Mostly lemon based

Category: House

  • Again with the cold, aren’t we done now?

    So, yes. Another day of tiling ahead, and then some grouting – and stripping the old radiator down. There’s four more days in this week and in those four days I’m hoping to achieve:

    – Tiling and grouting complete around sink, bath, shower, toilet and radiator’s locale.
    – Woodwork (behind radiator) painted.
    – Radiator stripped and repainted.
    – Radiator pipework completed and radiator connected.
    – Temporary kitchen surfaces up in the…kitchen.
    – Pipework run under the floor in the kitchen to connect up lounge radiator, with take off fitted but switched off for kitchen radiator.

    With that little lot completed we can call in the gas engineer and get the new boiler fitted; which would mean actually having heating. A blessing of unimaginable proportions. I’m lucky in so far as I don’t have to get up *every* morning at 5ish, which Kathryn does. At least some days I can wait until the weak sunlight has started to filter down; and also I can just sit and wait for the heater to warm up the bathroom (speaking of which…) and for hot water that is truly hot.

    So having heating that can take the house up to a reasonable temperature would be really rather nice.

    At the moment, the fire in the lounge isn’t really able to make the lounge warm by itself, probably ‘cos that back door doesn’t shut, which is another job that should be (and is) on my list.

    So that’s my day planned out, when the shower’s warm I’ll be heading in there. But there’s a trifling issue which is occupying my mind – that of my laptop. A while back firefox became such a pain to use (pausing every page load or scroll or on change of focus for up to 10 seconds) that I switched (albeit temporarily in my head) to IE. IE is awful, it’s stayed awful, and I still think it sucks. However, it does to a greater or lesser extent, work on here. However, now in the list of oddities has arrisen another; the laptop’s started to crash. With fair but not incredible frequency it’ll just lock up completely. Not ctrl-alt-del-able, not power-button-hold-for-offable but solid dead crash. Out with the battery and power cable crashes.

    Following this last one we had failed services on startup and Control Panel wouldn’t open… It seems to have ‘settled down again’, but I suspect it’s coming time for a mighty reinstall. I want to try Linux again on here, since I can’t have OS X; which means getting the linux install disk onto a machine with a burner. Since the PC in the lounge is *also* waiting for a reinstall (house has priority!), then that’ll be the Mac (which is currently somewhat of a blank slate, since I got the install to work but it’s not yet got any actual software on there, really. I’ve got Toast, just not installed). So I’m thinking I best get sorting things, and get all the data off here pretty soon otherwise things are likely to suck, in all reality.

    Still, that’s where we’re at. Cold, mostly….

  • Morning update (‘cos you need more than one in a day)

    So, plan for the morning was:

    Ring BeThere and order the new ADSL
    Collect car, collect packages, buy more adhesive, paint stripper, stanley blades.
    Drop off car

    And y’know what, it’s all been done (well, sorta. I rang BT to get my MAC Code, which they can’t actually produce at the moment; I await a call back with the same expectation as I have that the world will freeze over tomorrow). I tested the adhesive I’d got on the wood, and no, it still won’t bloody stick; so I’ve got a different brand of adhesive which, according to the man in the tile shop will adhere tiles to wood. I collected Kathryn’s prezzie and my MP3 player (but the batteries are flat and it’s not quite clever enough to charge from the USB cable, which is slightly distressing). I then dropped off the car, and walked back pausing only to pick up more Nitromors (mmm, volatile organic compounds) and stanley blades (I’ll actually use up the old ones stripping paint now I’ve got some replacements!). I’ve found who I think will be our VoIP provider – mostly because they offer in their basic price plan free and unlimited UK and International calls (to certain countries). Given that we’ve a penchant for calling Kathryn’s family in the US then that’s quite handy.I just have to get everyone I know to keep national geographic numbers. Or join the same company for VoIP ;)

    And in other news… I’m intrigued by this. If only I could find a trailer for it… It’s still fracking cold here, incidentally. My feet are wondering how it’s got to be so cold…

    Annnyhow. Off I go, it’s tiling time now I’m fed and watered.

