Mostly lemon based

Category: House

  • Progress, soreness, and tiredness.

    I am uber tired now. I have spent the day achieving this:

    See? No? Well, you can examine the world’s most dull photoset if you like. I’ve endeavoured to make it marginally less dull by attempting to cram a silly number of notes on some of the pictures, but really this set exists in that special space for doing something dull when you’re already bored.

    At any rate, I’ve made much progress today – I’ve now got only one huge box to move in the kitchen and the dishwasher. Then I need to empty the kitchen cupboard, remove it from the wall, and uh, find homes for everything in it. Once that’s done, I need to stick the tools out in the shed. And uh, *then* I need to move the washing machine.

    Hopefully this job will be done within the week.

    Then we can move on to the other works – the more major ones – specifically the doubling of the floorjoists in the pre-bathroom. I’m not sure how that’s going to work, really. Not sure at all. Nor how much it’ll cost. I guess we’ll find out.

    Unfortunately all this box moving has left me somewhat tired. Exhausted, actually – which I suspect is related to the sore throat, which I’m blaming on the night shifts… At any rate, I’m tired, so I think it’s time to rest…

  • Nights, Days and Disappearing walls

    I’m tired. Not exhausted, but tired. It was my second night last night, the first was one of those shifts where remarkably, everything gets done. Apart from a few issues here and there, it went smoothly and was as relaxing a night shift as you could hope for.

    Night the second, and we understand how few nurses 2 really are. I arrived to a patient with high blood pressure – and no plan as to what to do about it; then his heart slowed – 40 beats / minute is slow, not incompatible with life slow, but slow – especially for someone in their 80s – he managed to drop as low as 36 at one point. He was joined by the chap with the full-body-and-limb rash, high temperature and vomiting. Lots of vomiting. I had been slightly worried about him since coming on duty – he seemed very drowsy (which wasn’t mentioned in the notes) and looked very hot – although our crappy under-arm/mouth thermometers (what posessed them to take away our in-the-ear ones I’m not sure) weren’t picking up any temperature; and appeared to have a rash covering most of his body – which was also not mentioned in the notes.

    Because I’m paranoid I kept an eye on him – and his temperature rapidly went up, followed by the vomiting restarting. By the end of the shift it looked like he’d had another stroke, and despite trying for most of the night I couldn’t reach the next of kin. My opinion of the nurse I worked with last night has gone up immeasurably though. She’s excellent with really sick patients – and it was more due to her efforts that the patient stabilised than the doctor – the Dr was very slow to turn up and then didn’t want to stay because it was the end of his shift. Fine, I can understand, but don’t say you’ll be up in a minute for an hour and a half and then say ‘oh, I can’t see him I’ve got to go home’. Thankfully, quite a lot of pressure on him later, he saw the patient and realised the patient was actually very sick. By which time the senior nurse I was with had done a lot of what he was telling us needed to be done.
    I’m really hoping tonight’s a bit quieter. Because it’s only 2 nurses and 2 HCAs on at night – basic patient care disappeared last night. I didn’t get to sit down until 4am when I’d got my sick patients (and the new patient) settled and stable (I started at 8pm), by which time I was fairly much exhausted.

    On the plus side I slept a lot when I got home. Well, by a lot, 5 hours. I may even allow myself to use some of the change lying around the house to get me something to eat, because quite frankly I’m a whole heap of tired, and the idea of standing and cooking for 20 minutes appeals to me not-at-all. Whilst I know I can’t afford it, I am just so tired that that isn’t really featuring in my thought process. Especially while there’s change sat on the surface near me.
    The one nice thing about nights is the break, during which I’ve been listening to NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me which meets my criteria for ‘terribly funny’ – and is I’m sure very irritating for those nearby as I break out into peals of laughter. I’ve also been reading some Jeanette Winterson (specifically the Powerbook) she has an incredible style – it’s kind of like reading poetry in the form of prose (which I think is how Kathryn may have described it to me, but that description sticks with me as I’m reading). So that’s actually been quite good :-)

    The Days have also not been so bad – despite my thin thin curtains I’ve actually managed to sleep okay; getting around 5 hours each day, which is pretty good for me. Not enough though, in so far as I’ve got a sore throat. Not a real stinker of a sore throat, but a sore throat none-the-less. Last night I consumed most of a packet of Halls (given that I couldn’t actually stop moving enough to ‘drink plenty’). My glands feel like cashew nuts, seriously, so I’m thinking that I’m really not-that-well. Still, one more night and it’s over.

