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So, today’s been an odd day. Odd because I bought new clothing. The number of occasions I’ve bought actually new clothing in the last few years could be counted, probably, on one hand. Socks & underwear I buy new, shoes I sometimes buy new, but really other than that it’s second hand all around. And I don’t exactly replace my clothing frequently. For example, right this moment I’m still wearing a shirt I bought on my trip to Canada in 2006. It’s a bit faded, but otherwise it’s survived startlingly well.

Anyhow, I’d seen this hoodie whilst I was looking for something for my best beloved for Christmas, and finally bought it today. We picked it up after a nice lunch at Roll for the Soul (who do a fantastic aubergine (eggplant) burger). A quick wander down the street takes you to the surprisingly quirky end of Bristol’s old main shopping area which sports the old Police station, which apparently contains some sort of pop-up-arty-thing that’s never been open when I try and see it, and CoLAB, which is where we got my nice hoodie, and an excellent print by Martha Ford (that is, interestingly, not on her site).

We then bought far too many books/CDs/DVDs at Amnesty, because they were having a £1 sale. Most unfortunate, but much good stuff was obtained. However, in the process I discovered that my iSort database of books was lost in the iOS debacle, and I’ll need to re-upload it. Which is possibly pointless at the moment because it’s not kept track of the many changes to our library (we have got rid of something like 40 books, and err, bought a few replacements). So that’s a job for the future. Anyhow.

Having got home I then spent a cheerful ten minutes closing off (but not quite sealing) the three chimneys in the house that we don’t use. Because it turns out I was wrong. I was looking at the graphs of usage from ovo staggeringly incorrectly. I don’t know how I was looking at them, but yes, it wasn’t right. Yes, our usage in January appears lower than last January, but last year I kept forgetting to submit meter readings, and if you look at our overall usage it’s gone up fairly dramatically.

The car accounts for our increased electricity usage (but costs have actually dropped because it’s all off-peak ‘lecky), but having insulated the house one would expect our gas usage to have dropped. And it hasn’t. So I’ve been around and sealed up the ventilator that I reopened during the redecoration of Kathryn’s office; just with duct-tape over the unpainted metal grille for the moment, I’ll have to come up with a better solution. And I’ve thrown cardboard up over the chimneys and ordered new chimney cowls to go on the two upstairs chimney stacks that we’re unlikely to ever use.

Hopefully that’ll improve the energy usage, as will the tweak to our central heating cutting down the run-time by an hour in the evening. It’s a 5% reduction in ‘time the heating is on*’ which presumably won’t lead to a 5% reduction in price because the house will be ‘a bit colder’ in the morning now, so it’ll take more energy to heat it up. Ugh.

This is why we want to build our own, much more highly spec’d place. Money’s a complete sod, really, isn’t it.

I’ve also been pondering where to live. Whilst I still think we’ll land up in Astoria, OR, this terrifies me. I suppose it’s the whole thing of having had my dad die from cancer, and the years (5, I think) of chemotherapy and hospital stays, and the fact that I’ve had a delightful week in hospital myself, and a trip to the ED with Pyelonephritis, and perhaps just working in the ED. That deep and abiding understanding that it doesn’t matter if you look after yourself, it doesn’t matter if your genes are good (and mine aren’t), shit just happens.

Getting sick just happens.

And that kind of bill, that’s just insanity. It’s sheer bloody madness. How can anyone charge that much for healthcare? How can you charge $816 for an ECG. It takes me maybe 3 minutes to do an ECG, start to finish. A really complex ECG on a patient who’s poorly might occupy one of our senior doctors for 5 minutes, if they decide to debate it with someone else. I can read it well enough to spot most common concerning issues. They’re charging hundreds of dollars for IV fluids. Hundreds. The damn things, last time I checked, cost about 25p.

How the hell does anyone afford that without going bankrupt.

Of course, the UK is running full pelt at becoming some kind of totalitarian state; with the passage of the deregulation bill a likelyhood, and given that we have secret courts in this country…Good god, I can’t believe I’m writing that. We have secret courts in the UK… we have the police being able to access your medical records without your permission, we have the NHS selling your healthcare data improperly anonymised to anyone with the ready money for it, we have privatisation of the highly dubious already ‘nudge unit‘. Gods this is a scary country to be in right now.

So, err, leaving’s definitely still the plan. But anyhow, I’ve been finding the world deeply depressing of late. The rain probably hasn’t helped; the endless pityless rain.

On that cheery note I’m going to go and spend some time measuring up our artwork because I’m wanting to actually hang it up rather and most of it’s unframed…

* I’d like to do the thing where the heating is on all the time, but at a lower temperature overnight, but our thermostat won’t accommodate that.