     

     

     

  • Brrr.

    It’s chilly and foggy here today, much with the chilly and much with the foggy. Theoretically I get to collect Brick from the motor engineer today; sadly the oil leak persists; it’s not a failed seal of any sort. The sump (which for those not in the know is the reservoir for oil) has a crack in it, apparently. How it gained this crack I don’t know, although I have a sneaking suspicion that it had a crack before I bought it that had been sealed using glue, or pixie dust, because it started leaking pretty badly as soon as it was home. Unfortunately despite people fairly frequently chucking entire engines, without getting a whole and entire engine (which seems ‘excessive’ to me) I can’t easily lay my hands on a sump. People’ve suggested waiting ’til I go to sort out the welding and then have the engine out / sump off / clean / weld / replace. But there’s a fair amount of welding, and it’s leaking oil at a frantic rate of knots, which makes me unhappy.

    Another thing which makes me a little unhappy is this. See, I want to run all my vehicles on E85. I can’t afford an (adequate) EV conversion, I can’t do biodiesel, and I can’t not commute to work. Even working in the hospital in the town where I live is far enough that I’d have to commute by car; so I’d be stuffed anyhow. So Morrisons starting to sell E85 is great, except that the nearest station is so far from me that I’d use half a tank getting there and back, and given that I’d have to adjust the timing and possibly the mixture once I’d filled up with E-85 I’d be a bit stuffed. Come on guys (specifically, Esso, Jet, Tesco and Murco ‘cos they’re the ones I actually go near every week), let’s have E85 at all the stations, then I can have a selection of much cleaner vehicles. Infact, they’d be heading for carbon neutral, which would rock. Well, theoretically at least. When E85 production methods improve there’s a good chance for carbon neutrality.

    Anyhow, so I had a really fantastic weekend. Which is odd, because I spent the second half of it (i.e. most of Sunday) tiling. I’m 3/4ths done in the shower cubicle though, I’d be tiling now before heading off to collect brick were it not, well, too early for diamond-saw noises. I misjudged the remaining number of tiles though. I thought I was down to about 200, but I’d neglected the ones that went in the spare room to use as a table when we had lauril staying (ah, the magic of a throw). At any rate, I don’t know if the tiles are adhereing to the wood yet (or if they need *another* coat of paint) – if they are then I can commence that final section of tiling and the plan that we should be done and dusted by the end of the week could actually be true. I am not looking forward to grouting though. Kathryn’s done a wall and a half, and between us we should get the rest done without too much pain. But it’s still the most tedious thing in the world.

    So, what else did I get up to this weekend; well, mostly I just spent time with Kathryn – which is a pleasure unsurpassed in my book. We went for a little wander down to what we thought was an abandoned abbey, but turned out to be an active abbey, and met a nun in purple. Apparently they’re an Augustinian community; at any rate, the nun in question seemed nice :)

    On the way back we stopped to disassemble a skip full of parts of an alarm. A shop’d been stripped out and there was a large amount of depressingly useful wood there, all of it being dumped, and also a significant quantity of electronics. It’s always rather sad, I feel, when people strip out shops throwing away stuff that’s potentially useful. We came away with two small plastic FixSystem bins (of which there are some more at my mum’s house, somewhere (little plastic bins you put on the wall to store things in)), and some small piece of the alarm system. Then we headed home stopping at the local supermarket for provisions, ‘cos Brick not being here, and us living where we do means that shopping on foot would be an activity unsupassed in it’s tediousness.

    Sunday was tiling day, although come the evening I took Kathryn’s advice and actually had a break. I’d been tiling pretty much solidly from 1130 to 1700, which to be fair got 100 tiles on the wall, but did take it’s toll on me. So, today I collect Kathryn’s Xmas Prezzie which handily has arrived same time as my new nipod. This time I actually got a branded one though, the nipod’s awful interface, and the fact that they don’t show any shots of the interfaces on the adverts put me off getting another – although it was very small and cute.

    And it did play video.

