So along with shipping everything in the world (USian family prezzies, Ebay soldness) I also sent the Registration documentation to Nova Scotia. Eek.
Good eek, but eek.
I’ve been working on the bathroom… and Kathryn’s present… so after lunch I’ll be going ‘back into the bathroom’ with the sander and a vacuum. Wish me luck.
For those few of you who read this on my vanity domain, the DNS hosting is in the process of switching providers. Things may get a little bumpy (but hopefully not).
So, despite having been on nights, the impending visit of my mother has spurred progress on the house, or at least on the Belf. The Belf being a Daybed/Fold-Out-Double/Bookcase affair of such astonishing complexity that even I am quite surprised by how complex it’s ended up being.
The bed itself is mainly MDF and pine. The shelves that are at the end are more of the reclaimed douglas fir we used to make the shelves in the other alcove:
Now, we were a bit limited in quantity of fir, so between the wood for the belf and the wood for the shelf, that really is all the wood that we could usefully salvage to make something big – and whilst it would have been nice to have an extra shelf on that one, we don’t really have any spare (mostly because the plank they threw in free with the others we bought was split end-to-end).
Anyhow, so, despite sleep deprivation I spent today working on the belf…
So, today started with it looking like this:
And ended up with it looking like this:
Irritatingly, my centre support is approximately 3mm to flipping wide. So I’ll have to trim that down (which is going to be a complete arse, because it’s both glued and screwed into place (for strength). The end supports are similarly a smidge wide. Still, it gives me something to fix tomorrow. When Kathryn gets home we’ll have to flip the top over and stand it up – which will allow it to be attached to the hinges which give the bed the handy day-bed/flip out semi-proper double (double, but with two single mattresses).
Anyhow, tomorrow we get to populate the bookcase, which is quite exciting.
And we checked, and as you can see, the second mattress does, indeed, snick neatly under the bed. Which was entirely the point :)
Also today I went and collected Chester. He’s now got a new (old) front strut, and the old one is currently in the boot, with the intention of being moved to the garage in case we have another strut failure. This garage didn’t swap the disks over, so the brakes are a bit uneven at the moment, but hopefully that’ll settle down. It was better by the time I got home, than when I set off from the garage.
At any rate, as I was walking there in the mid-day winter/autumn sun, Bristol let out the pretty for a while…
So, the more I look at women’s history, the more Kathryn researches for her project, the more I become aware of the way that women’s importance in science and history is hidden by the veil of just not being mentioned. If you never mention someone, they disappear, and like Rosalind Franklin, people forget they were ever there.
And my friend Nikki pointed me at this news report, from the BBC, about Brother producing the last typewriter in the UK. And underneath in the text about the video, it said ‘Edward so-and-so built the last typewriter’ (or words to that effect). But the video actually showed an un-named woman assembling the typewriter, then handing it to him for testing.
Now, I have no idea if Edward actually did build the last one, and it’s just edited showing the assembly of a not-the-last typewriter. But that’s really poor editing if it is. If he actually built it, and tested it, and they didn’t film that, but instead filmed an earlier one… and didn’t make it clear that the one she was building was actually not the last one.
But as it stands, it makes me feel that faint feeling of ‘am I going slightly mad, or is our society still so backward that we can’t say that the woman involved built the damn thing, because men build things’. It’s bothering me.
So, we did thanksgiving. I realise Turkey day has either been-and-gone or not-arrived-yet depending on where in the world that you are, but in our bit of the world it’s not given as a day off, and thus we tend to have it at the weekend, when we can arrange days off, and our friends all have days off. It is a fairly effective system, and this year, the many gathered in our house for an inordinate quantity of food.
