Mostly lemon based

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  • Ah, public transport

    It appears Kathryn’s been delayed, so as I fill time waiting for her to arrive…

    From the BBC news site, they’ve clearly employed some specialists in stating the obvious:

    BBC weather forecaster Kirsty McCabe said: “We have had some quite extraordinary rainfall.”

    Well, I never. Really? It’s unusual to have landslides and have our towns underwater? That’s not normal? Gosh.

    And from the highways agency this startling piece of information:

    “The Highways Agency has warned rain and spray can reduce visibility”

    Good lord, really?

  • It’s been raining

    So, I had one of the most surreal mornings in the ED that I’ve ever had. From kicking out the two patients who were there when I arrived (at 0700) until 1100 I didn’t see a patient.

    I was then, going to rant about the fact that there’s this one nurse at work who while nice to me with everyone else seems to like to attack me whenever she takes over any of my patients; and the 30 seconds with her made me feel like crap for my entire journey home. Hell, I’ve been sat here alternately ranting and wanting to curl up because of what she said. Mostly ranting, because as I’ve thought about it I’ve realised that yes; I didn’t do the bloke’s resps for the 25 minutes he was in my care. But the fact he’d not had obs written on his chart? Well, I’d done them, they’re recorded on the nice machine, and given that she didn’t bother to hand him over to me, nor give me any help, and that I’d done her a favour by ECGing him (he was having some sort of cardiac event), and organised, and moved him to the Resus room; I’d given the drugs he needed and so on…

    …She can sit, and indeed swivel. Yes, I should have done his resps, but quite frankly, he needed drugs I’d never given before and I needed to check doses and routes and side effects and indeed what they did before giving them. The fact he had no obs recorded for an hour? That’s *not* my fault, I had him in resus for 25 minutes. The time before that? She should’ve done and recorded them, thanks very much. ‘course it must be hard being so perfect all the time.

    Anyhow, the whining though is much reduced by the fact that I’ve just discovered that my mum’s house is flooded out and I’ve got to head down there to see what we can save / recover / how bad it is. Wish me luck.

  • Dolls in pram ≠ Brick

    So, today was a bit insane. At least, I thought it was insane.

    I’m not sure why, but the nurse in charge decided I should be 1st in in Resus. This was actually good, in a lot of ways; because I much more enjoy and am much better when I’m thrown in at the deep end.

    But it was scary++ because, well, not only do I have only a limited clue as to what I’m doing; but also I’ve got next to no Emergency skills. I can’t take blood (although hopefully I can do my assessment this week), I can’t give IV’s unsupervised, I can’t cannulate, and I can’t plaster….

    So it was a bit interesting. I got very good at saying “could you possibly…”

    And “no, but I’ll get someone who can”.

    Thankfully someone much more experienced came in for the Trauma call (a chap with extensive burns). And I stuck to my chest pains, and self-harmers. I did meet a genuine bona-fide gangster; at least according to himself… I must admit when he self discharged I really didn’t care that much…

    After my shift I drove home, although there was a brief pause because Brick randomly decided he didn’t like the rust syrup masquerading as coolant, and thus spat it out. I’ve only seen a car-spitting-out-coolant-old-style once before (Nikki’s Mog) and it’s quite impressive. There was steam pouring (and I do mean pouring) out from the bonnet, from the back of the bonnet (where the vents are) and when I opened it there was a whoosh of more steam. So I shall *change* the coolant before heading up North; although I shan’t flush it.

    It seemed fine after slopping some fresh coolant in so it was probably a stuck thermostat. But I shall be paranoid’ly observing it.

    I finally, incidentally, got my shot in for Snapshot Hunter; ‘ve stuck it below, and I’m quite pleased with it… I’ve got a whole bundle more from the weekend with Kathryn, but I shall maybe upload them tomorrow.

    And to take you into the evening, here’s some links: Funny. Scary.

  • Demonstrable progression

    So, I mentioned the oil leak, but I didn’t mention the coolant. The coolant in the Viva appears to be made by a careful process of combining iron oxide and stale water, and then leaving it standing for; say; 5 or 10 years.
    This is obviously less than ideal. i have, in fact, since I had the car, been intending to flush the cooling system with some coolant flush and then change it for nice fresh shiny coolant. I may even do it twice.

    However, doing so before the trip to the Lakes whilst it seems in many ways a great plan (big stressful journey) invites my paranoia gremlin to pop out. See, last time I took Rebecca to the lakes, and just prior to the trip I flushed the coolant. The car then developed a leak (presumably some shifting bit of rust free’d it) and then in desparation I threw rad-weld in. Rad weld combined the remaining rust to clog up an already knackered coolant line and I got a very dead engine.

