was just worn out. Drove back to B&Q. Spent twenty minutes trying to find the washers to fit a new valve to the cistern. Discovered that depite selling: (a) cisterns and (b) ballvalves they do not sell the washer that seals one to the other.

    Decide to bodge it anyhow. Buy ballvalve, selection of random washers, ptfe tape.

    It takes three goes and quite some fiddling, but my plumbing isn’t too bad and I managed to get a fairly good seal (i.e. it hadn’t leaked 3 hours later) – my mum now has a working toilet again. Ra.

    I then fixed the lights in my mum’s dolls house (apart from the bulb I dropped. Well done me). Came home and picked up the hockey stuff. Tried on the hockey stuff (well I just had to know if it’d look the same as it did when I was at school. Thankfully not(!)) but it does all fit, which is ultra-super-cool. Now I just need a job in the ED, and I hope they’re still playing. Also, I guess I should brush up on the rules of field hockey. I was always an indoor hockey kinda girl. The whole field hockey thing never really did it for me as much – just not as fast – but hey.

  • It’s colder…

    …than in Toronto. It’s -2 according to my little thermostat in the car; which is hardly accuracy itself – but the windscreen washer fluid froze on impact with the screen – so it was probably at least -2.

    I actually lent out the window and sprayed de-icer on the windscreen.

    Why am I writing this? Well, see, I’ve got to go out and put laundry on so that when I get up tomorrow I can take the laundry out and I’ll have clean uniforms for work on monday. Otherwise it’ll be… “the dress”.

    Anyway, I need to go to bed. Laundry. Bed. Oh, one other bit of news, I got some Hockey gear. It was going free on Freecycle and no-one else was interested. It’s apparently in my size, shoes / skirt / stick. I’m not too sure about the skirt(!), but if I do get to work at the ED they have a hockey night, so the stick and shoes would rock. It’s been a long time since I’ve played…