The turkey, having had a delightfully exciting, and thankfully uneventful ride home:
Was cooked. It was a 6.5kg turkey this year – I think that’s about the same size as last year – although this year we went with a different recipe. The turkey was, as usual, insanely expensive (we get really good turkey from a very respected place, because if we’re going to kill a damn-huge-animal we’re going to have it treated well before hand. That and they taste excellent), so the ride back before cooking was fraught with terror. That and I also had a large number of potatoes and two bottles of booze on my back, so whenever I stopped was thrown forward with some force. Anyhow, cooking. Cooking was simple and it was ready more or less on time. Again, the pop-up timer didn’t work, but the juices ran clear, and the meat looked right, so we ate it. I’m not dead yet. :)
Many good friends and associated miniature people descended (one of my oldest friends managed to make it down, too, which was excellent), and much food was eaten (seriously, every year I make the same eyes-stomach related error), a large quantity of which was brought by our friends, thus saving my sanity*. The small people watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and later on Nikki got excited about The Birth of Cool again. I also shared my Serbian EP, or at least, the side with the songs we all are likely to recognise.
We chilled out, chatted, digested, ate Kate’s ‘Heavenly Hash’ which is a concoction of cream, marshmallow, fruit, and coconut. Insanely unhealthy, but excellent :)
And then people dispersed, and we loaded up the dishwasher, washed up, and went to bed. Pretty much perfect, as Thanksgivings go.
And then, in a shock move, Kathryn and I also had today off, to chill out and recharge after the franticness of yesterday and the last few days of cleaning. We spent the day discussing moving plans, and are more or less settled on a course of action. The only rather fearsome bit being the price. The beginning of the nursing registration process is a cheerfully insane $469.20 (CAN).
* Last year, I did a large chunk of the cooking of the entire meal by myself, before Kathryn came home. All of the food was prepped and cooked in our kitchen. It was an error, in so far as whilst the food was yummy, I was on the brink of insanity by the time it was all ready, which was also very late.
So, not having a car and living in a city is the way of at least some of the future, I expect. The zip car / on demand rental / city car club thing has been going for a while, and I keep thinking it’s something that we should consider. Or at least consider dropping our second car*. When Rebecca’s electric (oh, the dreams I have) we’ve discussed the possibility of not keeping Chester anymore (not in front of him, obviously). Rebecca is, however, some way off. And as previously mentioned, Chester is currently waiting for parts, so today I signed up for Hertz on Demand. The reason I opted for this is that they have the fun-‘n-funky option of picking up an iMiev and somesuch, but also a nearby collection point is B&Q.
However, whilst my ordinary approach is to work out roughly what I need, wander around B&Q and get the bits (ideally I’d wander around Bishopston Hardware, but I’m in a hurry, and B&Q is nearer). But obviously, only having a motorbike as a means of transport makes manouvering a 2.5m long sheet somewhat more difficult. Some might say it’s an unrealistic thing to suggest. Hence the van rental (and yes, it would have hung dramatically out of the back of Chester, but he’s used to it).
So, having carefully made a list (with only the one major flaw, at the moment, which I’m just having panicked thoughts about), I made a list on ‘Reserve and Collect’ only to find that the reserve/collect thing only works next day. Which is no help.
So I’m going to have to trundle to B&Q, wander round in my (hot) bike gear, load the van in my (hot) bike gear, unload it at home in my (hot) bike gear, and then head back to B&Q to take the van back so I can get my bike back, and ride home. Which all takes time from my bed and bookcase building. To top it all off, I’ve realised that I cut the shelves for the second shelf unit to the wrong size***. Which makes me doubly unhappy. Feh.
* In that imaginary circumstance where both vehicles were, say, working. Or even one of them, for that matter**.
** The second hand Volvo spares place are very nice, very friendly, and have singularly failed to manage to remove the spare front strut from the spares Volvo on which it currently resides. Apparently my order is blocked by various other vehicles which are on the hoist, being as it’s still on a poor old 340 that’s about to be rendered down for parts. However, our 340, which sports a shiny MOT and was in fairly much daily use, and is badly needed for ferrying parts back from the shops to build a bed, that is sat outside immobile because the much needed part is still on the car in the field. Gah.
*** Well, it would be the right size if the verticals were infinitely thin, but they’re not. This is because we went through a phase of thinking we’d just put the shelves up as shelves, not as a bookcase. Did I mention Augh!?
Completely, totally exhausted. No idea why. One minute I was peachy keen, the next I felt like kipping on the sofa. I’m resisting, because it almost invariably makes me feel worse. It has been a fairly busy and productive day though, which might explain it.
So, the items on today’s list were: Replace the leaking ballcock washer, gluing the back of the bookcase back together* and making an iphone/ ipod to valve radio cable.
Having watched yesterday’s Rachel Maddow show over breakfast, and enjoyed the Pro-Obamaness**** I diassembled the 1930s ballcock and ‘simply undid’ the piston*****. It actually did come apart with less force than I thought might be required (although I was suspecting that it would need to be replaced entirely, so that’s not saying a lot). The rubber of the washer was fairly brick like and slightly crumbly, so the fact it was working as well as it was is quite surprising. Slipping the washer into my pocket I wandered down to the garage sporting my bike gear with the intention of going straight out to get the bits and bobs I required from the plumbing place and the very depressing Maplin.
Having had a bit of a mental debate about the issue of how to glue the bits of wood making the back up back together, I realised that really, I’m going to have to do that in the house. It’s a bit of a bugger, because it means that some of the drilling is going to have to happen in the house. But then, taking that into account, I realised that that timing was a bit of an issue and threw the first coat of varnish on the wood before taking my motorbike outside and dropping it.
Yes.
See, we live in a nice house which backs onto a lane. The land outside our garage is gravelled, because our builders dumped the excess gravel on there. This is good, because prior to that it was just mud. I stood the bike on the gravel, locked the garage doors, started her up (she ran a bit roughly, probably because she’s not been used much recently) and hopped on. Up with the kickstand and pootle forward. Only the engine then attempted to stall. Pulling the clutch in, the bike came back to a stop, but now I was badly placed and the bike was starting to camber over. I stuck my leg out to stop the bike and the gravel took the bike rightward and my leg leftward. I tried to hold it up with my arms and force of will, but the fact was it wasn’t happening. The bike landed on it’s left side snapping the end off the clutch lever (argh). It also, I realised, weighs the same as a thousand suns.
A very nice biker who happened to be walking his dog kindly offered his help (I’d tried twice and realised I had no hope of getting the bike up, he arrived whilst I was in the midst of that second attempt at a lift). Between us we got it back onto it’s centre stand. I think from now on I’ll walk it out to the tarmac stretch before riding, because that was no fun. We had a bit of a chat before he went, he used to have a GT550, and commented on what a lovely bike it is, and also how insanely heavy they are compared to modern bikes. Which is kinda funny, because I thought it was just me thinking it weighed a ton, but no. Anyhow…
Having got the bike back up and running (it’s only the very end of the clutch lever that’s snapped, thankfully) I hopped on to go and be depressed by Maplins. Maplins, as we know, is painfully depressing, because I remember going in there and them actually stocking components. Still, they had what I required – a reasonable stereo socket, and a switch (for what was my mum’s broken bread maker), and I had the idea that a 4mm plug might fit in at least one of the connectors on the valve amplifier (I think I want a 3mm banana plug, but they’re very pricey) – so I got a couple of them. Despite costing more than e-bay I decided to pick up a pair of ‘helping hands’ too, although to be honest, they’re not the best ones I’ve ever tried. Nice heavy base, but finicky to set up. I then stopped at Graham and picked up the washer…
And arriving home threw the varnish on everything shelf related.
Reassembly of the toilet cistern proved to be a doddle, assuming it doesn’t start leaking in the near future. I’ve got 10 washers, anyhow (came in packs of 10). And then I sat down, watched Red Dwarf and made this:
It just all fits inside the metal case I got (I went for the metal one because I’ve had any number of stereo sockets with plastic screw together sleeves that have disintegrated). A quick check demonstrates that it works perfectly. The ‘Gram’ socket on our Bush VHF 61 does indeed work beautifully. Now I just need to make the iPhone base adaptor that looks like it’s made of bakelite and we’ll be good :)
I also took the opportunity of being in a fixy mood to repair the breadmaker my mum gave us. I don’t think anything in particular has changed with our other one, but the faulty display has led to enough failed loaves of bread, so I fixed my mum’s… Unfortunately, I made an unwarranted assumption. When I looked at it I assumed (without taking it apart) that it used nasty cheap membrane switches, because it looks like it does. So I thought, ‘sod that’ and bought a push-to-make switch. It turns out that actually, it had dinky little sub-micro switches actuated by pushrods and the plastic surface that looks like membrane switches is just a plastic surface. Still, since it’s pretty ancient I decided I wasn’t too concerned about looks, and also couldn’t be bothered to go and deal with Maplins again. A few minutes work, and a couple of little flyleads later we have a ‘Start button’ that looks more enthusiastic:
That done I went and did some more varnishing.
Yes, my entire life the past few days has been cutting or varnishing or sanding.
Then as I meandered up the garden I was suddenly hit by a wave of tiredness. An awesome wave of tiredness from which I’ve not yet recovered. I’ve been sat curled on the sofa dinking on the internet for the last couple of hours apart from… trying on my new leather jacket.
It’s pretty rare that I get clothing of a decent brand. This is because in general I’m limited to whatever’s in my size in charity shops, and I’ve broad shoulders and long arms which means that whilst the majority of me is one size, finding jumpers and jackets that fit is a fracking nightmare. However, I’ve been faintly trying to locate a leather jacket for a while, but given my ethics it had to be a second hand jacket, because one shouldn’t be killing animals for leather, and then taking that leather and using a sweatshop to make the jacket. That’s my opinion. But I’m also not wealthy, so getting new clothes that are ethically made requires either that I have very few clothes or that I get them from charity shops, or at least second hand.
Having vaguely poked at charity shops, then upped it to a fairly concerted effort to find one, including looking in vintage shops, I decided to poke at e-bay. And there it was, a Press and Bastyan jacket. Now, I’ve less idea who these people are than most, because my idea of following fashion is to watch Big Bang Theory and see if I can get teeshirts that match. However, I looked at the prices and I thought, hell, it might be decent quality. I stuck a bid on for a tenner (meaning the thing would cost 15 quid) and didn’t think too much more about it. The nice ‘you’ve won this item’ e-mail arrived, and I then assumed that it’d not fit.
It arrived today. It does fit, and it is, indeed really a very nice leather jacket. It’s not exactly what I originally went looking for, but I’m really quite pleased with it. So there we go. Now I just need to develop the ability to care deeply about clothing and I reckon I could look quite good. I suspect, however, that’s not going to be coming in the near future.
* So, yesterday Nikki kindly gave me a lift to B&Q to get the second sheet of spruce ply. Sadly, their stock was much smaller than it had been, and to be honest, a lot scabbier. It’s not intended to be furniture grade, and much of it was poorly filled with streaks of nastyness. The one I selected in the end also has scabby filled bits, but it was the best of the top few. I got it cut to size and we wandered out to Nikki’s Leaf (since Chester is not moving until we get a new strut). We tried a few angles, but were prevented by the narrowness of the rear door from getting it in**. I thought it was bendier than it is (it’s not really very bendy at all), and so having attempted every orientation of I took it back into the store and had it cut in half. It is, of course, now, 3 mm narrower than it was intended to be. Which is a bit of a bugger, but not as much of a bugger as the massive error I’ve made***.
** I can picture my dad’s rant now; he very politely destroyed every point that a Vauxhall salesperson had about why the then new Vectra was better than his few year-old Cavalier was. The only reason we were debating it is my dad had been made redundant, and whilst he still had a massive GM discount he thought it might be worth replacing the car. Having decided the Vectra was even worse than the Cavalier (which was not really as good as the Mk II Escort, but wasn’t nearly so rusty) he decided that he’d rather keep the Cav, which went on to do nearly quarter of a million miles before we sold it.