    This one however is just a music player, and possibly not quite so robust being hard disk based (like the ipod) but hey, we’ll see. Anyhow, shower, phone BeThere and then head off to collect the car, if it’s ready (it bloody ought to be since they opted not to take the engine out and just to switch it to unleaded; I can do a head swap on an A+ in a few hours…. and I’m paying them for a few hours work). Anyhow, enough whining.

    Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s off to tile I go…

     

     

  • Progress (at least in some areas)

    So, I’ve had a to-do list on the computer for a while; I’d like to imagine that I was getting through it at great speed, but I’m not. Indeed it’s been the same list for most of the week. Or at least modifed versions. See, sadly as I’ve crossed off items from the to-do list I’ve found new things to put on it; at least, until today, when I found out just how dead the laptop battery really is. I accidentally unplugged my laptop and about 15 minutes later it was dead. Dead as in died without even flashing up the low battery warning. Feh.

    Anyhow, I’ve been plodding through it. Not with a great deal of success, to be brutally honest. But there we go.

    I had stuff to write about when I started writing this yesterday; but I’ve largely forgotten it. Since Kathryn asked about the ‘Things I want page‘ so I’ve updated that. I’m sure I had more of a reason for posting. The past week’s been really quite crappy; I mean, I’ve enjoyed it in some senses of the word but it has been incredibly hard work – and to be honest a lot of patients haven’t got the care that they deserved. Some have got rather more than they deserved too; to be honest. I think my judgement’s been off as I’ve been tired.

    For some reason our poor little department has been flooded with patients, and pretty much every day has been full and really, really hard work. I have a faint feeling there was one nice shift. But I can’t really recall it. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my job, I just sometimes feel that it’s a bit like bailing out a rowboat using a sieve.

    Anyhow, so this week has been a bit frustrating. Brick’s starting problems have returned. I’m going to have a clean of the relevant connector and maybe try measuring the voltage while waving the cable around and see if it suddenly drops to 0 or somesuch. But even applying the jumpleads doesn’t always seem to make it work, which was my trick last time around.

    I finally rang Virgin to find out about the phone, and it’s a no. The street is cabled, just not as far as our house; I did actually put ourselves on the ‘come look and call me if you’ll cable it’, but I doubt it’s worth the hastle for them. There’s only 6 or so houses (possibly as many as 10) that are on the street that aren’t cabled, and most of ’em have Sky. So it looks like I’ll have to trawl through the broadband suppliers and find a ‘good’ one. BT seem to have given up offering me things to try and convince me to stay with their crappitude.

    I’ve done more tiling; Kathryn did some grouting too, so there’s a section that’s more or less finished. But there’s still a lot of tiling to do. But one wall is done bar the wood at the bottom; which needs different adhesive. And the wall the toilet’s on is similarly done. The one with the radiator on is done bar 6 tiles. When I’ve put those last 6 on I’ll start cleaning up the radiator; because once the radiator’s on then we’re very close to calling in the gas engineer. It’s getting fracking cold here now, cold enough that the fire’s starting to be slow to warm the lounge and that it’s cool in the bedroom. So I guess the fact that we’re now not going to Italy is actually quite handy because a solid week of work should see the bathroom finished; and then the happy chappy who is my gas engineer can come and hopefully stop us freezing to death. I’m actually tempted, if I can, to connect up the lounge radiator too. That would be positively spiffy, but we’ll just have to see how we go.

    I’ve also finally got around to filling in the NHSP forms, so I now need a signature from my manager and some lovely photos of me, oh and some photocopies of my passport and stuff. Then I’ll be able to earn the extra cashes required for…

    …the Minor. I’ve also finally got around to ringing JLH – and Rebecca will be heading up there towards the end of November, beginning of December. She’ll be fitting in around other work; and it’s quite terrifying how much she’s going to cost. It’s a big chunk of the original restoration costs. I’ll also be adding recovery to my breakdown cover before we try running up there because she’ll now have not been run for just shy of a year, and is *not * a well bunny. If we decide we’ve had enough on the way up there, then we can stop and call breakdown then.

    Poor old Cherry Red’s been doing the run to and from work; she’s still just as sick as she has been for a long time, with a top speed of about 80km/h to maybe 100 km/h. She’s next on the list, and will have to get taken down to London at some point. I keep thinking about what could be causing it but I suspect without stripping it down I’m not going to find out. She still leaks two-stroke (which I need to get some more of from somewhere – and not the local bike shop who I was very unimpressed with). It’s getting bloody cold though, riding the bike. And my bike gear’s beginning to show it’s age (even more!) – the zipper’s starting to come apart on the jacket. I may have to make a run down to Bristol (since I want to head down and see friends anyhow) to my favourite bike shop and see what they’ve got on offer :)

    Yes, so.

    (And now, thanks to e-bay, I have oil. Ra).

    So, last night we went out to the A&E and Paramedics’ Halloween party (yes, as many people pointed out to us on the way there, Halloween is not for a while yet) – with Kathryn’s help I went as a Witch and she as my familiar :) Despite my shyness I did actually talk to a few people although I didn’t do a great deal of socialising. We also screwed up travelling there; I forgot how crap Firstbus are and we tried to get a bus to the station. Obviously at obscure times like Saturday night, at say 1900ish, you need busses no more frequently than hourly (oh, and let’s make the times the bus run completely unrelated to the online time table). In the end, despite my ridiculous heels we decided to walk there, which would’ve been fine, apart from the fact that my cheap-arse boots had a staple come through the sole while walking, and the balls of my feet feel like they’re working up to revealing some blisters of significant size. I had a good time though, and we headed home after midnight. I may share the picture of us; when I feel enthused enough to put it on the laptop :)

    We had a very relaxed day today though; it’s really nice just to spend a day relaxing, I’ve not touched the house all day, I’ve not dealt with the E-mail to JLH, although I may ring this chap about the Enfield…. and JP about the Enfield also. And that, that is my update :)

  • And winter commeth

    It’s starting to get cold outside, and the ‘heating’ such as it is is something I’m becoming increasingly fond of. The gas fire in the lounge is really quite nice of an evening, and curling up beside Kathryn ‘n reading or watching telly, or a film is about the nicest way to pass an evening. But, there is one thing that goes with the coming of winter…

    …car problems.

    Brick seems to have heard the call of the winter somewhat early and has had a little bit of a quirk with his brakes for the last few weeks. That is, namely, that pressing them leads to smooth application of the brakes until about half way down when the brake pedal will sink about a quarter of an inch with very little effort and the brakes will come on incredibly hard. It seemed that flicking the brake pedal upward (it would stick slightly down) would remove this tendancy, but it seems to be getting worse and worse at a rate which means I’ll have to fix it rather than wait for the service. I’d been intending to do that this week but it’d got lost under the battle to get the radiators in (2 out of 3, the third needs stripping and painting before it can be fitted), then all the heating-plumbing is done upstairs. It’s just fitting taps ‘n the shower mixer now for the other plumbing. Mmm.

    But this morning we got the ‘won’t start’ quirk back. Fortunately I recognised it quickly, but I’m now at a loss as to what’s causing it. The voltage seems correct at the coil, so the resistor clearly is working correctly… bypassing everything does work, but it’s a touch tedious. And the coup de gras today; a while ago the clutch-end of the clutch cable disappeared through the plate into which it is mounted. For reasons best known to themselves the cable appears to be slightly smaller than the original and the hole into which it is meant to rest is big enough that it goes ‘whoosh’, straight through. My lovely local garage sorted this by sticking a nut on the end of the cable so it can’t go through the hole. As if to torment me, today as I left the railway station having dropped of my beloved, the other end of the cable went *chunk* though the top of the firewall and approached the pedal. Fortunately, it still had enough length in it to work, but it remains irritating.

