Mostly lemon based

Category: I’m a mechanic me…

  • No going back

    So, the Dell and the Apple are both now on ebay. Shinymac and Lapytopy will hopefully go to new owners, although to be honest, I doubt the Dell will sell. Added to the near 100 quid I got from the first auction I’m hoping that I’ll get enough from the Apple (starting bid 580 quid) that a MacBook (or ideally, a MacBook Pro) will be mine. I doubt the latter, but the former’s definately achievable. It’s a little weird to think that in a week I won’t actually have a ‘main’ computer. The RiscPC’s a bit past it, and the EntMac’s only connected to a TV (and not a HiDef one) so isn’t really useable in that way.

    The DAF’s been ministered to, yesterday the throttle stuck open, the kink in the cable caught on the cable inner and it also seemed to possibly be unhooked at the pedal end. I’ve checked it over, and it shouldn’t happen again – but when the new inner arrives (it’s going to the new DAF) then I should hopefully be able to replace it without too much pain.

    This time I shan’t kink it.

    I went to pick up Kathryn after work yesterday, missed her junction and got to travel all the way into London before I could turn around. The traffic was awful and I ended up being around 40 minutes late :( But, it did mean that Kathryn had the opportunity to go out for more driving practice yesterday, and we pootled around Slough. Apart from the incident with the pedals (before we moved at all) there weren’t any problems, but the traffic was lousy, and it opted to snow, which was a little cruel. Today I’m hoping to put an hour or two into clearing the garden a bit. I’m just going to suck down my Chai.

    I’ve been incredibly lazy today. Really, ridiculously lazy. Although, to be fair, it took me ages to get the Dell posted on e-bay. It’s taken days, actually, ‘cos the photo-upload wasn’t working last night.

    As a side point, I’ve been listening to far too much VV Brown and The Ting Tings. The bloody VV Brown song (Crying blood) keeps getting stuck in my head. Too damn catchy.

    And I keep wandering about going ‘Aaaaree yoooooooou caaaaaalling meeee darrrrrrlin(g)…’

    I had something else to ramble about, but I’ve forgotten. I blame the Ting Tings.

    Oh, no, I remember; I finally got around to entering Snapshot Hunter again. It’s not a great shot, some of the ones up there are way better (already, and we’re only on like the 6th photo), my excuse is that my camera dies after 8 photos now. Do I need new batteries? Yes I do. Not this month though, I think I’ve spent my money for this and next month.

    Oh, and yes, my minimal bid is on the shite DAB adapter. I won the amplifier, so we’re all go for taking the Radiomobile to bits. Anyway. Chai. Garden. Collect Kathryn.

  • Wakey wakey rise and shine

    Said my body at 4:45am. I’m not quite sure why, I think I was woken by my throat, and then my brain started listing all the things I need to do today. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) Kathryn said I wasn’t to do anything that might upset my throat further – so my cunning plan to strip the paint on the door frames, and uh, paint them is off*.

    I’ve still got a fair bit to get on with. When the frost’s melted a bit I need to take jejy round to the tyre place, having found that the ‘slow’ puncture’s got quicker, and that it’s leaking from the valve. Now I can point and go “look, it’s leaking from the valve; that’s definately your fault, please fix it”. I also am debating getting an external enclosure for my now spare SATA hard drive (what? why?!)…

    Let me explain. I want to sell the G5 Mac. The G5 Mac currently sports 2 largish harddrives, a lot of memory, a 20″ monitor, a 14″ LCD monitor and so on. To sell it, I have two options:

    1) Dump all my data onto and remove the second HDD.
    2) Copy all my data onto the 500Gb ex-entertainment-Hackintosh drive in an external drive case and then nuke the two drives.

    I think the latter is probably the better solution. Whilst it will cost 20 quid, it will probably add more than 20 quid to the value of the Mac, selling it with two big hard drives in. Mind you, if one of them is bigger than 500Gig it’ll be being swapped around.

