Quick question (mainly for the LJ followers). Is it useful having the aggregated twitter feed on here? I added it ‘cos of the instagram posts which were hiding separately. But if it’s annoying I can turn it back off!
Blog
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Err, it appears to have been a month
So, I restart my course next week (it was meant to be this week). Between that and the house things may get a bit less frequent here. Although they’ve been staggeringly infrequent this month because we’ve been desperately trying to get as much as possible finished…
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A Quick post from the definately not an iPad
Okay, I started this post a few days ago on the laptop. I know it goes on to talk about the chaise longue, but a but in the implementation of the textbox editor on the very decidedly not an iPad (I’m tempted to call it nanolax) means I can’t edit the text at the bottom of the page. Or indeed see it. The idea of doing multiple windows to copy / paste / link to photos is just laughable! But I plan to carry on regardless! I might fire up opera in a sec and see if that’s better.
Anyhow, the new plasterer turned up today, he seems very nice, he’s quick too. Removed the rotten board and replaced the whole bay’s plasterboard then reskimmed the whole room in one day. To those who missed the developments with our old plasterer he decided to go to Manchester rather than plaster our upstairs and we had to find a replacement plasterer super quick. LUckily he seems good.
I’ve moved the gate and spent a delightful afternoon fittig a lock to it (in the rain) so you can now get in and out with a key (from the outside as well as the insid, whichis nice). Hopefully the bike should arrive tomorrow… hence the need for rear access that didn’t require walking through the house to unlock it!
So, I was slightly inaccurate in my last post. I’ve bought a 27 year old bike to replace my 22 year old one. Astonishingly, it’s not an MZ. Not that I don’t love my MZ, but I kinda want something that’s not a project, or at least, only a small project at the moment.
And I’m sick of losing 3rd gear. I could get another ‘zed, but really? I think it’s time to try a different biking experience. And so, I’ve finally picked up a Kawasaki. It’s a D reg GT550 – in blue – so it’s in keeping with the rest of the fleet. Apparently it was a good runner, then wasn’t being used so was just being started and allowed to warm up regularly, and then the battery died… and it’s sat for about a year.
I’m essentially hoping that a quick service, a clean of the carbs and it’ll be good to go.
Here it is in all it’s ebay glory:
This sadly means that the ‘zed has to go. Much loved though it is, it’s also provided much difficulty. I need to sort out some photos and stick it up on e-bay. Although I’ll probably offer it on the owner’s club first.
I am, however, deeply looking forward to the arrival of the blue, as yet unnamed, GT 550. I’ve sat on one before, and that’s it. I’ve riden a four-stroke bike around a carpark and it was a wholly different experience to the all-or-nothing ‘zed. Mostly, though, I’m looking forward to third gear.
We’ve also had a freecycle success. I have wanted a chaise – for quite a while. It’s a ridiculously frivolous item and given the state of our finances on this project one I couldn’t quite deliver. Not least because we, well, had only seen one that I wanted.
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Errr…
I just bought a 30 year old motorbike to replace my 20 year old bike. Um. Oops.
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It’s an actual factual day off…
…which is why I’ve spent it on the house. Err.
No, it goes like this. Over the past few days I’ve worked like a dog (one of those spit-turning dogs (like so) to get the house ready for the plasterer, this involved a 31 hour day on Monday, and essentially working from 0900 ’til ten/elevenish Tuesday and Wednesday. Today I woke up and hurt, pretty much all over.
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More house updates
So, there’s a few quick things to say on the update front. Oh, before I do, thank you all for your lovely comments… I shall continue updating on the house then :)
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And now we bring you some scheduled insanity
So, I thought I’d do a little housey update for you all. And for me, I suppose, since I think I’m really the main audience for my ongoing rambling. Anyhow, I realised I’d not done an update for a while and quite a bit of progress has occurred since the last update…
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Radio silence
Sorry for the radio silence, it’s a bit stressy here (in my head) because:
– I flunked an essay and have to rewrite it by Monday. I found out I’d failed on Sunday.
– Between me and the builders, we both screwed up. We now have to (I think) submit a retrospective planning permission request for the garage. We both, for some reason, neglected the fact that it is (quite definately) within 2m of the property boundary. So, while it’s within the 4m requirement for a detached building, it’s meant to be under 2.5m high. Looks cool though.