    So, paranoia says ‘don’t fiddle with it, it’s working’. So I’ve decided not to. Who can say if it’s the right decision. But since the coolant will probably have to be drained for the oil-leak-solution then I may save it for then.

    Completely unrelated to that is the fact that I made Raspberry and Apple crumble. Well. We’ll see if I made it, if it’s hideous I’ve just wasted nearly 500g of Raspberries. Sadly since they were picked at the weekend, quite a lot of them had gone manky. I think actually it’s because a few of them were just beyond perfectly ripe; and having turned into moudlyberries they were in close contact with many other berries. In the end I think almost 1/4 were inedible. Or at least, I chose not to trust them. Hence it becoming Raspberry and Apple crumble.

    I’m just waiting on dinner coming out of the oven; then the oven needs to cool down a bit; and then I shall have pie!

    Well, crumble.

    It’s weird to cook after so long not cooking. And nice. I miss having a nice kitchen; but frankly I’ve got sod all to complain about really. In fact there’s been some good house news; the woodworm is apparently not active enough to be worth treating. He reckoned it’s an old infestation with some residual activity; basically. And that all houses this age will have that kind of level of activity; most of it where you can’t see. Given the doubled joists, it’s not worth treating it, apparently. I may treat the bits I can still get to,  anyhow.

    I’ve also started grouting. I’d forgotten that I really don’t enjoy grouting much. How I could forget this I’m not sure, but I had. Still, about 1/3rd of the floor is grouted, the last tile is cut and down… So, all is good.

  • I must have been busy

    I thought to myself, it’s a while since I’ve updated; I’ve been reading but for the most part been too busy or too tired (or most commonly both) to get around to actually updating. Thing is, my life has become insanely normal. I go to work (knackering, but exactly what I want to do); I come home and do DIY and I talk to bluwyngz. I’ve got tons of work that needs doing, bills that need paying, forms that need to be sent off, and I struggle through doing them.

    Brick continues to ferry me to and from work; although the oil leak does seem to be getting worse, which is faintly concerning. I shall soon be getting him steam cleaned so we can work out where the engine oil is leaking *from*; and from there hopefully work out how to fix it.

    Kathryn came back from Romania and we had a fantastic time together; she was incredibly patient when the batteries in my mom’s EV died, and we had to come back on the back of a recovery truck. We went out and picked Raspberries; which I need to cook today; and we made it out to another bit of Slough area green space. We were also quite homey, and went to B&Q (think Home Depot) to choose the paint for the bathroom (and the lights for the kitchen).

    But really, while my life has been mostly delightful; the busy hasn’t been that exciting :)

    At least, unless you want to hear about my progress with taking blood, or with giving IVs….

  • Patient’s buying me underwear…

    Well, indirectly. So I went in to be a good little consumer today, and I spent the voucher that the nice patient gave (lots of staff) on my old ward; I now have two new bras which, unlike my other white bras, are actually white; and unlike all my other bras are not yet misshapen strange bits of rag. This was partially prompted by my ‘good’ black bras developing a strange quiff affair at the top of the cup, I’ve tried everything to get rid of this, but it seems permanent.

    I also spent the 30 quid that my rather nice old ward gave me before I departed for the shiny Emergency Department. Frustratingly HMV Shoppe was more expensive than HMV Online – but amazingly they had one copy of the Lucky Soul album. Which I relieved them of; and which is sounding very good. I was going to buy Green Wing, but their Green Wing DVDs were also 4 quid more per disk than online. Having accepted the 3 quid extra for the CD I was a little loathe to do that; and it would have meant I couldn’t afford the whole series. But there, lurking on the sale shelf was Black Books, Series 1-3; which is now mine. Quite a haul really.

    I then attempted, well, I’d attempted before without success, but I then attempted (after my purchases) to give my books which have been (hand) picked for disposal to a charity shop. Any charity shop (within limits). But I couldn’t find any that were reachable by car. Or more accurately after touring incessantly, I found one, which I couldn’t stop anywhere near.

    So the books are still in the back of my car.

    I’m hoping that when I go food shopping the shoppe will be less busy (a bit of a faint hope, really). This shopping however has put me in mind of what I watched yesterday; The End of Suburbia. It discusses what’ll happen to suburbia when we hit and pass ‘peak oil’; which either is soon or has happened, depending on who you ask.