    Far be it from me to suggest that this cable is not correctly manufactured and to utter a rant about the quality of modern parts. It would never occur to me even to consider suggesting such a thing, but now I have to disassemble the clutch cable mechanism and see if I can persuade the bloody thing to go back through the hole and sit, correctly, on the correct side of the firewall. I’m meant to be tiling, but I’m just steeling myself for a cold day outside covered in oil. Whether oil is worse than tile glue is something you may debate (yes, is my opinion incidentally), but it’s not something which makes me happy. Especially when I’ve forked out the first 50 of around 150 – 200 quid to have brick’s engine converted to unleaded.

  • So, thoughts.

    I know, I’ve become one of those become one of those people who rarely updates. I think  that’s because, well, most of the time I’m busy and really any of my spare time I want to spend with Kathryn. I don’t hugely want to spend time writing about what I’bve been doing. Because at the moment I’m sat waiting for MacOS to install on the ‘main PC’; purely because I want to install Linux on the laptop – and I’ve reached my tollerence for my laptop’s pause every few seconds to go to 100% processor usage, then resolve. It does it when it’s running firefox, not when it’s running anything else. But at the moment there’s not enough space on it to download the install of Gentoo – not that I could burn it, because the PC in the lounge / the homehub seem to be locked in a perpetual battle of wills – one of  them tries to connect, the other will work for a while, then they fall off. I can’t help blaming the homehub – it being so crap in every respect means that even if it isn’t it’s fault I’m gonna blame it for this problem.

    At any rate, it’s left me sat upstairs with the laptop in my lap to keep me company while Kathryn is applicationifying and showering and doing morning things. I can’t help but have paranoia that it’s some sort of keylogger – but I’d presume it’d be better written than this is. Anyhow, so I’ve been working with kids a lot recently – not through choice, I hasten to add, but just because. I’m increasingly of the opinion that I’d quite like a kid sone day. They can be terribly sweet – even in the incredibly stressed environment of an A&E department. That doesn’t stop them being horrendously scary – not least because I don’t know enough to look after them as well as I’d like. But still. Not yet, I also hasten to add; but at some indistinct point in the future.

    So, yes. work yesterday was tiring. We cleared out the Resus bay only for it to more or less instantly fill up again. And these were sick people; not desperately desperately sick people. Thankfully I’ve only had one of them in the Resus bay, once. Although, that said it’s probably good to get the skills down. But, yes. I may book myself on the ILS course. But I just feel so much out of my depth some of the time.

    I’m worried that I’ll go on the course and I’ll still be out of my depth, surrounded by nurses who are way more experienced and way more knowledgeable than me. But I guess learning is learning :)

    And actually it probably makes sense to do it now, just so I can apply the principles.

    Kathryn and I (mostly Kathryn, actually) have been attacking the bathroom some more; she’s painted the top section white, I’ve filled the ceiling, so it now needs sanding and then painting with some of that smoothing paint. I’ve sealed around the shower too, so that’s now ready to be tiled. And finally we’ve both been tiling. It’s only a small section of tiles that’s up and on the walls, but it’s a good start and it does make a difference, at least mentally. I shall pounce and attack them tomorrow – try and get a chunk done. We’re having a friend over to stay, so it’d be nice if it was nearer finished. Not least because the less stuff there is being stored in there relating to building the more space we have that we can clear stuff from the spare room into.

  • Update

    Um, somewhat of a lazy title – but lots has been going on here. The last week has flown past; I’ve had a lot of hard shifts at work, and a very good shift – I’ve finally started suturing. I can now officially say that I’ve put people back together. Not necessarily very well… But they seemed to think it was neat enough. I had a good old wash out of the wounds and my suturing seems remarkably neat. Given my complete lack of sewing abilities the fact I can sew people back together has come as somewhat of a shock.

    I’m really pleased to have got started on that though.

    I’m told that I can go into minors again on Thursday and if that’s possible then I can do *more* :)

    Kathryn and I spend a really nice day in London yesterday; I felt very decadent, somehow. We went to drop off some applications for her, well, that and some errands. And made a day of it, she posted about it here… I was just going to comment a little on Venus as a Boy – the play we went to see. I am still surprised at how the tale of a male prostitute’s descent into prostitution and eventual demise – a tale which centred around basically all the unpleasant and awful things which happened in his life – remained an incredibly positive feeling play. And the ability of the performer (who’s name escapes me) to carry me (at least) to the places he described; and to portray ages very different than his own – and multiple different ages though the play really impressed me.

