Mostly lemon based

Category: House

  • It’s unpleasantly like being drunk

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

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

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

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

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

  • ’tis the end of another week

    And I’ve got my ‘zed back; well, one of ’em. Cherry (or ‘the red one’) is back outside my house, covered by a tarpaulin (sp.). She’s not a happy bike, with a top speed of 100km/h; Dave reckons I should change the base gasket again, but the whole tedium of the job fills me with a longish dread.

    Of course, Rebecca needs a new exhaust, which is rather more pressing, ‘cos her MOT is due the week after next. Despite her leaky exhaust, she managed to pull me, my mum, and what appeared to be the entire contents of Ikea back down the motorway; Ikea now being a distressingly long distance from my house.

    And next time I will be paying for delivery. Hearing the cheery thunk of bookcase-on-roof for the first ten miles as I repeatedly pulled over to retie things and re-arrange things was painful. Getting sprayed with road-muck, stood on the side of the M25 in the rain, retying stuff again (the wind was wrenching things off the roofrack), and so on was really not worth it. Although seeing my books on the bookcase… Hrm. But hey.

    So I assembled part of it. The kitchen, incidentally, wasn’t on sale, so we didn’t bother getting it now. So yeah. I got my tickets though, or ticket, for Metric. Anyone else going? Anyone…?

    What else. I spent far too much in Ikea; or at least, I spent what I intended, but as usual came out with more things than I was intending to buy. Technically, I guess, only the one thing. But…

    …it’s a light, to go on the stairs.

    Unfortunately I need to drill a hole in the ceiling to allow the light cable to go the roof, and across, to join the stair light. I want them both to come on at once, I think.

    And in other, other news… err… I forget. Apparently one bottle of cider, plus incredible tiredness, takes me to drunk much quicker than I’d expect.

    No, yes, I got rid of – or at least, selected for disposal, about half a box of books, from the 4 boxes I unpacked. Which isn’t too bad. I think there’ll be more, later.

    Oh yes, we ordered the Sofas for my lounge, I need to organise delivery (not ’til mid feb); and presumably removal of my old sofas… So, that’s news.

  • Sometimes things talk to me

    Sometimes the house talks to me; it tells me tales of it’s youth in an austere post-war Britain; it talks to me about the excitement of the 70s. Today it told me about it’s childhood; new and shiny, exciting, people moving into a new house, and it showed me something more of what it used to look like.

    It told me about the luxurious experience of carpet all the way across the stairs with thick, high quality underlay. And about years of thin strips of carpet down the centre, with grey painted skirting and stairs.

    And I wondered about those first owners, flush with the joy of having a brand new house all of their own. I wonder whether, when they moved in they were worried about the situation in Germany. Whether they were wondering about being bombed. I think about these walls, and the things that have happened within them, and I’m honoured to be here.

    But it didn’t just talk to me about the past; I saw the future, where people look at the work I’ve done and say “how could she do this?”, and I respect more the choices that people made in past times.

    [More house progress shots here]

  • At the end of the road

    I’ve never lived at the end of the street; well; my parents house is, but it’s an odd end of the street – it’s a junction, with houses all around. Well, stables and houses.

    The only time I’ve ever been in a house that’s at the end of the street was staying with Kara – looking out of her window and seeing that view of mountains every morning was inspiring and beautiful. So it’s weird to be sat at the end of the street, as I am now, the big blue sky opening away from you; I’d never realised what a difference it made, but it’s so relaxing to have the houses sort of in the periphery.

    Of course, when I’ve got cushions on the sofa, my view will change, and instead of the beautiful sky being the bottom and top of my view, the houses at the far end of the street will be there, but for the moment I’m reminded of Alaska and big skies.

  • So, the Kate is the Tired.

    Housewarming is on the 19th; which on the one hand seems a long way away – until you realise I’m still attempting to plumb in the radiator (would be easier if the crappy (but very expensive) blowtorch actually worked upsidedown – I remember my dad’s old one would sputter a bit, but carried on going. This one just sputters and expires; it doesn’t matter how long you let it warm up for. In this case it’s meant that one of the joints I made I’ve overcooked it, because I took lots of attempts to get it hot – and now I’m going to have to go and buy some solder and re-seal the Yorkshire joint with solder. *Sigh*.

    Still, at least I still seem to be able to plumb, although I did destroy two joints and a good couple of feet of pipe in the process of practicing. And then; THEN; I discovered that the joist I’d selected to run the hot water pipes against for the radiator? It’s got a gas pipe on it. Fuck. Cue the most hideous doublebend-nastyness in the history of my heating system. I’m really quite scared doing this, because it’s all going to be under the floor; so I won’t really easily be able to fix it. I keep staring at the joints and going ‘are they good enough’. Ironically I think the hideous double bend cludge is probably one of the best joints.

    But none of this truly explains the sheer extent of the tired. No, the reason is I went out clubbing last night. I went to Heaven (irritating music playing website; just so as you know) – with Karsten, a lass from work. Heaven is GLBT* friendly on friday nights which is kinda what I need. Ideally I need an entirely lesbian nightclub; that would be good; because, quite frankly, I got hit on a lot last night… by blokes. Straight blokes who thought I was cute. ARGH! Then one informed me that they thought that Karsten was my girlfriend. ARGH!

    Then Karsten informed me that I looked intimidating; how can I be intimidating?! I singularly and spectacularly failed to meet anyone cute; I did for the first time in my life summon the courage (most of it, to be fair, dutch) to talk to one lass; who was spectacularly uninterested; although she didn’t really register as lesbian, and I found out from one of her friends that she was there as part of a work gang with their gay colleague, so I’m not sure…

    I also re-realised that my hearing is *terrible*. It’s actually ‘okay’ for most normal things, but I can’t distinguish voices at all when there’s a lot of background noise; and I seemed to spend much of the evening going ‘what?’ to Karsten and the various blokes who suddenly decided to descend on me *sighs*.

    Still, I danced the night away and drunk a mere 6ish units. Cost a bloody fortune though; Taxi, train, underground, club, drinks, nightbus, new train ticket (why don’t they do a ‘clubbing’ ticket that runs ’til, say 8 am – because singles cost so fracking much. Mind you; no one actually checked my ticket) and another Taxi. Oh, and half a day of sleeping.
    I also discovered that they shut the toilets in Paddington station overnight; hence me cursing everything about British Rail as I desperately wandered around the station dying for a wee… Heh.

    I had an excellent time though, and shall be repeating the experience.

    Oh, I also started laying the floor today. Mostly because I can’t finish the plumbing until some of it is laid… :-/

    So tired…

  • Sometimes I’m a little hard on myself

    I thought ‘poot, didn’t get much done today’

    List is:
    – Painted 2 walls
    – Measured and mounted on wall radiator
    – Struggled with, hopefully understood and have correctly positioned the mounts for the gas fire
    – Found TV Remote (harder than it sounds, given that I’ve not unpacked)
    – Moved the TV onto a couple of boxes of books… and then tuned it into my local TV signals…

    This on top of cooking dinner, visiting the pharmacy, and of course doing a full shift at work. I think, maybe, I did get enough done…

  • And so endeth 2006

    It seems everyone’s doing a ‘2006’ summary post; I’m debating jumping on that bandwagon. It’s something I’ve done every year (well, not a 2006 summary; but a ‘my year in a few words’ (or at least, less words) thing) since I started journaling; way back…when the web was new and shiny. Well, actually, the web wasn’t; nor was my website; it was more a case of using up the space of one of my vanity domains :-)

    So; at any rate, my New Year’s visit to my mum’s little holiday chalet was fantastic, kinda, although it got off to kind of a shakey start; fundamentally due to my lack of bothering to copy down all the directions; and my failure to realise that the place was much further down the road than I’d assumed. So, after half an hour of cruising up and down the streets, ringing my sister, swearing copiously (to be fair, it’d been a bitch of a drive – hugely wet and windy – and I was tired (tired enough to have slept for an entire hour on the front seats of my car in a service station)) I had almost hit the point of saying ‘stuff it’ and heading home. Fortunately at that point I decided to just drive down the road I was on until I ran out of houses; and then I carried on… and then eventually found the place.

    Chalet is a rather generous term. My mum describes it, on occasion, as her holiday cottage. A more accurate term would be ‘big shed’. It’s very basic, but warm, dry, and pleasant enough. But the view from the window is gorgeous. Uninterrupted fields leading down to the sea. My mum spent a lot of time talking about my dad; and we walked down to see some of the places he’d spent time at while they’d holiday’d there. My dad was very sick by the time that they started going to Devon; and I think for the first time I started to feel – as opposed to merely be aware of – the depth of my mum’s pain.

    It was very odd, very sad, but at the same time such a beautiful place. And I actually enjoyed the time I spent there.

    So, anyway, we did some walking, lots of sitting, lots of talking. And yes; I had an excellent new year. Today, I think I’ve managed to do most of the things that I want to do through the rest of the year; I’ve worked on my house, I’ve spent time with my mum, and I spent time (albeit not much) with my friends. I listened to new music; I listened to the radio; I read stuff on the web…

    So, really, it’s been a good day :-)

    I hope this is a good omen for me.

    2006 was a tough year; but in many ways I’ve had a good one; I finished my degree – I didn’t do as well as I hoped, or indeed expected, but I did get a decent pass – and frankly, the 3 years of my degree course have been the hardest and most challenging years of my life so far. I got a new job, I moved house (again (sorry James)), I experienced new things, I had my bike on the road, I’ve started to get back into music, I met some great new friends and I finally got to see Canada. Now I know what I want longer term from my life; I’ve got a direction… And I’m quite looking forward to 2k7.

  • News from the Kate-i-verse

    So, Xmas and Boxing day and so on. Yup.

    Xmas – I worked the morning, and then went to my sister’s in the afternoon. This is the first year I’ve not got Xmas dinner, probably in my entire life. It’s weird, I’ve actually *lost* weight over Xmas (which is good), but I still feel pissy that she (that is, my sister) invited me for Xmas dinner, and then proceeded to cook and eat it before I even left work for the day.

    Fortunately I had nutritious, healthy, traditional ‘left over Xmas Eve Pizza’ to eat; so I didn’t go too hungry. She did cook an awesome xmas pudding. Then boxing day, I spent that with Claire and Michelle, and their 2 kids, and their respective families. I had a great day, but I must admit it was a trifle odd to spend Boxing day essentially as a psuedo-family member. I had a great, relaxing evening, it kinda reminded me of Alaska – in the whole – being part of a family that’s not my own.

    I spent some time thinking about my own family that day, and that night. And my dad, and the destruction his loss and illness has wreaked upon my family. Where once we seemed such a nuclear family, now we’re all feuds and arguments and it seems so odd. It’s not like my childhood was idillic or anything. But compared to the disaster that is my family now? I guess I find it all a bit weird.

    My BT Broadband connection / Homehub continues to be fairly atrocious; if you put the wireless bit under any kind of load then you rapidly seem to loose all connectivity. It also appears to need to be beaten with the power-switch of doom on regular occasions. this, once must say is less than impressive.

    That thought was brought to you by ‘oh look, I’m disconnected again’.

    Anyhow, so, I met up with Amy, or more hunted her down in the store where she works. Impressed, I must admit, was not the first look that crossed her face. In fact, the meeting was ‘difficult’ at least, from my side. She doesn’t want to see me again. That, I have to admit, is another new experience for me. Not one that I’m keen to repeat. So, yeah. Her loss, and incidentally, from her revelations on that night I’m quite *pleased* that I’m not seeing her again.

    My car, that’s now got electronic ignition; she’s running a lot better now. She’s also serviced. She’s still not *right* though, I’m not quite sure why, I suspect I need to read that Timing lamp’s instructions again, and the instructions in the haynes manual. She’s definately running better. The handbrake however, remains a bit of a mystery. The cable seems to have stretched, and is, I suspect on it’s way out. But I’m not sure that the rear brakes are really doing that much… I think I may have to resort to the ‘someone with more experience’ looking at it.

    I also need to find out when the MOT is, just so that I can work out how much to panic about the now missing new exhaust.

    Oh, and I’ve painted the woodwork in the lounge…

    One thing that has been odd in my little world, I’ve taken to listening to CBC Radio 1, which is what I listened to in Canada; I’m particularly fond of the Dead Dog Cafe, but generally quite enjoy listening to Canada’s equivalent of Radio 4. But it’s odd, because I read Torontoist, and you start to feel a real connection, or a greater connection to the place when you’re reading the news, and hearing the news, and it’s difficult to explain, particularly in my current really quite tired state of mind… but it’s odd.

    Yeah.

    So that’s been my last few days, what’s happened in your world?