    At any rate, it’s fairly much a warning of what is coming. But one thing which interests me is that people don’t really get how much of a change will occur. And a lot of EV people seem not to have realised that plastic’s going to be hard to get hold of when the oil’s run out. It’s all very well saying we’ll build our EV’s out of lightweight plastic; but…. What when there’s no plastic. I do wonder about our society and what’ll happen when we no longer have cheap  plastic, cheap goods, when the medicines start to run out (how many of these things are derived from oil?). The End of Suburbia also raised various interesting questions about power generation. I’m intrigued to know who’s right though; they reckon biofuels are not likely to be a successful widespread solution, and I’d been kinda seduced by this Google techtalk on E85. So.. Mmm.

    Anyway, makes you think. Or makes me think. I’d always intended that wherever I settle down would be more environmentally friendly than this place; if it’s a build it yourself place then all limecrete and such; and with wind/solar generation (solar water heating, particularly). But yes, anyway, so I’ve been left thoughtful.

  • There’s good news and uh, some bad.

    So, the good news is that I’ve started making, albeit small, inroads into the chaos in my endeavour to make the house bearable when Kathryn comes back. It’s hardly be welcoming if it still had a Kate-sized hole on the sofa where I’ve been sitting surrounded by bills. I’ve even cleaned the stairs – it was quite horrendous how much shite there was on them. Seriously, it was revolting. Granted it was mostly sawdust and plasterdust, but still.

    Obviously, in my posting frenzy you’ve had the ‘lookie, tiles’; but I have pictures (you’re all thrilled, I can tell)….

    See, tiles!

    I also have proof that there’s a shower door in my bathroom; or at least, a shower door in someone’s bathroom, but I maintain that this is mine and that I put it up. Believe me, no one else would want to claim that they put it up…

    Anyhow, because I took it, and also because it slightly freaked me out when I realised how badly worn it really was, here’s the Viva’s clutch cable (I imagine you’re all barely able to contain your excitement at this point)…

    Yes, it’s frayed. Really frayed. If that had snapped it could have lead to embarassing ‘crunch’ type noises; although I’ve been awfully careful the last week not to sit with my foot on the clutch, as I might be wont to do if I was expecting a light to change… I’m quite proud of that shot, actually, it’s a really nice bit of macro photography, if I do say so myself (and I do). And it stands out really rather well against the aluminium carpet strip. That, incidentally, is my pile of metal that’s waiting for me to make a run to the tip. That run is approaching with some enthusiasm now, as my entire front garden is full of woodworm eaten floorboards.

    So, continuing the good news; the hoover survived. The builders used my Aquavac/Goblin (with my permission), however they neglected to mention that they’d run it ’til the bag split and the entire filter inside gummed up. I’m hoping it’s not toast in motor terms, but it doesn’t smell of burned motor. The filter at least saved it from sucking an entire base full of crappy builder’s rubble through its motor. And in other good news, with substantial effort I managed to retrieve the box-of-filing from the pile of crap. Having cleaned the filing cabinet (it’s still somewhat oily inside), I then spent a “cheerful” hour transferring stuff from the box into the cabinet. The box contained everything that *was* in the cabinet from a looong time ago. I have become aware that I need a shredder, again. I can theoretically shred up to 2002, now; and I can dispose of lots of old utility bills. And looking at how much paperwork I’ve got, that would be really quite useful.

    Anyhow, I’ve not yet started making inroads into the evil that is the ‘to file pile’ (which is in two parts):

    It’s amazing how much paperwork I’ve accrued in 6 months. Obviously there’s buying a house, two jobs, moving, purchasing endless appliances and bits for the house…. Lexx is out, incidentally, because I did the tinyest bit of sorting while I was shifting boxes – and found Lexx 1.0,  which means I now have all the Lexx videos. I think I’m going to sell them because, quite frankly, I can’t be arsed with video anymore. I loved the first season of Lexx, but never really loved it as much after that first season; the original actress (Eva Habermann) was fantastic…and not that the second actress wasn’t good, she just wasn’t Zev.

    Anyhow, so, that’s the good news.

    There is however some bad news.

    The house has woodworm, live doing stuff woodworm. I’d kinda disregarded the woodworm upstairs on the basis of my monitoring station downstairs being, well, unaffected. See, I’d read (somewhere) in my research that the lifecycle was around 3 months – having repeated my check I now find ‘a year’ is more accurate. But anyhow, I’d assumed after 6 months of staring at my masking tape that there wasn’t any activity and I was now safe. Unfortunately, I’ve now found two dinky little round holes in it, so I shall be calling in a woodworm company forthwith to see about fumigating the house. This is, how shall we put it, rather upsetting. At least the joists upstairs were doubled, because I know some of them floorboards that came out were completely rotten, so one must presume some of the joists are infested badly too… Ach.