    So, that was us, last night, at Soho Theatre.

    Today we got some of this… and put it here. It was a hideous job, it’s not quite finished, because a small section of the loft is floored – and rather than take that up, because we want to floor it anyhow – so there’s just that small section to be insulated. But it was filthy up there – and the guy and insulated it using randomly selected carpet and underlay, and apparently the lining of a mattress. All of that’s come up now and been relayed with 200 mm of glass fibre. Glass fibre is itchy, no matter what it might say on the packet.

    And in final other news; my laptop also needs reinstalling. It’s regularly hitting 1005 processor usage. By which I mean, every few seconds. I can’t actually type and have the results come up on the screen at the same time as I type. They come up in floods after I’ve typed entire sentences – and correcting mistakes takes minutes. But I need to retrieve the files off it first…which means getting either the Mac or the Windows box working well enough to copy them. Gah.

  • Progressing

    Against expectations I’ve actually done quite a lot of tidying and sorting today. I have pounced on the back bedroom with some vigour and shuffled piles of stuff into different piles of stuff, decreased the box content of the room and, in fact, started to uncover something that I believe was once a desk.

    I have a pile of computing equipment the likes of which I’ve not seen for a while; the Laserjet 4, complete with JetDirect is sat atop my RiscPC which astonishingly can see the network. Of course, OmniClient is being it’s usual argumentative self and I can’t seem to persuade it to connect. And WebsterXL seems to have decided that it’ll connect only to google’s homepage, and nothing else. It’s not helped that the Acorn Keyboard after 2 years of having crap piled on it appears to have finally bitten the dust (sadly :( ) and that after so long on Linux, Mac and Windows I’ve started to forget how to use the RiscPC. To be fair, I only connected it ‘because it was there’. It’s the sort of thing I feel silly for having spent time on, but at the same time it’s such an important part of my formative years that I’m rather pleased to see it still working. I’d’ve quite liked to use OvPro to produce the zine with Kathryn, but it looks like it may take me a long time to get it working properly – if I ever can. I’m tempted to nuke it and install everything fresh… but also I’d forgotten that with only 4Mb of ram it can only do 1024×768 in a decent colour depth. It’s sad really, it was a phenominally advanced machine when it was released, and now it’s put to shame by a cheap PC running an OS it was never designed to run.
    But, on the plus side the Mac went ‘print to a laserprinter on the network? Why of course’. Ahh. Mac, we love you. Turning off DHCP on the white box of internet doom home hub seems to have improved connectivity; now I just need to clear the desk of crap – although we’re pretty good now. Down to last few ods and sods.

    I’ve thrown a bunch of stuff onto freecycle too, and I’ve finally found the singles that seemed to have disappeared when I moved from Ashford to here.

    Anyhow, so that’s been my day really; here’s the results of the chaos decreasing act – the whole computing environment (some of this stuff has moved in from the bedroom, so the mess hasn’t decreased as much as I’d hoped; this shot is also an exercise in adding as many notes to a photo as possible) and the desk. Although it’s not really ‘tidyer’; everything’s actually connected now and there’s the possibility that Kathryn can use the desk with her Mac should she wish to – just by moving the hackintosh keyboard. Also, the Laserprinter is up and running, so resume printing should be a nice simple, and very professional looking affair. Everything’s still kinda dusty though.

    Still, it’s progress for definite.

  • On waking early

    So I tried to persuade my body to let me sleep in this morning; I mean, when I’m with Kathryn I can snuggle up and doze and the morning can slide away. But come 0800 my body work me up and refused to go back to sleep. Refused. By 0930 I was so fed up of lying there that I gave in and got up.

    Gah.

    On the plus side yesterday I generated a scene from a 1950’s hacker movie, as I surrounded myself with type 332 phones (I own 3 type 332s of various ages, and a 232 payphone), having reassembled the best one (well, two, but I’ve not set the other one up for modern usage) I’ve got two “good” phones and a spare phone – although I’ll be very impressed if that one works, considering that the electromagnets are furry (with mould; I’ve cleaned them, but it’s come back). Sadly the one that’s “best” doesn’t have the alphanumeric dial; but it certainly sounds good when it rings :)

    I have, however, discovered that the HomeHub can’t cope with pulse dial, which sucks. I mean, how hard would it have been to make it support pulse dial?

    Never mind eh. I can’t plug it directly in to the BT network ‘cos it’s not ‘approved’ despite being a BT (Well GPO) telephone…

    Anyhow, I now need to go sort out the back bedroom – well, actually, I now need to go connect the waterpipe outside, then I shall go tidy the back bedroom. I’m hoping some degree of sorting in there will make it possible to get some stuff out of the front bedroom, which’d be handy.

  • Slow, but forward.

    Okay, so you know how I said I hated tidying? I do, still, hate tidying. I’ve checked :)

    I suspect the house will be no-where near as tidy as I’d like when Kathryn arrives – this is down to two things:

    1) I hate tidy (did I mention that?)
    2) There’s not really anywhere to put things which makes me feel like reorganising the piles is sort of, well, futile, which leads back to….yeah, item 1.

    *But*. That said, I have made some small achievements.

    The drawers are almost split into two; There’s 4 and some of a silly little drawer for Kathryn now, and 5 and most of a silly little drawer in use by me. The tall-boy-of-jumper-and-duvet-and-sheet storage has been attacked, slightly, and has become the tall-boy-of-Kate’s-Jumpers-Kathryn’s-Jumpers-and-some-other-random-things-of-Kathryns. The sheets and duvet have moved into the cupboard next to the bed. the cupboard next to the bed is now also home to Kathryn’s iHome, a clock, and some other bits of Kathryns on a shelf – the shelf above’s been sort-of-cleared-a-bit, so as we can share it; although it’s suffered from the ‘oh-I’ve-no-idea-where-this-goes’ syndrome which has been affliciting me.

    *and*

    After a great deal of walking this morning, there is a hole in the soil pipe with a 40mm strap on boss (yes, really) attached to it. In a little while I shall pop out and stick the pipe in it (it needed to dry first). From tomorrow, were the water on upstairs (which it isn’t) you’d be able to turn on the tap in the sink and the water would make it’s happy little journey down to the sewer instead of out into the back garden.

    Ra.

    Although in the world’s most annoying turn of events; B&Q did have it in stock (although I didn’t end up getting it from there, which is why mine’s a different shade of grey to the rest of the pipework); but it’s now stocked in a different place in the store – despite there still being a hole for it and a label in the other location. It’s completely out of place in it’s new location; away from all the other soil-pipe related bits, and no one seemed aware that it’s moved. It was just as I was hunting for something *else* that I came across it. I’m debating attacking the back bedroom a bit. By ‘debating’ I mean “I think I should but have less than no enthusiasm for the task”. Pfer. And I forgot to get something important when I was out shopping this morning, which means that I now need to do more walking to go and get it :(

    Gah.

    Oooh, oooh, I could look at the list again:

    – Finish CD organisation.
    – Unpack Kathryn’s books.
    – Remove centre shelf from cupboard, allowing Kathryn’s light to stand on lower shelf.
    – Sort my clothes and clear drawers full of crud.
    – Unpack Kathryn’s clothes.
    – Sort & file paperwork. Write missing letter to NIContribs.
    – Continue work on bathroom (not in order): Mount wood for cistern, Fix sink to wall, Fix toilet to floor, Paint*, Clean floor of excess grout, Commence tiling*, Finish waste water plumbing, Paint bath feet, Fit shower*, Fit bath*, Fit cistern*, Trim base of door and refit*, Sort out lighting for shower*.

    Ooh, doesn’t that look better?

    Hrm. See, ‘tidying the entire house’ wasn’t in that list; but it’s kind of lurking in my head. Fooey.