  • One month in…

    And my hands are cracked to shit, my budget’s screwed by a plasterer of previously unknown quantites of evil and… the room’s got an undercoat of white paint. All of it. The room is WHITE. It’s like a special meeting of the BNP in there, between the white filler dust which coats every surface, the white matt on the walls, and the white undercoat on the skirting, it’s very white.

    Photos of the progress at one month on Flickr.

    I’m quite pleased with myself, and at the same time frustrated by most of the ‘professionals’ I’ve worked with, who’ve been late, not turned up, or overbooked. Which has meant that, as a general rule, I’ve been waiting on them turning up. I do wonder if the room would have been finished by now if I’d’ve not had the (really not very good quality) skim done. At any rate, I’m pretty pleased with progress. Sadly, my Xmas present to myself is not to be a lounge.

    But it’s nearly there. In other news, Rebecca’s present this year is a Xenon Timing Strobe – because Halfrauds no longer stock ital points. At least, Slough halfrauds don’t. So, in 3 days time we’ll *hopefully* be on electronic ignition. Or I’ll be totally in the poo. In more biting news, presents are all wrapped, and I’ve discovered just how dangerous care of the older person nursing is.

    In all my 3 months in A&E I got some verbal abuse from drunk patients, but never anything more. To be fair I was working in Bath, which is terribly posh. But still… In 2 months in CotOP, I’ve been slapped, had fingernails dug in, frequently been grabbed, and today we added punched (not hard enough to leave a mark, but enough to be sore) and having a glass of water thrown over me.

    I have to admit, with the punch, the person got told off, right there, right then. The word ‘No’ got used quite a bit. With the water, I just cursed lots (having gone off to dry myself a bit), and then went right back to persuading this (very confused) woman that perhaps she would like to take her tablets (she will, happily, just I’d dared to move the glass too quickly). *sighs*.

    Sometimes my job is less fun than it could be. Although, all in all today seemed to go pretty well. Despite being slow, and very thorough (my Xmas Eve gift to the universe); we still got to the end of the shift, and had time to do nice things. Which is always good.

    So, yeah, and now I’m off to ring the Trey creature (and by extension, the Kara, and Kara family creatures).

  • Reading, writing and arithmatic

    So, yeah. Um. Been a couple of weary days; Xmas shopping is complete, Xmas wrapping is not started. Cards to go to the states, still not sent. Absence of local post office. I take that back, apparently there’s one about 10 minutes walk away – but I haven’t seen it. I am, however, reknown for missing things. So uh, Xmas cards will be somewhat late this year.

    Mostly, though, I’ve been desparately ploughing through work in the lounge, attempting to reach completion; having no rooms to outright relax in is quite tiring – although it’s driving forward the lounge project at some rate. Today I started slapping white matt onto the walls of the lounge, which should help make the rather nicer Dulux red and off-white-brown really vibrant. I have also thrown concrete into the fireplace to raise the level of the hearth at the back to the same as that at the front; it needs a bit of self-leveling compound I suspect to get it completely level, but it’s certainly nearly there – and should be ready by tomorrow afternoon.

    I’m moderately certain I’m boring you all witless. Thanks to A. H. Contractors statement that you have to pay by Cash or pay VAT I’ve ended up paying *even more* for what is quite frankly really and truly shonky workmanship. Much, much filling, sanding and more filling, and more sanding, and more filling and yet *more* sanding and the finish is still no-where near as good as the work my (far more honest, far more decent) plasterer did the first time. So he’s hopefully going to be coming back to do the renovations in the kitchen.

    In other news I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time listening to Frontline Assembly’s track: Providence. You should go listen. James provided me with the linkage… I’ve also spent an inordinate amount of time laptop in hand reading the free PDF of Rick Dakan’s book Geek Mafia. It somehow reminds me of Hiaasen’s work; and is a compelling and entertaining read. The PDF is nicely produced, although there are some real stinkers of the typographical error variety in there :-)

    I really rather fancy owning a dead tree copy (not least because you can’t easily curl up with a laptop, or I can’t); but am rather resenting the idea of paying $15 shipping. For that I’d expect it to arrive wrapped in freshly polished plutonium, carried by a band of faeries sat atop a unicorn. Or in other words, I think $15 shipping for *one book* is entirely unreasonable. Ironically, were the book $10 and the shipping $10 I may have gone for it. But the balance is all wrong.

    Anyway, it’s an excellent book, and I recommend the free PDF, and the book to those living in the US. :-)

    And now, I must away.