    And finally, on a rather smaller scale, things continue not to improve on the laptop front… it’s still doing pretty well, given that it’s 8 years old, but at some point I fear it is going to have to be replaced…

  • Less imagination now required

    With a substantial amount of effort there is now about 50% coverage of tiles. I remain terrified that they will crack and disintegrate as soon as I walk on ’em. But that won’t be ’til tomorrow.

    However, the result is that my back wants to kill me.

    It really does.

    I think it may have teamed up with my knees to take out a contract on my brain. When I’m a little less sore, I’m thinking I’ll start work on the tidying.

  • On the dangers of prevarication

    But first, some news. Wow, those US lesbians with their gangs, and their guns… soon there’ll be no men left…. what do you mean it’s entirely made up?

    Anyhow, on to the topic de jour, prevarication. I got Brick serviced by a very nice garage who I’m actually planning to use again to sort out the oil leak *and* sort out the wheel bearing, because, frankly I’m done doing car maintenance for a while. I have the house, the job and the bike all calling for more time than I have; so the car, the car can be done by someone now I’ve got a garage I trust. And I trust them more now.

    See, on the list of advisories it had ‘heavy oil leak’ (which is true), and ‘rear brakes low’ which is probably true, and ‘Clutch cable needs replacement – badly frayed’ (along with the wheel bearing being ‘slightly noisy’). So I ordered a wheel bearing and a clutch cable… And they sat in the lounge, then they sat in the corridor. And I prevaricated. Did I book it in *now* or next week? Should I do it myself? I prodded at the do it myself option and didn’t like it, so I left it…

    Today I finally decided I would do it myself. Remarkably there was no swearing, even when the circlip disappeared down behind the ‘carpet’ on the driver’s side. There were several utterances about how insane Vauxhall are. But 2.5 hours after I started the car has a new clutch cable. And not a moment too soon; I see now that they weren’t joking when they said ‘badly frayed’. Of what appear to be 8 or 9 strands (each made up of many smaller strands) only two were intact, and the cable looked terrifyingly thin. Next time they tell me something’s in need of replacement real soon now, then I shall believe them :-)

    So, maybe I should order some brake shoes, but that really *is* a job I could and should do myself. *sigh*.

    Not today though, because once I’ve had this cup of tea over here, I shall be commencing the tile-a-thon in earnest, brand spanking new RCD in hand (or at least, plugged in). And roll of kitchen paper for my nose which has either taken offence to the dust (I suspect, ‘cos it was lousy yesterday), or has rediscovered hayfever because today it’s hot-like-woah. Actually, that’s not *strictly* true, because it is in fact bearable outside. And inside almost pleasant. But the weather is being it’s usual inimitable and unpredictable self; having gone from cold-wet-torrential rain over the past few days to tarmac-meltingly-hot sun today.

    I’m hoping it’s dust, because new filters are en-route for the dyson (and actually looking at them, that might explain it’s lack of suck, but I still feel I should give it a once over) and a pack, an entire pack of bags for the Aquavac/Goblin. I never had this problem when I used the Hoover Junior all the time; it just worked… ‘cept when it needed a new belt… ‘course it did cover the room in dust, but hey.

  • Day 1000 of Seven Million

    Or at least, sometimes it feels that way as I plod on working on the house.

    Anyhow; status is thus:
    – Finally finish off internal bathroom plumbing….postponed until the floor’s down. Although I did attached the last of the pipes for the sink; so when the brackets are done I can pop that up and plumb it in.
    – Finish screwing down the floor boards.
    – Obtain and put up the last baton for the faux end wall in the shower.
    – Put up the Cement-board wall (Aquaboard) that makes up the faux wall.
    – Screw down the wood (on the floor) which marks out the section that’ll be boxed off (with plumbing inside it).
    – Start and hopefully finish putting up the shower door.
    – With a bit of luck I might even get to commence the tile-a-thon this weekend. That would be really nice… Because again, it’s an ‘end in sight’ moment. 

    I’ve started the tileathon, only insofar as to lay out the tiles, I need an RCD before plugging in the tile cutter but I’ve decided where the ‘full’ tiles go and where I’m cutting… Now, it’s been a while since I laid tiles so everyone wish me luck; but for now I am going to have a shower and try and wash some of the gunk off me. I spent some time today sweeping up – that room was so dusty. Even after three attempts I still had huge amounts of dirt to sweep up. I would have used the hoover but the builder’s split the bag and I’ve not got around to ordering a new one.

    Although I’m gonna get a bunch of bits; new bags for the aquavac and new filters for the venerable DC01; which I’ll also have a go at de-fluffing, because I suspect it’s full of crap.