    At any rate, I’ve been travelling in the DAF a lot recently, and it’s come to my attention that the Radiomobile radio doesn’t work…

    It did work when we got the car, it stopped working a while ago, and has not spontaneously reanimated itself. But I rather like the look of it. Ratty and tatty though it is, it’s part of the car’s 1970s charm. The plasti-chrome is peeling and the volume knob turns on it’s spindle. But I have a solution. Rip out its guts and throw them away.

    I’ve finally found a cheapie company making (almost certainly lousy quality) automotive amplifiers (but you’re in a car with no soundproofing to speak of). In fact, the one I’ve bid 75p for (but £9.99 shipping) also sports 2 inputs (but no means of switching between them, switches, presumably, are extra). But since I intend to gut the poor wee beastie, that’s fine. I’m also hopefully going to get my grubby little hands on one of the Matsui DAB tuners. Back before I planned to move to Canada I debated buying one of these for the Minor. But they were 30 quid at the time.

    Now, at a few quid second hand, they’re tempting to again be the subject of my soldering iron. The plan is simple; gut the DAB tuner, gut the amplifier, make Radiomobile into DAB tuner. Leave socket for MP3/CD player. And lo, we’ll have the perfect modern stereo in a 70s box.

    Mind you, that’s how it is in my head. How it’ll work in practice is another question. The other thing I quite fancy, having driven the car a while now, is a small amount of illumination around the air vent controls and the hot/cold air selector sliders.

    I usually end up waving my arms around under the dashboard to find them (when driving in the dark) so a little glowy white LED illuminating the up/down arrows seems quite tempting to me. And a little red/blue illumination on the hot air and cold air sliders also seems like quite a nice idea (potentially mounting them in a small piece of sanded perspex to diffuse the light). I’m slightly concerned she might look a little boy-racer though with the blue/red glow eminating from the dash, but at least I’d be able to control the temperature while driving without too much concentration. I’m also slightly concerned that I might get overly attached to Jejy. But hey.

    This all comes about because I need to prepare Jejy to be Rebecca’s temporary replacement while I fit the diff (when it arrives), the gearbox (when it’s ready), the new swivel pins (when they’re manufactured; if ever), trunions, poly-bush the front suspension, and repaint the damaged paint areas of the engine bay. Oh, and strip out the dash, find all the things that are rattling, stop them from doing so, clean out the heater, fit a new inline heater control valve (from a golf, apparently), and potentially convert her to Left Hand Drive (which involves moving the brake master cylinder and associated plumbing, remanufacturing the dash I made (otherwise the worry gauges will all be in front of the passenger), fitting the other gearbox front plate and somehow working out how to lock and unlock the passenger door from the outside), oh and ideally fitting a heated rear window that works, and in a perfect world sending off the speedo to be recalibrated, the revcounter to be reinternalised and the clock to be made to work (a car with a working clock! that’d be a novelty).

    Just a short list of jobs…

    So Jejy may have to do service for the minor for a while. Which is why I fancy a radio and a CD input.

    Anyway, today I need to get my act together and sell the Mac, and possibly the Dell (although I doubt the dell is going to sell). And in aid of getting started, I shall now have my breakfast.

    * Yes, yes, I know she’s right, but it seemed like a good idea in my head :)

  • Amazingly, I’m not working on the car

    It’s Sunday, it’s cold out, and guess what. I’m inside!

    Inside!

    I can feel all my limbs, my peripheries are not the temperature of something you’d normally drop in a cocktail, and I can’t see my breath. The lights fading and I’m not struggling to put in bolts in the half-light.

    The minor has an exhaust, I’m not rating it as the best fitting exhaust in all of christendom, it’s an Aluminised Steel one so it hopefully last a few years longer than a plain mild steel one (before it rusts and drops off). I’ve poked at LJ, Kathryn and I went out for a drive in the DAF – we went out for one yesterday and on hitting 40mph the L plate (a magnetic one) peeled up and flicked off the front of the car, fluttering gently into traffic. Sadly it meant Kathryn couldn’t drive home from the store, so we checked the road today and couldn’t see it… Instead, today, we bought a static-cling one which is living behind the front windscreen – seeming less likely to go fluttering off.

    Assuming it’s not pissing down with rain tomorrow I may even take the little DAF round the corner and get the front and rear windows removed and refitted in an attempt to stop the high rate of water ingress.

    We’ve had a very nice breakfast, in a relaxed and quite decadent manner (Lady Grey tea, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and Parmesan; with toasted bagels and home* made jam (apple and ginger)) before we head out to inflict DAF on Slough. I’ve placed a bid on an e-bay Bread Maker – we appear to have missed the whole bread-makers being cool thing. Every shop appears to have stopped stocking them. The two laptops have all of a few quid between them – which is less great, but hopefully the watchers will bid in the last few minutes as normal.

    Jejy still has a few quirks, most noteably a distinct leftward urge when braking hard. The idle’s started to settle down now, which is nice, it was far too high (my fault) because I kinked the throttle cable (and also because I pulled it too taught). Other than that though, she’s been a good little car, and definately is running better with the new air filter, the new insulated king lead & the insulated HT leads… :)

    You’d think I’d’ve noticed the horrendous lack of insulation at some point earlier….never mind :)

    *My mum’s home, not ours…

  • Distracted by the shiny

    So, I’ve been looking on in joy watching the new Obama led government put a stop to torture in their name, signing orders to close Guantanamo, and generally being shiny in all the ways I’d hoped they’d be. Happily reading good things in the papers. It’s been a bit, well, different.

    Feeling quite positive about the world.

    And my MP wrote back to my previous ‘please vote against this’ with a ‘already was, but thanks’; which I rather liked. And then I came across this: who needs privacy?

    So, today I crafted another e-mail to my MP – I’m hoping she’ll be on-side with this one as well. I never really thought of myself as being a political creature, but as I’ve got older and realised that I disagree with a lot of things that are going on, and I am really unhappy with where the country’s going (in general terms) I find myself being more and more politically motivated. Even though I don’t intend to be here much longer I don’t think that anyone should have to put up with the level of invasion of privacy that they’re suggesting.

    The irony is I’m one of these weird people who’s pro the NHS having a massive database of health records; or at least basic information shared across the country. Why? Because I stand there and have patients who are dying in front of me who might have hideous allergies to the drugs we’re about to give them, who’ve been in accidents and can’t tell me that they’ve got some medical condition or other and I think, well, it’d make sense to have that information available. However, I disagree with the way they’ve done it. I disagree with virtually everything about computers in the NHS that I’ve encountered. Ironically the best (and most reliable) systems I’ve encountered are the early 80s ones with the text interfaces running on Unix based systems. Although ours has a really dumb-ass bug where if you press any of the arrow keys (except the up/down ones) it instantly crashes your instance of the software, which can be dreadfully annoying when you’re hurridly discharging the patient walking out the door at 3hours 59mins (4 hours is a breach, and a great sin).

    But having the government having access to that information? Makes me want to go back to storing all information on paper cards and in little folders, just to make life as difficult for them as possible.

    In other news, the TV appears to be soldiering on, I’m suspecting it was just a loose connector (bad me, should have checked) – it seems happy enough though. I’ve had to give in and order a new HDD for the Hackintosh though, it still freaks me out, that once a 20Meg HDD was ‘huge’ and now I’m about to stick a 1Tb drive into this computer.

    I’m actually tempted to keep the 500Gig one as a ‘backup’ and just decruft it a bit and stick it in a box. I’ve no way to back up stuff otherwise.

    In other (other) news, it has come to my attention that I’m not being as good about ‘doing things’ as I should be. I’ve got a pile of paperwork building up, again, which needs sorting. I need to get off my ass and do something about my (non-new-year’s but) resolution (all the same) to put in at least an hour a day into my development as a nurse. I need to get the cars sorted. I need to assemble the MZ. I need to finish decorating this house so we can escape this damn country and get (me) somewhere I can get paid a reasonable amount for my skills without pimping myself out to any trust that’ll pay me – no job security there. And to a place where Kathryn can truly start the process of getting the job she wants.

    I want to only work one job, not 3. I want to be able to see Kathryn. I don’t want to stand staring at my off duty and looking at the request I do two sets of nights in a month and think ‘well, shit, I could do with the money’ and end up saying yes.

    The wonderful nature of the people around me has kept me going thus far, and I shall miss my friends greatly when I leave this little island, but this little island has no respect for public servants. And working 3 jobs means I have no time or energy to express my creativity. I want to be off urbexing, I want to create the animation that runs through my head whenever I listen to Rock ‘n’ Roll or Trains (in fact, quite a few of the tracks on Today Is.. inspire me and I’m wondering if I could animate the entire album).

    A lot of this is down to me. I sit down of a morning and browse the internet until I’m bored and then sit and watch Blackadder, or BSG, or House, or Hustle instead of doing things that would actually make me feel a creative and interesting person. I am disappointed in my lack of activity. I’m disappointed that I’ve not written the book that lurks in my head. Even if it’s crap, I should have written it.

    I sound down on myself, and sad. I’m not, I’m feeling positive. I have the power to change these things. I have the power to give myself the time to do these things. Not necessarily creative time right now (with 2 cars sick and needing input of time and energy, and a bike that needs assembling, and a house in need of decorating). But I’ve remembered that I can do this. I used to come home after an early and work. I used to make progress on the house. That will start to happen again.

    I’m going to finish the kitchen over the next couple of weeks. The walls and the ceiling need washing down (Kathryn’s started). The cars are going to get sorted too. So; so we all know what the plan is:

    Late days: Paperwork and Development on Nursing.
    Earlys: Work on house or cars
    Days off: Spending time with Kathryn, doing creative stuff or seeing friends or family

    Uh, and cleaning the bathroom :)

    Which I’m off to do now.

    Time to decruft :)

  • Defeated by one nut.

    So, the plan was to do the clutch on the DAF. This is, obviously a simple job…

    1) Remove the bonnet, bumper and grille
    2) Detach all electrics (including the solenoid on the carb, the coil, the ….)
    3) Remove the air filter
    4) Remove the exhaust and heat exchangers
    5) Slip out the engine and clutch
    6) Change the clutch
    7) Put the whole darn lot back together.

    Theoretically a weekend should have been enough. Hell, with enough light and it being warm enough it should have been done in a day. Unfortunately, mid way through day two (siezed bolts, the fact it was freezing yesterday) this bolt intervened:

    DAF exhaust

    It is actually impossible to reach with ordinary spanners, a 3/4" wrench or a 1/2" wrench (even with a UJ inserted into the mix). I’m contemplating a set of S-shaped spanners but I’m not sure I can even get it off with them. I’m suspecting that the answer is: Angle grind off old exhaust (which I suspect may have been badly welded), Replace. Put on new exhaust with S-spanners. Unfortunately this doesn’t fit into the plan of having the car running tomorrow, or uh, any day this week.

    It’s very annoying to have been defeated by a single nut. Once that’s off the engine can come out and we can attempt to change the clutch shoes, but until it’s done we’re stuck with a DAF on ramps with a tarp over the front on our drive. Not really what we had in mind.

    On the plus side, we had a very, very nice dinner yesterday at Wagamamas in Windsor. And then came home and had a very nice evening at home :)

    Also on the plus points, the minor’s oil leak is now sorted, theoretically, and the heater while not pumping out heat is significantly warmer.

  • Shedloads of Cash

    Yesterday I engaged in shameless money grubbing, despite being exhausted I drove for an hour and a half after a revoltingly early wake up call, to go work in St. Marks Hospital for the Feverish and Sickly. I’ve done one shift there before – a night shift months ago – and bizzarely some of the staff were on again. And also somewhat confusingly we’ve had so many agency staff at the trust in which I work over the last few weeks that I knew a whole load of people who were at St. Marks yesterday – all of whom looked very confused when they realised I was out of my normal location. Not only that, but a member of the Ambulance Service who I thought seemed interesting, but never got around to working out how to say ‘hi, shall we meet up for a coffee some-time’*, and who recently left our area to work closer to home, happened to be on duty too. So it was kind of like working in my own department.

    I even knew how the system worked and were the drugs were… which was nice. It wasn’t that harder day, although being one of the agency nurses I got shuffled from one place to another through the morning, ended up doing admission assessments, having my own bay, looking after an observation ward… It was all fine though.

    Unfortunately, it has left me exhausted. The 3 hours of driving after how ever many days on shift has left me feeling drained. I slept in ’til nearly 10, which is incredibly unusual for me, and even now just ache. I need to sort out the exhaust on the mog, the front manifold of which is leaking like….well…something. Although I’ve asked (at long last) about the abandoned garage a couple of houses down, so if I’ve got access to that then that’d make all the jobs that need doing much more pleasant. Unfortunately, it also requires time; time which I don’t currently have. ONe would think that you’d either have time or money, and though this month through a process of working a ridiculous number of extra shifts I’m able to actually look at my bank account and not wince, which is nice.

    There may even be some to pay off the overwhelming debts that lurk on my credit card. And perhaps there’s the possibilty that Charles Ware’s Morris Minor centre might respond to my statement that I’m going to have to take them to court over the ‘restoration’ of Rebecca they did 7 years ago – in which case – the debt incurred fixing that restoration will be somewhat ameliorated.

    Anyhow, I need to get on with doing Kathryn’s present, the coffee doesn’t seem to have kicked in in quite the way I’d hoped, but I am at least upright.

    In other news I’ve sorted a place to sort the gearbox – so the new gearbox is off to them to be reconditioned (later today if I get off my arse) *and* I’ve got the clips to hold the trim in place on the DAF. Woo yeah!

    * I’m always faintly worried that it’ll (a) sound odd, particularly with the techs/paramedics because I barely know ’em, and (b) sound like some sort of come-on, when all I want to do is make some friends**
    ** Yes, I really suck at making friends.

  • There’s greasing to be done

    So, ‘becca’s covered a full 3000 miles since her rebuild and it’s service time. While the newly rebuilt A+ engine has somewhat longer service intervals than the A-series, the suspension, gearbox and back-axle are all original mog and need servicing every 3000 miles. It’s a clear blue sky out there and I’m going to shower and head to the store to get some oil and oil-fiter and bits and bobs (I’m not going to do the valve clearances, but I will ring Southam Metro Centre to see if they can fit me in any day before Xmas to get the 500 mile check over done; because they said just carry on driving and come back when you’ve got enough time free).

    I’m planning to take the fan-heater outside with me (the one with switches) so I can warm my toes and my hands as I need to – because despite the sun being ‘out’ it’s still frosty outside. I’m also planning a quick trip to the bank to deposit Kathryn’s half of the mortgage and such – and then I will get the stuff ordered for the DAF. I’m already going to have to move ‘er today, which is less than ideal, but I need the driveway space. My lax approach to asking about the garage on the corner means today’s service has to be conducted on the driveway. In the cold. Lying on a sheet of cardboard.

    I also need to sort out some means of getting music outside or I will, and I say this quite honestly, go nuts. I hate working on the car in silence, and I’ve done it often enough. I’ll probably run the cable round from the back of the house and dump the laptop on the wall. But I must admit to being slow about getting outside because it’s fucking freezing. It was cold *in* the house (this morning, it’s not now :) ). Outside it’s going to be even colder.

    Work continues to be incredibly short staffed, virtually every day they’ve offered me extra shifts – I’ve covered 2 this week and been offered another 2 – and we’ve been working with more agency staff in the department than I’ve ever seen before. We have had some truly excellent Thornbury nurses, which is not entirely surprising, but it’s good when you see how agency should be. People with plenty of A&E experience coming in, which makes it far easier to deal with than when you have lots of non-A&E staff.

    I’ve accidentally accepted a shift I shouldn’t have though. I’d meant to keep the day open for Agency, but forgot to put that on the Calendar. Ah well, at least I know I’ve got a shift.

    I need to send my agency my Plaster form and Suture form and Cannulation form too. Get that sorted this week, maybe.

    Sorry, this is emensely dull for you. Today’s journal post comes from the ‘Post it note of things to do’ genre. ;)

    Yeah, so anyhow, on other topics. Canada’s been lurking in my consciousness a lot recently. Contemplating logistics, and timings, and considering posting on the vancouver community (and possibly canadian lesbians) to get some input on ideas. Propsects for Kathryn’s job-interests, good hospitals, should we consider living in Richmond – or would it be like living in a giant Slough. Also wondered if there’s some kind of equivalent to housing auctions here – there – just because I’d like to look at Reno possibilities (not yet talked to Kathryn about that) – with the idea that we could live in place A, reno place B (or even get people in to do it) – and thus be able to land up in a house of our own (again) – ‘cos I like having a place which is ours. I like painting and decorating and the fact that we picked the decor, and we can change it when we want.

    I keep having this sort of pseudo-dream that I’m coming home from work and we’re living in Canada. It doesn’t get as far as ‘and I’m not working 3 jobs’, but I suspect that all the extra shifts I’ve been doing are factoring in to it.

    The unnerving thing is that to earn enough to pay off the credit card I’ll almost certainly earn over the threshold of starting to pay my student loan. Which I’ve been carefully avoiding for the last 6 years. In fact, I was hoping to make it, in some cunning way, to the point when they write the loan off (which iirc is around 50 years old). Unfortunately I’d like to earn enough to eat and go out – the two don’t necessarily coincide.

    One quick question though – I read this post in the Vancouver community – I can’t find anything about this new show (‘Paradox’) anywhere online – has anyone heard of it? Only it sounds quite cool – and I’m intrigued ‘n want to find out more about it…

    So – anyway – I need to go shower and get on with getting oily and dirty. Have fun with your days, y’all. Think of me, frozen to the floor outside.

  • le Weekend

    So, despite the persistent sore throat (which has lead me to be worried about whether I got something icky in the small cut I found on my finger during one night shift (and hence whether I should have done an incident form and gone to occupational health); I have to remind myself that I had the sore throat *before* the cut, and therefore my paranoia should shut the f*ck up) we held a pretty darn spiffy Thanksgiving.

    Nikki and Kate supplied turkey, James some truly delicious wine, and us the veg, the cooking space and the, uh, space. Our house isn’t huge – but we managed to squeeze 5 around the table without too much difficulty – and thanks to Kathryn’s careful scheduling the food all landed up being cooked and ready to eat at the right time. We had a traditional US dinner consisting of Turkey (one of the rare occasions we’ve cooked meat, although I let Nikki do all the prep ;) ), Sweet potato casserole, Sage Cornmeal biscuits (anyone know where you can get Cornmeal in the UK? We brought back an entire kg of it from the States – in our case), Home made stuffing spicy sausage and sage stuffing, Cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, Gravy, Wine, Schloer & Root Beer… and for desert, made with fresh pumpkin – Pumpkin pie with whipped cream / pseudocream.

    It was a vast amount of food. We have, as is traditional, a fridge half-full of turkey. Yesterday Kathryn made one of our pet meals, Artichoke and Cheese Tart – but replaced some of the onion with… Turkey. Today I’m going to have a second slice of tart for lunch and some… Turkey :)

    We attempted to fob off much Turkey on Nikki and Kate, and later on James, as well as some of the remaining produce from the Fried breakfast for the day following (Pancakes, Sausages/Beans/Hash Browns etc, which Nikki very generously cooked).

    So much food!

    It was a delight, though, to see everyone and have everyone here. I have new admiration for dog owners though. Pepper and Eddie occupied our house for one day – and very well behaved dogs they both are too – but the amount of hair and dirt they left behind is truly astonishing. Our venerable and aged Dyson DC01 wept tears of frustration as it attempted to suck and beat the hairs off the carpet*; and the sheer quantities of hair that we swept up in the kitchen – well – I am much impressed by those who keep dogs and keep their houses clean. I’ve no idea how you do it. I do, vaguely** recall that when living with Daisy there was an amazing amount of fur-deposits around the house, and that vacuuming was often a multi-bag-emptying job (with the then quite shiny DC02).

    Anyhow, we spent the evening engaged in a War on Terror which – amazingly – we (the coalition of Nikki, James, Kathryn and I) beat down the terrorists (Kate – who managed to at one point have Terrorist cells in virtually every country). James wishes it to be known that while the Coalition won, he won the most*** ;)

    Sunday, Kathryn and I had a fairly lazy day (apart from the hoovering, sweeping and laundry) leading in to a week of work in which my shifts are ‘not great’. Two long days**** and two late shifts. This weekend just gone was the last and final weekend I get off until after Xmas – the only reason I have a weekend off then is to prepare for nights. And to ice the cake of awful shifts – Kathryn is off for two weeks over Christmas – Christmas week – which I’m working (except the weekend after) and New Year’s week – which I’m on nights. The day she goes back to work is my first day off after nights.

    Bloody fantastic that is :(

    The only compensation is that while December is a 3 week month pay-wise and January a convenient 6 week month (urk!) then the pay I get in January should be less painful for it because I should get a bucketload of enhancements. Making it through the December / January months is always somewhat difficult. I am faintly tempted to move my pay straight into my savings account when it comes in, and give it back to myself just before Xmas (an idea which only just popped into my head).

    And, can we all have our ‘make it a nice day and Kate-be-well’ heads on for Friday – ‘cos ‘beccamog really needs a service, and however much I try and put it off it’s time and I should do it. Even if it’s bloody freezing (like today :( ).

    As a side point – changing your name is complicated as a Registered nurse – especially when people randomly say things like ‘hey; your civil cermony certificate isn’t signed’ and you go ‘oh, no it isn’t, arse’. Virtually everyone’s accepted it except NHS Professsionals, which makes it doubly complicated because my name on the Register has now changed. Anyhow, jobs to do today include faxing my statement of entry (from the Nursing and Midwifery Council) to all and sundry and also ringing Cumbria’s Registrars and saying ‘oi, should our Civil Partnership Certificate be signed’?

    * although I think its filters probably need changing again – what with us having had builders in and much dust being sucked through the poor benighted object.

    ** all too well, actually

    *** Having all of North and South America under his control

    **** Sort of my choice.

  • Unfortunate timing

    So, I finally got Jejy up on ramps today; the weather – while not terribly pleasant- cleared for long enough for me to have a grovel on the cold, damp ground. I looked up through the little hole at the base of the clutch plate and gently rotated it – initially it rotated smoothly, but then I got the sensation of rubbing. And got sprinkled in dirt and dust – which looked very attractive on me.

    I suspect then that there’s something up with clutch shoes (it has shoes, not a plate, I think); and therefore it’s an engine-out job. This being the case I decided not to continue with the service (since I might as well do all the horrid things all in one go). I did however spray the other sill with waxoyl… or at least I started. Then I lost the little injection straw in the sill. So that’s slightly frustrating.

    It is an unfortunate and unexpected expense coming at the same time as the TV licence and the Visa application. On which front we finished the first run of filling it in; now we need some photos and one small question answered and then some sendings. Hopefully, after that, Kathryn’ll be able to stay in the UK for a couple of years; which should mean that we’re fine to bugger off to Canada.

    Still, the house is warm, the kitchen is lovely and we’ve got almost an entire sea-load of fish for dinner, so that’s all good.

    Distressingly I’m on nights next week. But hey, into each whatever, a bit of rain must fall.

  • That’s not fair…

    So, plan is to service the DAF today. Forecast: Sunny.

    Go outside to check the weather – it’s cold, but dry.
    Go inside to get jumper. Get jumper. Go outside. It’s raining.

    Pump up tyre on DAF hoping that it’ll pass – ideally quickly.

    It’s still raining.

    Damnit.

    I have, however, looked at the manual and it appears that to change the fan/alternator(generator) belt you have to remove the bonnet(uh, hood) and the front panel, and the bumper. The bonnet is, apparently, a two person job, so I need to ask Kathryn to come and lend a hand; other than that, plan (such as it is) is to pop the car up on ramps and see if I can locate the source of the unpleasant noises – and then to set rocker valve clearances, change the oil, and theoretically change the fan-belt and check alternator tension.

    Another distressing possibility revealed itself to me – perhaps the reason the alternator light comes on, and it’s not charging, is that the alternator’s dying. I’ve never had much luck with alternators, spawn of satan that they are, and the possibility that it may, in fact, be on route to the grave would not surprise me deeply, but it would be annoying. Anyway, it looks as if it’s stopped raining, and the ground’s now nice and damp, so I suppose I should go out there…