*** So, I thought there was more space around the bookcase than there actually was. So when I made the plinth, I made it a bit bigger than the case itself, to make it look nice. Like a proper bookcase, I thought. I just went and measured the gap (yes, you can all say “shouldn’t you have done that first”, but honestly, I thought it was bigger’n that) and will need to trim the ends off my plinth. Not a lot, but the nice end pieces I made? They’re going to be coming off tomorrow :(
**** Whilst I have a multitude of reservations about Obama, the choice between Obama and Romney was, to me at least, do you want someone who seems to be very competent, even if his record on civil liberties is no where near where you’d like it to be, or would you like an incompetent pathological liar. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t object to Romney near as much if he actually stood by any position long enough to question him on it. Or admitted that he’d changed his mind. But he appears unaware of the fact that we now have the awesome technology to play back tape of him, and see what he said before and compare it to his random new position. Ah well, all done now :)
***** Whenever someone says ‘simply undo’ or ‘with a light tap’ you know that it’s bollocks, don’t you. You know that you’re going to be using molegrips and monkey wrenches or club hammers and your sharpest chisel and all the force you can muster.
So, today I’ve varnished the shelves (on one side). I will leave them to dry overnight, then tomorrow varnish the other side, and then it should be assembly time. Which is exciting. I’ve got a few holes to drill first (44 on the uprights and shelves, in total, then a few on the back panel (which will be glued/screwed to the shelves). I’m a bit worried about this now, I know that my shelf edges are not as square as I’d like. They’re pretty good, but I’m not sure how the whole thing will fit together. All I can do is assemble it and pray.
Anyhow, that’s for tomorrow. Nikki kindly said she’d give me a lift to B&Q this evening to get another sheet of spruce, which we’ll have to gently bend to get into her car, in exchange for some piano time (the appallingly out of tune piano is available for her playing pleasure).
That cut and varnished and drilled should be the last of the preassembly jobs.
In other news, Chester’s new leg is sort of ordered (a used parts volvo specialist is taking it off one of their parts cars tomorrow), and assuming that leg is in good condition it’s going to wing its way to us (by courier) and lo, Chester will be mobile again. We will also be the ‘proud’ owners of two dead legs which we can get new cups welded onto, should we have any further disasters. I’m hoping, though, that in the next year we’ll be leaving and it won’t be an issue.
It took a while to find a place that had one though, apparently the drift kids are using up all the spares, and our poor benighted 340 is being left high and dry. Shame, it’s a really excellent vehicle. Granted it runs on dead dinosaur, but still, as petrol cars go I’ve very little to say against it.
I’ve also cleaned up a bit, swept the lounge floor, done two loads of laundry, replaced the capacitor in the amp that I’d failed to do last time, repaired Kathryn’s iPhone (she’d knocked it off her bedside table and the power button had jammed in. Unfortunately, as it’s been apart several times before it’s now getting a bit… sloppy). I’ve also installed the iOS 5 ‘update’ for the phone (totally unsupported).
The purpose of this was to try and get it so that Kathryn could install newer apps on it. However, it seems that the update leaves the phone reporting itself as version 3.1.3, which is a bit of a shame. Still, it’s working again now, so that’s a step up on where it was yesterday :)
And that’s my day… how’s your day been?
So, as a consequence of my job I got to spend today at an inquest. Obviously I’m not going to talk about the inquest, or the evidence, or whathave you. Whilst it was an open inquest and anyone could have attended, I don’t think it’s terribly appropriate to discuss these things here. What I can (and do) say is that having been grilled on the stand about triage and care and decisions I made 2 years ago was less fun than I imagined. Having the relatives asking questions of you and wanting answers that you sadly cannot give them, that’s no fun either.
As someone who was involved briefly with the patient in question, well, it was weird to consider that the time I met this individual in life was far more brief than the amount of time I spent discussing the individual post-mortem. As I say, not fun. And now I’m worrying about my documentation for many of my other patients, the adequacy of which, if it came to court, now concerns me. Because my 15 minute or so, total, interaction with the patient was dissected and examined like some kind of specimen under a microscope, and what saved me spending the whole session stating “my normal practice is…” despite my appalling memory was the fact that the notes were adequate to draw a witness statement, which was enough to jog enough of my memory to enable me to actually discuss the events adequately.
Anyhow, enough about that, because it’s stressful. In other news, Chester had been producing a faint burning smell for a couple of days, intermittently, and we hadn’t managed to find the source. I’d come to the conclusion that I might have to take the dash apart and check the condition of the wiring behind, because it smelt like hot / melting insulation.
When I was en-route to the court today I noticed a significant quantity of smoke coming from the car as I pelted up the stretch of 60 limit, and pulling up to the court could distinctly smell melting plastic, but not locate the source of the smell which appeared to be somewhere engine bay related, and definitely not in the passenger cabin. Having had another look around the car I headed home, intermittently, again, smelling hot/melting rubber. Finally I got home, got changed, and poked in the engine bay, then laid under the car hunting for the source of the odour. Just as I was sliding myself out I glanced up at the suspension strut. Last year, you may recall, Chester’s suspension failed fairly dramatically slicing a tyre all the way around it’s rim. This time it’s not made it through the tyre, although the tyre has definitely had it. I’m slightly afraid to pull the car off the kerb I pulled it up onto, so I could examine it without too much difficulty, and without dragging the ramps out, because I’m slightly afraid that the tyre will go ‘Bang’ when I do.
This does, of course, mean we’re now sans car (again), and also that I get to play ‘track down the obscure part for the 25 year old car’ again. Volvo, last I heard, could supply these, but at 200 quid a throw. Which seems excessive on a car that cost £270 quid. So tomorrow I’ll do some ringing around, and hopefully get it shipped here, and then he’ll be mobile again.
It’s funny, because I looked at it a few times around the time of the incident, and had thought about rechecking it, but assumed that it was less likely to fail being on the side away from puddles. I was, clearly, wrong. It’s more irritating because we’ve got through a ridiculous number of tyres on the Volvo, none of which have actually worn out. Punctures destroyed two tyres, the failing struts have now destroyed another two. I think we treated him to all new tyres when we got him, so this rate of attrition is really rather sad. We’ve only done 40k miles in him!
Anyhow.
In other news, I’ve been doing more woodworking. Or what I consider woodworking, and everyone else would presumably consider causing wood torment and pain.
This:
is what we started with, and what we’re ending with. That, on the left, is one of the few bits of unplaned, un prepped douglas fir. That, complete with price tag, is what we bought to build the book cases. The back is made of spruce ply, which is what B&Q stock. (more…)
So, at some point soon I’m hoping to take this whoooole site down (not LJ, obvs. My vanity domain), do some tinkerings, and pop it up new, fresh and shiny. Well, that may be over stating things. But a fresh install of WP, hopefully with multiple site support working because the highly cludgy multiple instances of WordPress solution that I’ve been using does not make me happy.
The main reason for this, though, is that I am wanting to put in place a blog for the Minor’s EV conversion. Hopefully it’ll hold links-to-videos and progress reports, and so on.
It’s pretty rare that I do this. The last time was in 2004, the old site before I really made the switch to using WordPress still lurks in the background* (visit it before it’s gone). Before that it would have been a couple of years. I used to be more of a web design junkie, but as we moved away from straight HTML I stopped keeping up.
CSS is something I’m not familiar enough with to design sites at the moment…
Anyhow. There may be outage, just so you know. I’m sure you’ll all be able to cope though.
* I still rate that design. I know the technology has moved on vastly, but I still think that it was a neatly simple layout. And incredibly a piece of my design that hasn’t aged terribly. IMHO.