Today the gas bill arrived. Well, technically, the gas-and-electricity bill. I can happily say that, according to Ovo, our gas usage has gone down about 8%, which is impressive considering the thermostat is set 3 degrees hotter this year (at 19°C or 66°F); meaning that whilst it’s certainly slightly cool in the house, but it’s not last year’s very cold running the fan heater lots condition.

However, the bill’s arrival has prompted the usual angst ridden reconsideration of the heating situation. Despite having heaped insulation in the loft and strapped it underneath the house; the fact that we have solid brick walls means that this house is never going to be incredibly energy efficient without slathering the interior walls in insulation (or covering the outside of the house in insulation). Neither of which we can afford.

I am still sorely tempted to install a stove on the basis that we could, theoretically, wind our craptastic thermostat down to something like 16 or 17 degrees, and then throw the stove on when we got home. It’d hardly feel warm in here until the stove got going, but we have an incredibly large source of free wood; and the space under the deck would make a pretty fair wood store… However, it’s a moderately large expense now with the hope that we’d save money later. Mainly next year, when we might be coaxed into not switching on the heating until later in the year; perhaps.

Anyhow, more consideration of the problem is definitely required, but needs to occur fairly rapidly because they’re coming to do our roof soon and whilst the scaffold is up is probably the right time to insert a chimney liner.

I’m trying to persuade myself to restart working on the house. It’s hard though, there are so many places that are ‘nearly done’ and many frustrating little jobs that need doing. It’s my fault for my lackadaisical approach to completing rooms. Once they’re fairly much nice and liveable I have a terrible tendency to stop (which is why when you look at The List there’s lots of small jobs on it).

The distressing thing is after today there are only 5 days in February where I don’t have stuff planned and am not at work. I’m also giving a teaching session at work about sepsis, and so one of those days will be spent panicking about doing so. However, I can feel the vague urge to work on the house increasing from the ‘I should be working on the house’ background hum into an uncomfortable sensation that I’m really letting myself down by not finishing the house off. It helps that whilst I was staring at a problem section this morning, sucking my coffee down, I realised what the answer was.

We have a doorframe where the trim piece (all our door frames still have their original 1930s trim) was cut off at the edge when the house was built (to install it around the built-in cupboard). That built-in cupboard was so very literally built in, incidentally. There was no plaster behind it, that’s how built in it was.

Anyhow, I’ve stared at this trim trying to decide how to restore it, because whilst I do have some spare lamb’s tongue trim saved from another doorframe, because we’ve now plastered the wall and the plaster stands out further than the original brickwork on which the trim was mounted, it wasn’t simply a case of pulling off the old trim and putting new on. Also, my experience with this stuff suggests that ‘simply pulling off’ isn’t something that happens in this house. The entire house appears to have been constructed with a “It’s never coming down” attitude, which is nice, but involves more nails, screws, and assorted other fixings than you can get at B&Q’s distribution depot.

Anyhow, I’ve come up with a solution that I don’t feel is entirely hideous, which has encouraged me to think that maybe I should get started on making the door fit the frame.

Once that’s done then I need to go and buy the paint, which means I really ought to go and try the tester pot out, since we’ve got it and it’s been sat around upstairs since before christmas.

Hrm, I can almost feel the urge to ‘do something’. Writing about how lazy I’ve been is generally what’s needed to push me into doing something. First thing I need to do is find the plane; I suppose; which means treking down the marshland to our garage. Meh. Shower, find plane, [remove hinges from door], plane door. There’s a plan.

In other news our roofer, who had been utterly silent, randomly e-mailed today to say he’s going to book scaffolding soon. Whee.

I mentioned before that I’ve recently been abusing my poor piano horribly. Unlike previous abuse (storing in an unheated garage; standing in a flood; causing an anglepoise lamp to drop onto the keyboard; attempting to apply french polish to the front; leaving it untuned for years and years) this is through the medium of me attempting to play.

I am, in fact, attempting to locate some kind of musicality that is perhaps latent in my soul. Well, it’s doubtful that it’s latent musicality; because as a child despite reaching the heady heights of Grade 5 on the piano, and occasionally even getting the excitement of a merit or distinction in such exams, Grade 5 (well after grade 5, according to my teacher) is generally the point where you either have to have talent, or work hard, and I did neither.

At grade 5 I accepted my terrible inability to practice as simply being something that is and gave up. I could kind-of-play stuff that I wanted to; and imagined that without the necessity to practice I’d simply play when I wanted to and that would be sufficient to keep up my skills. Of course, soon after I: did my A-levels; spent my time going out with the newly made friends; and then went to Uni where I had no piano.

When the piano finally arrived in our house, I plunked myself down at the keyboard of its hideously mistuned and poorly adjusted self and discovered that I can’t really play anymore. Quelle Surprise! However, my vague attempts to bring back practice as an adult have been not entirely unsuccessful. It’s hardly a daily occurrence, but the frequency with which I assault the keyboard with my presence has increased somewhat. And occasionally something vaguely resembling music comes out.

But the whole thing is quite interesting, comparatively, because at the same time as I’m doing this, Kathryn bought me Guitar-Teaching-Software; and so I’m trying to learn a new instrument* too. But the experience of trying to do something new on an instrument that requires all my concentration to produce anything resembling, well, at the moment, a chromatic scale, compared to the muscle-memory-being-dragged-out-and-used of my playing the piano is quite fascinating. I can sit down at the piano with a piece of music I played a couple of decades ago (oh, there’s a scary phrase) and despite the years of neglect my fingers sort-of know where to go. Not exactly, but sort of. To an extent that when I’m sight-reading (which is somewhat like going ‘right, so that’s an F…so that must be a C? [plink] Oh errr, no…D. Yes’; anything that’s off the stave takes me quite some time to find) I can let the fingers do the work. They know where on the keyboard they need to be. The reading-bit is hideously brain intensive, but the actual playing, whilst it’s not terribly accurate (at least in terms of timing) is pretty reasonable.

But playing the guitar involves all of my brain, muscles and nerves in a fight of extreme multitasking concentration. There is no muscle memory. Despite me cycling to work with my left arm out in the air trying to practice my fingering. Despite the several abortive attempts at guitar playing. The whole thing has to be done with no automation and it’s a real struggle. If I’m looking in the wrong place I sometimes pluck the wrong string, and if I’m looking at my plucking hand then suddenly I find my fingers are wandering off on their own little explorations of the neck.

Anyhow, I’m basically posting this because I want to give myself a little pat on the back for actually practicing. I realise that I’m (allegedly) an adult and thus should be perfectly capable of practicing an instrument (or any other skill) but; well; frankly I’m not very good at such things and I’m quite pleased with myself for doing so. Yes. Well, that and I do actually find the whole experience of learning vs re-learning quite interesting. So there y’go.

* For, err, 10 year old definition of ‘New’. Yes, I’ve had a guitar 10 years and still can’t play it. I’m aware that I suck at this stuff.

Today I finally tried out ‘New Kintsugi’ (which means ‘epoxy resin and gold dust’ rather than whatever the traditional substance was). I’ve been meaning to try it for a while; we’ve broken enough objects that have ended up going in the bin, but the lid to a jar and the rather nice possibly Victorian bowl being broken was a cause of disappointment; and so, when I came across the New Kintusgi stuff I thought ‘hey, it’s worth a try’.

So these are the preliminary results:

The glue needs to be allowed to dry properly, then you’re meant to ‘sponge off’ the extraneous gold dust (which is very dusty; incidentally). It’s not really a patch on proper kintsugi, but it might mean that I feel happy to return them to service in some form or another. The lid of the jar has a gap in it, which I need to fill with some sort of filly-gunk that they’ve supplied, but you’re meant to do that after the glue’s dried, which’ll be a tomorrow-at-least job.

So. I have the intention of making a nice little video for the Electric Minor Project. This occupies me on that front since I’m currently in an internal pickle about whether to go down the route of sponsorship (having gone to all the bother of producing a nice brochure), or to say “it’s only $5000 for second hand leaf batteries, I could avoid sponsorship and just do it”. Just over £3k seems much more attainable than £8000.

Anyhow, whilst I’m dinking in my head, I’ve been putting my hands to adequate use. You may have noticed a flurry of fisheye, wide angle and macro lens shots in my flickr. This is because I bought a bunch of very cheap lenses on ebay; these have a magnetic mount to the iphone (via a really dreadful metal ring you stick to the phone that’s sliding about and accruing a quantity of filth). The advantage of this particular design is that it will (hopefully) fit whatever phone I get to replace the iPhone*. Anyhow, having got them I realised I needed a way to transport them. I also got a (probably knock-off) sidekic (I’m not sure if it’s original, it came with packaging that looks right, but it was cheap and doesn’t grip the phone as well as I’d expect). So having pondered small tobacco tins, I was talking to my best beloved about the problem and she offered me a mint tin. I had thought it’d be a little small but actually it’s excellent.

The ‘foam’ is hacked up bits of a torch case, supplied also by my best beloved. It’s not the neatest thing in the world, but I did knock it up just before I went on nights, which meant that after my last night I could do this:

Which was quite fun.

I also, today, knocked up a camera stabiliser (following the concepts I’d seen in a tutorial like this one). It’s really intended to be a DSLR stabiliser, but with the addition of the sidekic (and an elastic band, because the sidekic doesn’t hold my phone well enough) it should work okay for my iPhone 4.

I’m also pondering whether to add something like DollyCam. I think I’ll have a play with the free version of that tomorrow; maybe; and with my new camera stabiliser, and we’ll see how it goes. Yes.

Anyhow, that’s been my entertainment (beyond working nights).

* which appears to have decided to become as irritatingly unresponsive as possible, and has decided to intermittently not to have internet access (switching it off and on again seems to fix this, but is mightily annoying).

So, the last time we cleaned our Dyson hit spectacular levels of unsuckage. Despite new filters it wasn’t really doing its stuff. Indeed, in all honesty it hasn’t really been terribly effective for a long time. I spent a while dinking on the internet searching for servicing info, in the process realising that it has likely passed its 20th birthday*, but pretty much everything said ‘change the filters, check for obstructions and ‘ta-da’.

I did. I checked. And yes, as usual the soleplate was full of crap, but that doesn’t explain the piddly level of suction from the hose. Eventually I found an old post describing how to strip the cyclone.

You’re actually meant** to cut away the glue-seal around some valves and lever the plastic apart. I started, but the ABS casing just started to disintegrate, so instead I spent some time wiggling and jiggling and using heat and managed to just get the cyclone bit off the bottom – leaving part of it inside the casing which will, no doubt, be hilariously entertaining to get back on.

Still, replacements for them are around a tenner. Of course, if I break it reassembling I won’t know if it works any better, at which point, is it worth the bother of getting a new one? Feh.

Anyhow, it’s sat drying out, hopefully it’ll be reassembleable. And maybe it’ll actually suck, in the good way.

I’ve also been having a play with the new lenses I bought. I’d been looking at getting an olloclip type affair for the phone, but since I’d rather replace the iPhone as soon as I get the chance than continue using it forever more, I’m trying to avoid anything that’s totally tied to it. Which includes the olloclip. However, on ebay there are the delights of cheap-magnetic lens knock-offs. So I ordered a few of them, a tripod mount, and sat back. Not all of ’em are here yet, but the wide angle / macro and the fisheye arrived; and they’re… well, about what I expected really :)

You’ll have to excuse the fact they were all shot in very low light, and you can’t use the flash with them because they obscure it.

Fisheye:

Wide-Angle:

Macro:

I don’t know what I was expecting, but the quality’s about what I’d hoped for, so go e-bay knockoffs.

In other, other news, we’ve been referred to the baby-making clinic that we’re hoping will be a better experience than the other baby-making clinic.

* And virtually all the spares are discontinued. We’re going to have trouble if any bits break. Though if this has fixed the naff-all suction issue I might fork out the £4 for a second hand filter cover.
** For quite limited values of meant

A lot of my time at work is spent looking after people who don’t need to be there. People who’s GPs were closed, who didn’t want to wait for a GP appointment, who can’t go directly to a ward because the ward is full but aren’t actually so unwell as to really warrant an ED trolley, people for whom we’re performing ass-covering medicine, because no-one wants to get sued.

But some days you get a run of people who are ill, who need the ED, and just occasionally you save a life.

Recently, I had a shift where someone arrived who was so sick that the crew had applied the defibrillator pads, had telephones us with a ‘pre-alert’ and were looking fairly worried when they arrived. And rightly so, the person on the trolley, to use a technical term ‘looked like shit’. He was pale, his breathing was shallow, rapid, and ineffectual. The crew were using a bag-valve-mask to push air in on his intakes of breath as a basic form of assisted ventilation.

For once all the training, all the experience, it all actually was useful. It was not used to explain to someone exactly why we wouldn’t be able to magic up the cure to their 2 year old problem that was suddenly urgent at 2am. The pre-alert had given us time to get drugs out ready, and the machine to assist with his breathing out of the store room and next to the bed. The drugs and equipment he needed were up and on, and indeed in him in minutes.

The best bit of my recent shifts was laughing and joking with this really delightful chap as I took him to the ward. A chap who’d been maybe minutes from stopping breathing just from sheer exhaustion a few hours earlier who stood up and got himself across to the hospital bed. The transformation was stunning.

It takes its place within my mind with other moments I treasure. Helping the terminally ill patient get on the plane to see their family one last time, sorting an older woman out with a proper stick, not the half-assed chunk of wood she’d borrowed from a friend. There are little moments in this job that are utterly fantastic, and shaking his hand and walking back to the ED is quite definitely one of them.