    Also, in the ‘days’ I’ve managed to sort out the builder. He’s still not come up with a complete quote, he wants to come and do the chimney (200 – 300 quid), and while he’s here that day look at the rest of the work that needs doing. This of course means I need to make the door to the lounge shut – and ideally tape a plastic sheet over the space – I also need to get the back door to open, and clear the back office at least partially.

    Anyone want to come give me a hand tomorrow, thursday and at the weekend?

    I also need to clear some of the kitchen so as I can move the dishwasher and then the washing machine on Monday night. Oh the fun. Building work is such a joy. I should feel more positive I suppose, but I think the tiredness is winning at the moment. I wonder if I need to take down the cupboard as well, probably…

    It is incidentally the wall behind the washing machine – the chimney breast – which is coming out:

    It’s one of those things which is disproportionally irritating, despite notionally occupying not-that-much kitchen, it’s actually a complete nightmare in terms of layout – and losing it, whilst it will cost a couple of hundred quid makes it that much easier to lay out the kitchen and make effective use of the space. Actually, the excitement has started to come back, looking at that photo, this is the first step in getting the kitchen I want in the house I live in :-)
    So, anyway, in the name of entertaining myself I found this video, which is fantastic. And I found this trailer which is for a documentary I’d really like to see – anyone able to wave me a copy from somewhere?

  • So, a bit of an update

    It’s a bit huge today, lots of photos and all, so rather than inflict them on my entire f-list, the post is under a cut. But for all of you to enjoy, here’s a picyture…

    So, Kathryn ([info]bluwyngz) came down last week, in fact, a week ago today. Having ensconced ourselves in Slough – funds for the journey to Bristol and back (and foodage while there) being somewhat lacking from my bank account (hell, funds for anything are lacking and a certain NHS related staffing are working at that special speed at which the NHS functions – thus preventing me from obtaining bank shifts which is somewhat frustrating). Anyhow. I was a little concerned by this turn of events – Slough being hardly a cultural mecca – and fearing that Kathryn might get somewhat bored with, well, Slough.

    But actually it all turned out fabulously. The weather was kind to us, and we headed out to Windsor Great Park – on the way there encountering this rather nice picture and then…

    The park itself is pretty vast, considering I live all of 20 minutes away and had no idea about it’s existence (I’m sure someone ([info]jordax, probably) has told me about it, but hey, I have a short memory) and yet is bigger than Windsor itself, well, I’m surprised. Anyhow, we wandered in and here in all their (edited) glory are some of the pics.

    It was gorgeously sunny, and the current

    [info]snapshot_hunter comp is ‘dappled’ so I spent ages trying to get ‘dappled’ shots:

    Given that it’s a big old park with lots of big old trees, there’s plenty of storm damaged trees – with their broken jagged points scoring the sun bleached sky.

    I spent ages photographing this tree, but I never did quite get the shot I was after.

    Of course, since it was sunny++, I could actually use the Macro on my camera. I’ve not played with it very much, it needs a lot of light, and obviously, tiny focal distance. People who’ve seen my ladybird (ladybug) shot from the urbex set know I’ve been playing with it, but hey, here’s some tree bark which had a gorgeous texture:

    So, playing with the macro in a park leads to ‘flowers’, obviously. But not being in a great position (I was on the rather steep bank of a little dinky stream) meant that I wasn’t that great at checking the focus on some shots. This was intended to be a shot of the purple flower, but I really love the way it’s come out, actually. The focus is not where you expect, and the grass looks fantastic :-)

    I debated whether that was ‘dappled’ but really, it just doesn’t scream ‘dappled’ at me. It wasn’t the last time I played with the macro function, oh no:

    However, on the dappled front I have to say I felt this next shot achieved dappled quite well; in fact, assuming the competition’s not closed, this’ll be my entry.

    I won’t say as it’s the very definition of dappled, but it’s pretty much dappled as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, we continued our quest (which was, I suspect, to have a very nice walk in the park) and both continued to snap away with our respective cameras…

    And I continued to play a game I’d not even realised I was playing – I think it was called ‘how many macro shots can you take in a day’?