– I’m considering applying for the senior staff nurse (well, junior sister) position at work.The stress has shown itself by making me feel like crap, my allergies are worse than normal, I’ve had a headache on and off for the last two days, my jaw is insanely tense and for the first time in a couple of years, I think, I’ve got a mouth ulcer.
Anyhow, back to the essay.
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An EV Question
I don’t get it.
People keep saying ‘oh, charging stations are going to be a huge problem on motorways’ and ‘you’re going to need lots of extra spaces to charge cars’ like this is (a) true, or (b) a problem. For the service station owners this has got to be the best thing since sliced cheese. Charging at this point in time is potentially fast, but not 2 minutes fast.
Kathryn and I currently generally barely stop at services. We pull in, fill up with nasty petrol (the minimum amount required to get us to our destination because it costs 10p more per litre, or more, quite frequently) and hop back in the car, chocolate/nuts/sweets/drink in tow, and drive away.
With the slow-charging G-Wiz, Nikki and I stopped at rather a lot of pubs on our cross country oddesy, having rather nice meals and supping large glasses of (non-alcoholic) drinks.
Even with fast charging, as it currently stands, we’ll probably want 15-30 minutes. That’s good for driving alertness, because you’re meant to take a proper break, and it’s good for the service station owners. If you’re stood around for 15 – 30 minutes it’s all the more time for you to browse the music/books/mags, sit down and go ‘Oh, actually, I will have a Danish with that coffee’. It’s all good for them.
And all this extra space that will mysteriously be required? What extra space? Yes, it takes longer so you can’t ram 50 EVs through charging in the same time that you can fill up 50 assorted petrol cars. But what these people are neglecting is that unlike petrol cars, filling up an EV does not require a carefully segregated getto filled with noxious, toxic, environmentally damaging fluids. It doesn’t require careful construction with tons and tons of concrete and drainage that traps the nasty dirty river-water-polluting oil. It can, in fact, just be a carpark with a bunch of posts in it for attaching EVs to.
The car park that…already exists.
It’s dead simple. Between the noses of the cars, you run your whacking great cable, you slap in 10, or 20 charging posts (for now). You designate a few bays (for now) as EV only, and others as EV charge capable. Ta-Da, you have an EV charging station. Better still, cover the building with solar panels and, if well sited, wind turbines on the site. You slap pay meters on your charging stations with a eco-lover’s tax. Button A is regular electricity, Button B is (at a higher rate) 100% renewable sources. You, as a company, are generating some electricity, anyhow. And suddenly you get to greenwash your company and clean up the UK’s transport.
It doesn’t fix the mess our public transport is in, which desperately needs fixing, but we’re a dinky little country, we don’t need to burn petrol to get around it…
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Rewarded with tired
So, today was a bit of a disaster, in some senses. I was, it appears, meant to be at work for an Early shift. I discovered this 2 hours after the start of the Early shift. Having fled to work at speed, unshowered and feeling distinctly grotty I stumbled through the shift, making countless small errors (I took a patient to the ward having forgotten to update their obs chart for an hour. Having put them on a monitor and carefully monitored them. Doh).
I then trundled home, stopping at B&Q to find out how much our awesomely exciting voucher that they gave us when we moved in was worth. It said ‘Up to £2500!’ on it. That, we thought, unlikely though it is, would be enough for a kitchen. Hell any significant amount would have been quite helpful with the kitchen. See, we have a problem with the kitchen which is… well… we’re not exactly sure what we want to do.
We’ve gone through period(ish) units (as in, either English Rose / Paul Metalcraft etc) re-sprayed in a modern colour; period wood furniture of various origins repurposed and reworked into kitchen units, commodity cabinets with custom doors, a commodity kitchen, brick pillars with wood-framed doors inset. As you can see we’ve been deeply decisive. So I was kinda hoping that, while I have no great love for B&Q kitchens, if they turned out to have given us 2.5k towards a kitchen it would have been easy(er) for us to decide.
But they didn’t. So tomorrow we’re off to look at some sale ‘standard’ units, and see what we think of them.
The issue is, of course, becoming more pressing as the room that will be the kitchen has become closer to completion. I spent an enjoyable few hours under the floor adding in extra plumbing after we somewhat suddenly decided that we actually would rather like to have a second sink on the opposite side of the room to where we put the main sink. This was inspired by finding this in a salvage yard:
