Mostly lemon based

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  • Order of business

    So, the part I need from B&Q won’t be in until the 23rd. This is frustrating; however less frustrating because there’s still a billion other jobs that need doing… Having spent some time talking with Kathryn about it I think we need an ‘order of business’ – otherwise we’re not going to be able to progress on the house in a sensible way.

    This post is therefore dull and mostly for me (or us :) ).

    So; I think the plan goes thus:

    Prior to her arrival, *’d items are things I’d like to do…

    – Finish CD organisation.
    – Unpack Kathryn’s books.
    – Remove centre shelf from cupboard, allowing Kathryn’s light to stand on lower shelf.
    – Sort my clothes and clear drawers full of crud.
    – Unpack Kathryn’s clothes.
    – Sort & file paperwork. Write missing letter to NIContribs.
    – Continue work on bathroom (not in order): Mount wood for cistern, Fix sink to wall, Fix toilet to floor, Paint*, Clean floor of excess grout, Commence tiling*, Finish waste water plumbing, Paint bath feet, Fit shower*, Fit bath*, Fit cistern*, Trim base of door and refit*, Sort out lighting for shower*.

    Post her arrival:
    – Complete bathroom.
    – Complete upstairs heating plumbing (mount radiators on walls, connect up).
    – Commence kitchen works (In order, based on current thoughts): Lay cable for new sockets, fit new consumer unit, add plumbing for dishwasher, Replaster those areas, Paint internal (lounge / kitchen dividing wall) main wall (with fridge against it atm) and corner up to window, buy cupoards, fit those cupboards, remove internal kitchen / bathroom dividing wall (as far as possible) and have gas engineer come and fit gas pipes for cooker and also fit boiler [start using bathroom upstairs], remove rest of downstairs bathroom (take back as far as possible, and concrete up rest of old soil pipe), builder required to fit new french windows and brick up old door way, replaster and make good ceiling, paint ceiling and then paint remaining walls, fit new ceiling lights, tile, floor.
    – Back bedroom: New sockets, plaster, sand and paint.
    – Move into back bedroom; Front bedroom (strip wallpaper, etc)
    – Garden!

    …and we’re done. No problems ;-)
    It’s a bit scary when I look at it like that.

  • Home again, home again, tra la la

    I just spent a fantastic weekend in Norwich; well, okay, 2 days. You have to remember that as a shift worker, my ‘weekend’ falls when my days off do, and not so much when it’s actually the weekend.

    I miss Kathryn when I’m not with her; and so even 2 days dropped into a 3 week stretch is a joy. We had a great time watching films (Accepted – surprisingly good, and great fun; The Science of Sleep – strange, good – but not engagingly brilliant, more good in an abstract way). We wandered around Norwich seeing bits which aren’t so lovely, and bits which are pleasant (and were quite definately not lost ;) ). And we went up to the beach at Sea Palling with her friends from work – and built a sand castle (and watched it destroyed by the sea), ate BBQ food and generally had a thoroughly wonderful time.

    I miss having the sea nearby… I’d not realised how attached I was to it.

    Anyhow, that was my weekend; now I’m home, missing Kathryn, thinking about 2 (and a bit) weeks from now when she’ll be moving in, and contemplating unpacking her books (some of which I brought back, for the sake of convenience), sorting out the drawers and unpacking some of her clothes; and trying to coax her i-home into working.

    *smiles*

    I’m really rather looking forward to her moving in :)

  • Nerves…

    Actually, for once this isn’t a post about Kathryn moving in. Things are progressing nicely in that direction – I have the world’s worst hanging rail which should mean that there’s lots of drawer-space available. I should be able to commence tidying soon; and through an aggressive ‘interesting’ policy, I think I’ll be able to squeeze the CDs that are going ‘in the box’, in the box.

    So, that only leaves getting the plumbing working – so that we can switch to the upstairs bathroom asap. Which isn’t a huge job, it’s just a difficult and complex one. Anyone got any tips for cleaning up Victorian radiators? And connecting them? I think it’s got a 1″ pipe connection on it, but I’ve never tried to use one like the one it’s got, so I may go to the plumbing place and say ‘hey, I’ve got one of these – what do I connect it with?’ (taking a photo with me, as opposed to say, the radiator, on the basis that Kathryn, Brick and my back would be out to kill me if I decided to ‘nip’ to the plumb place with that radiator).

    No, the nerves have come because some of my very lovely friends have asked me to DJ at their wedding. I’ve not DJ’d since, uh, hrm, 1999/2000, and feel a little out of practice. I mean, I’ve done some party playlists; but not actually one-disk-after-another DJd. So it’s a trifle scaryfying. I shall have to get some practice in before hand, but I am feeling better about it having been sat here playing track-after-track and starting to get that ‘this track goes next’ feeling again. It comes back, it’s like when I’m making party playlists; I guess I DJ to myself there, playing one track and going ‘yes, now this one’, then skipping most of the way through it and going ‘ah, yes, this one next’…

    Anyhow, I guess I better get washed; things to do, people to save… ;)

  • Both legs…in plaster.

    So today I ended up with both legs in plaster. I am not joking. Both of ’em. Makes moving around quite inconvenient. Fortunately it was only because I was doing the A&E plastering course; and thus spent a day plastering bits of my colleagues. Tomorrow is the second day and I’m nervously looking forward to plastering arms.

    I also had a plan; I thought I’d finally connect up my waste water plumbing, it is but one pipe afterall. This, however, failed to take account of the fact that B&Q, nutcase people that they are stock the part I need in 32, 34, 36 and 50 mm (in grey, the colour of my soil pipe) or in 40 and 50mm in black. I need 40. I am not going to put up with it being black because it really would look stupid. So.. tomorrow I shall be heading up to Wickes and see if they stock it.

    That however zapped the last of my enthusiasm. One interesting thing though; I turned over the minor’s engine today, and I suspect I have some idea why it’s sick. There’s no-where near the compression there used to be when I first got it. Uh, so, yes.

  • Holiday, Part 2; Photos and House, part whatever.

    So, yeah. I promised I’d write something about this. Anyhow, after the lakedistrict we headed down to Bristol. I have several fantastic friends in Bristol who I’m very bad at getting down to see – and also I wanted Kathryn to meet more of my friends. So, a plan was hatched (thanks to LizBuf who pointed out that the harbour festival was occurring) and we headed on down to the land of Bristol on the Friday night before all piling into Kate’s Prius for a journey to the city centre.

    On the way in we caught up with a little abandonment; the whole of that bit of the harbour is redevelopment prone – especially now they’re well underway with the waterfront developments further up. So the previously grotty and interesting end of the town is starting to be gentrified; but there’s still some interesting bits of fallingdownness. Impressively I largely failed to get any shots of the actual harbour festival; but some interesting shots of friends and some interesting shots of abandoned boats, or bits of ’em. Anyhow, shots of the weekend are located here…

    Next up we have another photoset; this is shots taken from London; mostly around Bankside powerstation / The Tate Modern. I’ve always meant to go to Tate Modern, and actually I still need to go, because we only really had time to look around an exhibit about urban life (which was ace) and then while Kathryn was busy I spent most of my London afternoon taking pictures outside or lounging on the grass, then we headed to St Pauls, and then off to Gay’s the Word (where I bought two books, despite knowing I shouldn’t, but one of them is called ‘The Wombat Strategy’ and therefore needed to come home with me). On my way home that evening I was treated to a gorgeous synchonised flying display from the local bird population. It was just *stunning*. Sadly the batteries on my camera were somewhere beyond flat, and lurking around in the micron thick range; I managed with much shuffling of batteries to loose two shots; one of which was in focus. It was just a glorious, glorious sunset and the birds were flocking and flying and… I just stood and watched for ages. So that photoset is here…

    And finally, in the name of updating you all; the fruits of mine and Kathryn’s labour. This is the bathroom as of today.

  • Building the future

    So, Kathryn came down 2 days ago; and we spent some time working on the bathroom. It’s cool; because thanks to the amount of progress we made I now have a faint hope that the bathroom will actually be finished by the time she moves in. Not actually working; but finished. Which is a step forward of awesome magnitude.

    In the mean time there’s quite a few jobs that still need doing. While Kathryn did nearly all of the hard bit (the careful measuring and locating on the wall bit) of putting up the boxing at the ‘bath’ end of the bathroom, there’s a whole other (rather simpler, but still) wall which needs doing, and there’s then the tile-a-thon. I realised that I was being a dizzy mare and also need to put the sink brackets up before the tiles. While I’m not great at cutting tiles, doing it the other way round is liable to lead to cracked tiles.

    The toilet has holes ready and waiting for the screws that’ll be holding it down now, thanks to a new very sharp drill bit. I’m really quite excited. It’s all heading towards the 4th, when Kathryn will be moving in. I’m trying to sort out my finances a bit before I do that; I went to the bank today for an account review (which is where they generally try and sell you stuff), the woman I talked to was very friendly, and then utterly appalled when she learned how much I’m paid. Perhaps I should print my pay per hour, and then put that up on a poster with ‘are nurses worth more than this?’. Heh.

    Kathryn moving down is alternately very exciting and rather scary. I love her, that much is very simple, and I’m very excited that she’s moving in. But we’ve spent only 10 days together at our longest, and we’ve never yet had an argument. But, I hope (and believe) that anything that crops up we can work through; and I ended up rambling on about her at great length to the financial advisor person; poor soul; who commented on how happy I seemed to be. Which is true; I am ridiculously happy. And I hope to keep it that way.
    Anyhow, plan for today is continue the wood-working fest; maybe collect the bath foot, if they’ve actually got around to recasting it, and paint the walls. I do need to check that there’s nothing I need to ‘do’ for the plaster weekend (I’m learning to plaster limbs this weekend), at least, nothing beforehand. So, uh, that’s my day.

  • lather, rinse, repeat.

    Mondays are always awful, monday lates, in particular are somewhat like drawing teeth. Or being dropped in a bucket full of angry piranhas… the funny thing is; today I encountered conditions I know nothing about; I was run off my feet, and barely got a chance to see anything, but…

    …it was so much better. What wasn’t better was the two exceedingly selfish patients who both absconded. This meant that instead of me doing nursing work for an hour I spent an hour tracking one of them down and the other got reported to the police. I could have been doing something *useful* in that hour. But no.

    I have however come home to my BT Homehub being it’s usual completely shit self. It’s now decided that the PC downstairs is beyond redemption and shall not be allowed to connect under any circumstances whatsoever. *sighs*

    I may set it to use static IP addresses because clearly it’s DHCP server is as effective the rest of the box. Bloody pile of crap. Anyway. I’ll return you now to your normal scheduled programming.

  • Miscalculation

    It’s not like I can afford to pay off the electricity bill I got after Xmas anyway; but I’ve been trying to creep closer to it. Unfortunately I didn’t twig that it would be ‘electricity bill month’; and thus used the money that should have been there to pay it off to pay off the credit card. So now…

    …now it’s the 6th of the month and I’m broke.

    Bother.

    I also need to get off my lazy arse and write to HMGov who seem to think I’m self employed. I rang them, and they said ‘return the bill with a cover letter’; so I shall…

    I dunno, I’m feeling a bit down today; have been since yesterday. Yesterday didn’t *suck* as such, but it was just one of those days where my lack of experience and lack of knowledge really felt wearing. I have realised that I am actually the nurse with the least experience in the entire department. While I vacillate between putting my hand up or not at training sessions when people say ‘and newly qualified?’, I sometimes (well I do) forget that at work and I do feel my painful lack of knowledge at times.

    But yeah, yesterday we were insanely busy. I kept complaining that people should be out relaxing (gently) in the sunshine (well, Ideally the shade, looking at some of the burns that came in); but instead they kept pouring in to A&E. Millions of the buggers. Well, quite a lot of ’em. And some people seem to assume I’m dumb, which is annoying. I was dressing someone’s arm, and the Doctor had stated that we should send him home with dressings ‘so he could dress it himself’. Uh, no, I think not. But I wanted to check what the policy was on that and the nurse I spoke to assumed that I wanted to send him home like that. Argh.

    And when I came home last night my washer/drier decided to play up. I’m *assuming* that the clothes got all the way through the wash cycle. But I can’t be sure. It seems to have died at the start of the dry cycle and went into a mode which isn’t in the manual (the flash lights very fast mode); having spoken to my friend Dave who fixes these things he informed me that the model I’ve got does have a nasty habit of killing it’s drier element, and when it does so it does the flash lights as if trying to induce an epileptic seizure in the user. At any rate I was all ready to ring Hotpoint and say ‘WTF!’ to them (It is, after all, less than a year old), but I emptied it and stuck it on a cycle this morning and it’s made it all the way through without going nuts, so I shall just keep an eye on it.

    Maybe it was tired too.

    *Sighs*

    Sadly, since I was up ’til late trying to figure out how to get my uniforms out so they’d be dry I am now even more tired and facing a Monday late, never a shift that’s fun; and somehow I’d rather spend the day lying on the bed with a good book (of which I now have several to read) and not-doing-work. Gah.

  • yeah yeah, update blah.

    So, there I was contemplating trains. I was doing this as I sat on the train having failed to find a ticket selling representative to sell me a ticket (given that the machine on the platform was broken, and that the ‘permit to travel’ was  demanding money before giving me anything). I’d looked around for a ticket office, and found only barred windows, a door covered by metal shutters and no signs directing me anywhere else from the L-shaped corridor that led up to the platform.

    After an argument/discussion with the ticket chap on the train I got the return tickets; and he told me I should look more carefully because the ticket office was open.

    When I finally got back from the fun evening of bonding with work colleagues (2 cancelled trains and a fun hour of  in the station later) I found that no; there are no signs for the ticket office when you come in the entrance. The only sign that *might* be present is if you go out onto the platform and walk down the platform… then there *might* be one on the door which is behind a metal shutter.

    I’m reminded of Douglas Adams, they’d not really gone as far as *telling* anyone about the ticket office. And given that there are many small unstaffed stations with ticket machines only; well; I didn’t think I’d have to *hunt* for it.

    Anyhow, I actually had a moderately pleasant evening. I’d’ve been more pleasant if I’d’ve got over my shyness, but it’ll come.

    Today, well, today was odd. Apparently today was the worst day to visit the hospital. In fact, because the media scared everyone away today would have been a bloody brilliant day to visit the hospital. Come my departure time we’d had around 80 people through the department. We’re normally up in the hundreds. I saw 4 patients today who weren’t pre-booked in for a clinic. It was beyond weird. I actually stayed late; just so I could *do* something.

    Anyhow, I got home and then I got irritated by an article masquerading as an article by ‘Feminist’ Julie Bindel, but actually by irritating woman Julie Bindel. While I’m quite happy with my body just the way it is thanks-very-much (no Karsten; short hair and a penchant for oily contraptions are not indicative of a desire to be a boy, but thanks for asking); I would suggest that being in a situation where you’re willing to undergo major surgery to make your body something you’re happy to remain in; risk being left at the margins of society and so on takes presidence over whether it upsets Julie’s concept of what maketh a woman.
    While I was doing research for my dissertation I encountered quite enough information about what trans-people go through in healthcare alone to make me feel quite strongly on the subject (along with what the entire GLBT community go through in healthcare). Anyhow; I could go on at length. Every article I’ve ever read by this woman drives me nuts; and personally I think she gives Feminists a bad name. And the BBC’s shonky reporting on GLBT issues remains as shonky and annoying as ever. Anyhow.

    I tend to feel if what you do hurts no-one but yourself (uh, or consenting others) then you should be allowed to get on with it. But there you go.

    So, having wound down I then finished grouting the floor. It took some bullying of myself by myself to get myself up to the bathroom; but once up there I kinda slogged my way through and finished it. I now need to de-grout where there’s overgrouting that I failed to get off with the sponge at the time. That’s a tedious job. I think that real tilers do a better job of that than me, but I’m not quite sure how.

    And then I curled up to read some more of The Eyre Affair. As a lover of Robert Rankin, and Douglas Adams; it was pretty likely that I’d like Jasper Fforde’s (first) book. As it is I stayed up this evening just so as I could read it. It’s excellent….and I blame Kathryn entirely for me spending the last few days reading it (well, intermittently) rather than doing work :-)

    I have the best girlfriend in the entire world :)

  • Holiday, part 1.

    So, I had this faint intention of writing about the holiday in great depth, because it was a fantastic holiday filled with awesome.

    But I’m too tired to do that. So, rather than wait until I forget about it I’ll sketch it for you shiny people, and then give you a link to some pics…

    Day 1 was mostly spent travelling; the traffic was okay, I think; Brick performed flawlessly, apart from a weld on the exhaust failing as we off-roaded up to the hostel. Actually, it wasn’t as bad as the coniston one by any means, the track up is pretty rough though. We landed up at the hostel fairly late in the evening – and despite failing light took a little wander up towards Red Tarn / Helvellyn… the air was just so clean. It’s amazing, you forget what real, fresh air smells like.

    Day 2 and we headed for a nice light easy walk; easing ourselves in – Kathryn had new (unbroken in) boots, and I am well out of practice with walking, so we walked down the mountain to Glenridding; and after a brief detour to buy waterproofs for me (because I’m a dizzy mare and forgot them) we headed  out to the ferry to get the ‘steamer’ (diesel, these days) to Howtown. From there the plan was to walk back around Ullswater, one of the Wainright walks; sadly there were about 3,000,000 people also with this plan, so instead we decided to nip up Hallin fell. Hallin fell took exception to being ‘nipped’ up; and we got rained and hailed on, sheltering behind the obelisk at the top. Once done with the rain and hail, and my boots having disintegrated, we headed down and (squelched) around Ullswater and the weather went back to being rather lovely.

    Day 3 – and we headed to Keswick. Keswick is where most of my youth holidays were spent; so feels kinda home-y; we wandered around many bookshops, a few sweet shops, and also did some (of the vast number of) mountaineering shops (to replace my boots and get a knee support and a trecking pole (or stick, as I insist on calling it)). We also found a truly excellent cafe called the Lakeland Peddlar. My, that was some good food… And I also availed myself of Keswick’s exhaust repair facilities. Brick’s re-welded exhaust remained trouble free…but when we arrived to collect Brick there was a chap who, well, let’s say he was very excited to see an HC Viva still on the road. He all-but bounced, and asked to sit in the car (so I opened the door and let him have a sit inside)….
    Day 4 – Helvellyn. The weather looked hideous when we started out; but the report said that the clouds would lift and the rain would stop and the sun would shine. And y’know what; it was true. When we were walking up Helvellyn we stood about 200 meters from Red Tarn and didn’t know it was there; and had to guess at which path was the one we wanted. We didn’t bother doing Catstye Cam (which we were going to do) because, well, we couldn’t see it. Anyhow, 3118 feet up, and the weather cleared a couple of times for us; giving us some truly breathtaking views. And by the time we were crossing Striding Edge it’d become a glorious day. We opted to walk across Grisedale Brow (where I shot my quick bit of abandonment; this dam), and down into Glenridding – where we would grab a pub meal before making the treck back up to the Hostel.

    Day 4 – And we decided on a nice, relaxing day; visiting the museum in Ambleside; and wandering around many bookshops in Ambleside where we chanced upon a very informal, very friendly poetry night. It was excellent, and very friendly; and I deeply wish it existed in Slough. Anyhow, if you’re ever in Ambleside the poetic justice poetry night is well worth it.

    Day 5 – We headed to the Potfest – a place where we could both have spent vastly too much money. There was some beautiful ceramic art and pottery there; some of it very reasonably priced. Some of it while reasonably priced also very expensive, and some of it oh-my-god-expensive :)

    And then we headed to Bristol, but that’s a story for another post.

    Anyhow, here’s the pics…