    This was another shot I took in my quest to get dapplement, but I wasn’t quite so keen on this one…

    One of my other hobbies of the day was candid shots of Kathryn. Sadly, quite a lot of these came out with her being small and far away, or alternatively ‘not hugely flattering’. In many ways the next shot went horribly wrong, but I actually really like the result:

    Shortly after this, we decided to rise above it all…by climbing a tree. I love climbing, I used to scale rocks and walls and trees as a kid, and though there was a latent fear of heights lurking in my conciousness I overpowered it by sheer force of will. Apparently, my will isn’t quite so strong these days; that and I’d forgotten about it until I got into the tree.

    And when I say ‘climbing a tree’, Kathryn climbed, with grace – or at least agility, she shot up the tree, perching high up in the branches

    I for my part kinda scrabbled in – intially and rather startlingly dropping to the ground (having first impacted the trunk of the tree as I threw myself to clear the sign which I *really* didn’t want to land on) – it was only a few feet (about 5?) to the bottom branch, but my arms really weren’t that keen on the concept of me going into it. A second attempt lead to me scrabbling and in a terribly undignified way landing up on my desired branch. Happy I was, and then I looked at the teeny tiny drop and my brain said ‘no Kate, you’re scared’. Having beat the fear into a small mushy pulp I then attempted to ascend… a bit of scrabbling later and my fear gland worked it’s magic again, and I decided to stay where I was. Comfortable on the lowest branch. There I sat, happily contemplating ways to screw my subconscious out of ever speaking to me again, and enjoying the rather pleased sensation of having at least made it *into* the tree.

    Clearly tree climbing is something I shall have to re-skill at, because it was great fun – although I don’t bounce *quite* so well as I used to, and we won’t discuss my descent which left me with scrapes and bruises that had my colleagues at work much amused.

    Kathryn went on to climb another tree, me – feeling a little sore – I rested on a bough which had formed a natural hammock shape, lovely it was. The evening light was casting funky shadows and Kathryn was being silly…

    As we headed back we encountered a bird we’d spent some time trying to get pictures of earlier; and this time we both got good shots of it

    We also encountered some terribly irritating black-what-are-they-birds. Irritating because they were quite interesting, cute and had a policy of only flapping their wings or flying about if you were pointing the camera at another bird. To be fair, it was getting a bit less light, and quite a lot of mine – zoomed to maximum zoomage – came out rather blurry.

    But there was one…

    And then of course we did some urbexing (which I ramble about here)

    So that was my days with Kathryn, in a very restrained journal-publishable not nearly as Kathryn-centred as it would be – way.

    Anyhow, so since Kathryn’s been I’ve been trying to be a little more organised in my approach to the house, and my life – mostly because she’s introduced me to Performance Poetry, some other indiefeeds, and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (which is similar in concept to Radio 4’s ‘The News Quiz’ – why isn’t that podcasted? Grr); and I’ve restarted listening to Coverville. Which means that I need time to listen to these things – but also I need to get on with the house, now I’ve managed to encourage my builder that I asked to quote to maybe send me a quote.

    So, I dug up some enthusiasm and dug great chunks out of the walls in the spare room – and then went around filling them back in – hopefully post sanding (and there’s going to be a lot of sanding) it should look a hell-of-a-lot better. I still need to do more, but I’ve left it two days to try and ensure it’s really dry.

    I also returned Gardenia from the wild rebels to a state of harmonious…well, I’d say democracy, but it’s more of a dictatorship. With the aid of the heavy artillery (namely a 25 quid lawnmower from Homebase, and a similarly cheap and nasty strimmer) the grass has been reduced from ‘field like’ to merely ‘slightly untidy’. The weeds are also an even length now, too. I’m not sure you’re meant to mow beds filled entirely with weeds, but I kinda did. The mower is pretty effective – but the motor attrociously balanced leading to a feeling like riding a motorcycle flat-out down the motorway; vibey. And the strimmer is similarly equipped with the Vibratortron 3000 motor. I struggled to do too much with the strimmer because it actually made my hands hurt to keep in on too long. Still, thankfully the garden’s small enough – and once my mum’s had her way there probably won’t be much in the way of grass. Some, because I like grass, but not that much.

    And finally in my enthusiastic streak, I attacked Brick’s headlamp switch. I’m not sure what made me decide to do that, but I’m incredibly grateful that I did – for whilst my old switch looked in good shape

    That top – which appeared in such good shape hid a nasty, nasty secret.

    For the last few days I’ve had this faint idea that I could smell burning electrics – just occasionally. I’d started to put it down to paranoia – but also started to bump up the list of things to do the need to look at the state of the slightly flakey headlamp switch (it’d made a crunching noise once, and since that day hadn’t quite worked right). I’m really thankful that I did look at it today. The insulation on the connector was black and charred, a big chunk of it missing completely; the headlamp connector as you can see above and below black and charred. The paper’s even clearly started to scorch.

    There could have been an electrical fire – which would probably have been terminal; because it would have been under the dashboard – and just the sort of fire which puts and end to old cars. Anyway, the switch has gone, the connector’s been cleaned, and hopefully things are now sorted. Big thanks to PSL from the Vauxhall Viva Owners Club for the for-the-price-of-postage replacement switch.

    Anyhow, if you made it this far, congratulations. I’ll try and be a bit more regular with my updates :-)

  • House-al Progress Update

    So, I was going to take my camera out today and play, but I was overcome with ‘you should be doing the house’ type feelings. This lead to me… doing the house. I’ve got other stuff that needs doing too, which I shall do once I’ve had a bit of a rest. Anyhow, house progress photos are here.
    It looks like the plaster in the back bedroom is not quite as shonky as that on the stairs, but it’s pretty rough in places. Since I just want to paint it, that’s a bit of a bugger. I suspect I’m going to get to spend a fair few hours in there doing my best impersonation of the filler bunny. Lots of PVA and filler will be spread and then much sanding. I also want to convert the only single socket to a double. That’s about it for the second bedroom, I think. I might put a phone point in there too, since it’s meant to be doubling as an office.

    I think I’ve also worked out the furniture layout in there. So, that’s good. I think :-)

    I’m starting to think about doing much of the rest of the work too. And organising and planning that. Some of it’ll be a bit of a struggle – especially doing stuff like relaying the floor in here (to-be-bathroom), but I want to shave as much off in the way of costs as I can. Anyway, so that’s the news :)

  • Distance is relative

    So, yesterday was an interesting day; I managed to haul myself out of bed early to go look at an EV. The guy had said it was probably only good for parts; but I never trust other people’s judgement in these issues – because often people can be a bit blinded by dirt and grot.

    In this case though, he was probably right. It’s rather sad, apparently there were only 110ish of these little cars made:

    Very sickly Enfield EV

    This being a rather sad example. I reckon it’s had about 20 years of hard service followed by about 10 of sitting unloved in the corner of a council yard. Although the body is glass fibre and aluminium, the chassis is a box-section affair with a big plate of steel on top of it, and that has basically completely disintegrated. If I didn’t have 3 projects on the go (the minor, my pink ‘zed, and the odds and sods on Brick) plus the house then I’d be tempted, because I really think it’s a shame that it’s going to go for parts, but it is a big project. The body’d have to come off the floor, and then it’d need a new floor, new electrics, new batteries, the door, if it is salvagable would need an awful lot of work – it’s not like you can pick these things up down at your local dealer…

    I rather like them though. They have a dinky charm.

    Anyway, so that was a longish treck in the morning – not aided by Brick having a bit of a flat battery in the morning. I have been having this suspicion that the alternator isn’t *really* keeping up – I’ve had this faint feeling for a while. Things like the lights dimming at idle, and this faint but almost certain feeling that the starter was going slower each morning…

    At any rate, it’s not charging effectively, which is another thing to look into. I was meant to be going to the parts day, but… well, I’ll get to that.

    So after the enfield trip I decided I was going to pick up Brian’s birthday present. Great plan, except that saturday in Slough is a slow-traffic affair. Brick – having come off the motorway – was very hot. Traffic was fairly much stationary. We actually sat through two cycles of one set of lights without moving, and I started to get the feeling that the engine wasn’t entirely running well. Then he stalled, in a line of traffic outside Tesco. With superhuman, she-ra like strength I lept out (having discovered he wasn’t in a hurry to restart) and managed to push the car (using a run up) half onto the pavement, thus allowing people to get past. For once, I don’t think I even got honked at.

    So we sat for a few minutes, I took the opportunity to reclean the rotor arm, and when the engine had cooled down a bit, it restarted. Still didn’t really idle, but with some effort I got us turned around and headed home. I suspect fuel vaporisation, which is annoying, ‘cos it’s not exactly *hot* at the moment, and I’m not quite sure what to do about that, except possibly knock up some sort of heat shield and change the layout of the fuel pipe.

    Aaaanyway, so then I walked into town (far more healthy, anyway), got Brian’s present and promptly turned round and walked back. It’s about 4 kms each way, and I’m not the fittest person on the planet (and also I do a fairly active job…), so after that I got home and was a bit tired. Having stripped the bed linen, put the laundry on I had a nap, this was also a cost cutting measure, because if I’m asleep I don’t need the heating on (alledgedly). I woke up freezing cold, and stuck the gas fire on… And then showered, dressed and headed to the strangest party.

    This, obviously, involved walking back to town. And then taking the tube. I am never, ever taking the tube again when there’s engineering work on. I’d ‘budgeted’ about half an hour to get to Brian’s house – reckoning it’d really take 20. It took about 40 minutes to get there – especially when the only option for reaching the Northern line was the Hammersmith and City line, which for some reason decided not to stop at King’s Cross. When I was going the other way on the Northern Line they implied that there was no Hammersmith and City connection too… so I had to go past King’s Cross and down to Moorgate. There was a lot of standing around and no information being given to customers. Or at least, the information being given didn’t aid you in getting anywhere, it simply told you that there was no service on the Circle and District lines…

    Anyway, I got to the party – but the tube situation meant that I had to leave early, which was a shame, because I had to leave at about the point I started to relax a bit. It has to be said that I did have a good time, but it was weird. Really weird. These are people I’ve not seen for 8 years, and I last saw them during a period in which I was not in the best state of mind.

    But the weird thing is that they really have just become older versions of themselves. Personality wise, they were pretty much the way I remember them. But they look…well, like they’re coming up on thirty. I forget that I’m nearly thirty, and most of my friends either are, or look younger than they are. So seeing this group of friends who are the same age as me, and don’t look old per-se, but definately look their age, and are all doing the same scarily responsible things as me (house ownership, pensions and jobs); many of whom are married, or getting married…. It was quite scary. And they’ve all kept in touch – which is quite weird – since they were school friends. Nice, but uncommon, I’d say. Anyway, it gave me this feeling like I’d teleported 8 years into the future. There were these grown up people, and here I am feeling completely out of my depth.

    At any rate, I had a good time, and I’ll probably see them again.

    It’s funny to think of them, writing for NME (I think), teaching and… in positions of responsibility.

    Anyway, I headed home, and had a bit of a nightmare with the tube, missing my connecting train by a good 20 minutes (despite leaving nearly an hour to get back to the station), but thankfully Kathryn was awake, so I had someone to make the journey back a bit more pleasant.

    When I got back (sorry, rambly post), I did try and persuade a cab driver to take me ‘most’ of the way back, but he declared that his meter starts running at a fiver (it normally costs 6 quid back to my street, so I’m slightly surprised by that (whatever time I’ve come back, it’s cost 6 quid)), so I walked, tempting myself with the thought of a kebab… Not that I was hungry, I’ve just not had one for so long I thought it’d be nice.

    So I wandered back, amazingly I’ve discovered the power of ‘layers’ and thus wasn’t cold. Oh, and thermal teeshirts from Alaska and Canada :-) And the stars were so pretty last night. It was a cold night – because the sky was completely clear, and even through the light pollution, I could see loads of stars. And then, as a special treat, as I approached my local kebab van (which, incidentally shut while I was looking at this), two groups of birds set forth each forming a beautiful V in the sky, the light from the earth reflecting off their light feathers producing a beautiful spectacle. The people on the other side of the road seemed to think I was a bit odd, as I just came to a stop and stared at the sky…

    …It was just supremely beautiful, and completely unexpected.

    Of course, when I got home I had to make the bed (*doh*) and I finally fell into bed and slept ’til 7 (thanks body), with some encouragement I managed to make it through to 1045 though, so now I’m pondering the rest of my day. I need to do some cleaning, and if I can get some reorganisation done in bedroom two I should be able to prep the bathroom for builders…. Not that I’ve got any yet. Lucky’s not brought back the spare copy of the plans, so I may have to photocopy mine, or somesuch, to give to the next lot of builders. Bloody sod people.

    I hate builders. Did I mention that?

  • Rats

    No, the house hasn’t got rats, as far as I’ve noticed anyway. After yesterday’s successes, I finally got around to ringing Lucky and asking for the quote. He gave me what I long ago nicknamed a ‘go away’ quote. The architect reckoned that even if the wall that has to come down is a structural one and needs a steel joist put in to support the weight above (possible, but unlikely), then I’d need to pay around £9000. Not that I have £9,000 you understand.

    But my quote? £20,000. Ha.

    Of course, I shall be getting a few more in when I’ve got the plans back; but I am… well… surprised. And currently starting to ponder doing the work myself, again. There are several jobs I can’t do, and what I may do is just get quotes in to do them, and accept that I’m going to have to do a lot more work myself.

  • Lazy Sunday…Mornings

    I have stuff that needs doing.

    Instead, I’ve watched The L Word, I’m up-to-date now, without saying anything spoilery, the telephone-tag episode is awesome; and the next two episodes are also really damn good.

    Since lots of people reading this (not that there *are* lots of people, but a high percentage of the few that do) haven’t seen up to S4E8 then I shall shut up now. But my promise to myself to watch just the one episode didn’t really work out.

    I’m meant to be tidying. The house needs tidying. And cleaning. And all that domestic stuff which I like the result of but have to find the enthusiasm to do. I also think I probably *should* go to my mum’s and collect the ramps, so I can service Brick. But again, y’see enthusiasm anywhere round here? No? No.

    The other thing which has been bugging me in a major way in the house is that paperwork is entirely out of hand. I’ve got important documents I can’t find. The problem is, I used to have a filing cabinet. Or more accurately, I had a filing cabinet that wasn’t full of oil. See, when I moved into the rented place in Gatcombe Drive it came with a big ‘ol filing cabinet. So I stuck mine in the garage and it became a handy storage place for those lubricants that are required for looking after cars from the 60s. LM grease, EP90, and copperslip have all managed to thoroughly coat the interior of said object.

    Hence I can’t really pull it back into the house. So I need a new cabinet – but the problem is, I want a nice one. The spare room is to be a bedroom-come-office, and I don’t want it to *look* like a bedroom with random office furniture. Which makes the ‘filing cabinet’ a bit of a problem. But at the same time, it’s easiest and simplest way to store the vast amount of paperwork I seem to need. Lots of it is obsolete but I have to keep it for tax purposes. So I’m on the lookout for a nice wooden filing cabinet. Without woodworm. Also for really cheap.

    I don’t really like the modern laminated chipboard crap ones, I’m after one of those ex-army, solid wood and thin-panel things. One that’d match the doors :-)

    Oh, I nearly made the lounge door fit. It needs to come off again. The bottom is a mil or so too low, and the frame is well-off-square and needs me to shave loads off the bottom edge. although, looking at it I’m wondering if I should take the plane to the other side of the door and make it narrower that way. Otherwise it’s going to be much-thin’d on one side. Hrm.

    The hub continues to work ‘better’ than the previous one. Although for limited values of better. It doesn’t appear to crash-and-need to reset, but the PC downstairs still seems to limp at anything from a 5.5Mbps – 54Mbps connection. On the plus side it seems to reliably get an IP address. Or at least moderately reliably. However, actually getting videos downstairs is not an activity which will currently occur ‘on the fly over the network’. And seems to take several attempts, for the most part. And a lot of time. I’m not sure why this is. I don’t now know if it’s the homehub, the hubphone (which I’ve reconfigured again this morning – things *seem* to be hanging together still (I’ve yet to test if I’m still regularly disconnected)). I’m just a bit bored of it now.

    In other news, my mother asked me to do something ‘dangerous’ before she left on holiday. She asked me to go to Richer Sounds. The amplifier my dad bought, uh, 20ish years ago has started to get like my own one – flakey. Mine exhibits this as crackles on powering on and as the two channels not being the same volume at “low” levels (not that it actually goes quiet, or anything (presumably the pot is dirty)). My mum’s entirely loses the right channel, and seems to need a lot of fiddling with to get it back.

    But to be entirely honest, she really doesn’t need all the stuff she’s got. She needs a little dinky thing like the…thing…I’ve got. Oh ah. And some little speakers. Loud, but not nearly so big as she’s got. Hrm. I could just get her some bookshelf speakers, and give her my Denon thing. Mhm. Sorry, I’ll stop thinking aloud.

    So yeah, that’s my Sunday.

  • Keeping up appearances

    So, the Viva continues to be a nightmare to start. Well, to be entirely honest we didn’t reach ‘starting’ today. Today we got as far as flattening the battery (which to be fair wasn’t very well charged) and starting to flatten the battery on Rebecca. After a full half hour of starting attempts I took Rebecca to the recycling place instead.

    I’m managing to maintain the pretence that Brick is running by cunningly moving him (by a process of pushing) – so he’s now on that central island at the end of my street. And the battery is back in the house being charged… again. The most frustrating thing is it’s almost certainly something very simple. I suspect that I need to clean a few earth points, change the distributor cap, points, rotorarm and all that. Basically do a service – and I suspect he’ll be sorted. But it’s annoying. I wanted to get the tyre changed, so that when I *do* get ‘im started I can treck straight down to my mum’s and do the service in the garage there. Only, I can’t. But now I’m so unsure of the starting situation that I fear going anywhere except straight down there.

    So, yeah. Homehub, not arrived. BT again promise that it will be here. Each department blames the previous one. I’m really fed up though, of having non-working wireless. I can’t watch stuff on my TV because it all goes through the PC. The PC has just been reinstalled, and needs to connect to the internet to download the graphics card drivers – otherwise I get to endure black and white on the TV output. Which obviously makes watching things less fun – even were I able to watch them.

    The damn thing also randomly loses the Mac now, which is wired to it. It’s incredibly annoying. It’s not getting better after resets either, before the wireless problems’d go away if you rebooted it, but now no.

    In other news, hooking up my CD player has reminded me that my amplifier doesn’t really do ‘quiet’ – on it’s minimum setting it’s ‘a bit loud’ for the evenings… I can’t really afford another one, so I guess I just better get the PC working soon, because that you can adjust the level of the output on it, so it ends up being quiet enough. Mmm. I think that’s the news. Life on Mars tonight, so let’s pray it’s a nice day at work so I get out on time. Yeah. So. Anyway, the house should be okay for Kathryn’s visit, if I get off my arse and sort various things out. I think actually, I’ve worked out how to make the stone on the fireplace sit better. Unfortunately it means I’ll have to remove all the sealant that I did do. But hey. It’ll be a better finished product :-)

    Lordy lordy, this is a boring entry. I’ll stop now :-)

  • Ahh. All becomes clear

    Whilst I’m sure you’re not interested it didn’t actually take that long to figure out where things went ‘wrong’ this month. I paid the Building Regs fees out of ‘current’ not ‘savings’. Which is fine, and actually I’ve only transferred enough to cover me for next week out of ‘savings’. However, it’s explained the unexplained lack of 300 quid from my account.

    Mrr.

    What isn’t ‘quite’ so good is the realisation that I’m now down to less than I thought in my savings account (presuamably why I decided to try and squeeze through the month on current, not savings, even when having to spend lots on car’s MOT, insurance, etc, etc, etc). I am looking forward to the point when the house is more sorted, because then I might get some sort of realistic feel for how much money I’ve got coming in and out. It’s really hard to keep a track of it when I pay for some building stuff out of ‘current’ and some from ‘savings’ and sometimes I don’t transfer all the money – because if I can do stuff out of my income I’d prefer to do that than taking it out of my savings (obviously).

    Anyway. So yes, it doesn’t *help*, but at least I now know where the money went, and I don’t feel guilty. I was worrying that I’d done something dumb, like bought a herd of elephants, or a small island somewhere, something like that, in my sleep. But no, it appears that my outgoings are all justifyable.

    In other news, my Homehub has still not arrived. I would be suprised but frankly, BT’s shonky customer service is now becoming a legend in my own home. They cut me off after making me wait on hold for ages today. So now I’m using their complaints line. I remain awfully close to cancelling my account and getting a phone from someone…anyone else. It is, however, the irritation of having to change my number(s), etc, which is the bigger stopping point. That and the hastle. Although the hastle of my broken hub is starting to reach the level where it’s more hastle to *stay* with BT than to change. Which is bad for BT.

  • 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.