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This looks good.

This is an interesting idea, but then it’s Mark Thomas so what do you expect.

And this film is so good it’s not being shown in Slough :-/

And in lieu of getting to hear my Lucky Soul single (which isn’t here yet anyhow) I’ve been listening to their stuff again on *shudder* myspace (consider yourself warned about the link). Uh, it (their stuff) is good :-)

So, I had an awesome weekend, somewhat longer than intended, but awesome all the same.

After work on Friday I piled into Brick and with great speed ran to the first traffic jam. Several traffic jams later (and about 2 hours), I got off the M25 and onto the M11. Normally that journey takes less than an hour. I can’t say as I hugely enjoyed battling through the M25 traffic, but once I hit the M11 things went somewhat better, and I finally pulled up outside Kathryn’s house at about 1900. Piling back in the car we headed onward (or more accurately, backward) to Lauren and Chrissy’s whereupon a good time was had by all.

I sometimes forget how lucky I am to have the friends I do, but I truly am a lucky girl; Kathryn was introduced, Thai food was obtained, UHF watched, and a small black cat entertained. Having got to bed really quite late, we woke up and spent the day playing games and wandering round a beautiful bit of park/woodland/lake. Finally, we sat down and watched a mixture of Grand Designs and then Dr Who. That third episode of Dr Who – Really very good indeed.
It was a really, really enjoyable day. As night drew in, Kathryn and I hopped back in the car, I prayed to the god of Vauxhalls and we set off. See, on the way the ignition light which for the past few days had flickered on at idle – well, it went from flickering on to full on glowing at idle and occasionally flickering on at other times.

So I was  hoping that at the times it wasn’t on, it was actually charging – unfortunately, hope doesn’t charge a battery, electrons do. And there weren’t a lot of electrons going *in* to the battery. Having had to switch to the ‘spare’ battery (which I have now discovered is as dead as I was beginning to suspect) we limped to 29 miles from Kathryn’s house at which point the engine decided it had done it’s bit, and we were quite definately not going any further.

Much effort later, the RAC declared the alternator dead, and that there was no-where suitable they could take me; a friend of Kathryn’s collected us, and I rung work and admitted that I would not be in today due to my car’s complete and total desire to stay in a service station.

Normally, or at least historically, this would have lead to wailing, gnashing of teeth, swearing and kicking the tyres in a ‘curse you, you swine!’ kind of way, but somehow I have chilled out and just curling up with Kathryn seemed a more appropriate response. I suspect I was pissy; at least a little; but there’s no use crying over spent money.

Mostly I seem to have become fate’s bitch, my car won’t go anywhere, I can struggle and fight, but it won’t get me anywhere; better to accept my situation and simply attempt to move forward.

Of course it doesn’t *always* work like that :-)

But what was nice, was that today I woke up next to Kathryn, and that made me start the day on a high; I found the alternator; I had the best taxi journey ever (with a guy who appeared to have done every job, and who had travelled the world, and was just waiting to head off abroad again); I changed it without too much hastle – although I cheated and let the RAC guy I’d called tighten it and the bolts – I’m glad I booked ahead and called them because the battery was way too flat to start the car. And then I headed home.

I am now wrecked, but attempting to find it in myself to change the coolant which does, it must be said, look atrocious. On the plus (plus) side, I see Kathryn again on Wednesday.

On the minus side I may have to cancel my trip down to Bristol, I don’t know that I can afford the petrol now :(

So, music’s often had the power to beat my mind, or my body, into submission. Feeling down, or tired; throw the right music at my body and it’ll perk up. I just danced round the kitchen to Soulwax, unfortunately, while my body was listening to the commands of the music, my brain was on holiday somewhere. So I carefully chopped my only piece of my last onion, making beautiful slivers of onion, threw the nasty bits from each edge in the bin, shoopy shoopied, grabbed the chopped onion and threw that in the bin too.

Poo.

I’d been thinking about music, because it turns out that I won the limited edition, signed copy of Lucky Soul’s new single; a 7″ single, exactly the type of media that I can’t play until I’ve sorted a new amplifier, timed beautifully as I sat looking at my dying amplifier… (it’s getting worse).

Oh, and it turns out that while LoM may be over, there’s a follow up / spin off series.

*sighs*

People keep asking me to join social networking sites, or sites that I deem to be social networking sites. I had a play with Vox, and it seemed pleasant enough but more than I really wanted; MySpace looks like a teenager’s wet dream to me – it’s ugly as sin, impossible to navigate nicely and doesn’t actually work on any browser I’ve tried (I guess I could hook up the RiscPC and try WebsterXL or Browse; they’re the only ones I’ve got left). And last week Naomi at work asked me to join Facebook.

Somehow I just don’t see the point. I don’t really want all that stuff, I dunno whether it’s coming from the Acorn school of computing where you use small applications that are well designed to perform a specific task (I’ve got Flickr for photos and LJ for Journalling, and that’s me happy), as opposed to using one monolithic application which isn’t terribly good at anything, but does it all.

I get quite enough social networking out of LJ without having all the crap that seems to accompany MySpace/Facebook/All these other things. I’m sure I’m less visible, but I’m quite happy that way.

I’d think that I was getting stuck in a rut – but quite honestly I never did really do joining in. I’ve never been one for following fashion, and it seems to me that’s what most of this is.

Apparently a British MP is off in the fair land of Canada telling ’em not to privatise their health service. Just like we haven’t.

Actually, having done a bit more research it looks like it’s someone who was opposed to the sneaky, two-faced, lying disposal of our NHS to the private sector that this government is involved in.

The article about Canada is here.

By the way, for those of you planning to stay in this country, I seriously recommend you defend the NHS with every fibre in your being, because you will seriously miss it when it’s gone. Me, I plan to leave.

So, I said a few weeks back that me and my comrade decided to do a bit of urbexing. Here’s the pics:

Clicky for More and because I loves you all bonus shots from getting there. Obviously, for the sake of sanity, my nursing registration and purely practical reasons we didn’t go *inside* the building (frankly it’d’ve been bloody hard anyway. Not impossible, I shan’t say how you can get it, because I don’t want it trashed any further, but I did see a route in).

Seriously now, today sucked.

Which is a shame, because it started so well. I relaxed, watched the episode of Dr Who I’d missed while muching on some nice cereal. I had a moderately pleasant shower, at least by my limited standards, flew into town to get my mom’s card, bought petrol, found the ideal card, got home, ate lunch, got changed and headed out into the sunshine. I flew down the motorway, ’twas like the Viva had wings.

Seriously, he flew.

And then, 2/3rds of a mile from my junction I lost power. The engine didn’t *die*, not outright. Just wouldn’t rev. I dashed indicator lights blazing for the hard shoulder. I assumed that this was another instance of ‘I’ve got very hot and I’m now unhappy’. I sat. We retried. After a while we’d got to ‘idle’ but as soon as I put my foot on the accelerator the engine died.

Eventually I had to join the RAC – after admitting defeat. An hour and 15 minutes later they turned up (oh, I’m so impressed *sigh*); on the plus side the guy who turned up used to work for a Vauxhall Dealer. Indeed, he used to service Vivas, and so got right down to stripping the carb there and then at the side of the road.

And there it was, inside the carb. The main jet – that which controls petrol flow to the engine, it was sat – having unscrewed itself – inside the body of the carb. He put it back, and off I went. I am impressed. I’d’ve been altogether more impressed if he’d’ve remembered to put the choke-cable-retaining-clip back on; because, well, I had to do that. When I left work. And the car wouldn’t run right. Fortunately it was still sat on top of the battery (christ knows how, I guess I have some luck). It’s still not quite running right, I suspect I’ve not got the cable in quite the right place, but I was clamping it using my neuro-obs-torch gripped twixt my teeth, in the dark.

*sighs*

It cost me 100 quid though. That’s 500. 500 quid would nearly have reconditioned the engine on Rebecca. I keep having to remind myself that there’s other jobs in that engine bay that need doing, but it’s hard. Hard not to think that I made a stupid, wrong decision buying Brick. Though he’s actually worked out pretty well, and tolerated  the switch from barely used to daily driver with only moderate trauma.

Anyway, that got me down, but the death of another patient at work, that got me down more. Her husband was clearly very devoted, and they were obviously still very much in love. I know that you have to risk your heart if you’re going to get to experience all that there is in this life. But it was heart-rending watching him come in; too late to be with her when she died.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember the ones we save.

i’ve also started to feel a little down, there’ve not been any new exciting emergency jobs on nhs-jobs, and I got nothing, not even an interview from any of my applications. I don’t entirely know what to do about it, A&E is always oversubscribed, but I feel my future plans slipping. I always hated having plans, because I never was any good at making them work, and it was always so stressful when they didn’t. And now I remember why.

But I want to work in the ED, it’s really something that makes my day brighter, I love it. I love it with all my heart. And whilst I enjoy care of the older person – or at least the ward I work on with it’s generally cheery staff and fantastic team – it’s not what I want to do with my life.

James jordax now has a LiveJournal… Ra.

Before we start. Work yesterday meant that I didn’t see Dr Who. If *anyone* tells me *anything* about the second episode of Dr Who I may be forced to kill them. Kill them with pointy sticks of spoilering. Right? All clear? Good. I am attempting to use my usual nefarious means to obtain it, but I’ve not got it yet, so…

I have however watched Tokko. And just as promised it does appear to be what Torchwood could have been. Of course, I never did watch that much of Torchwood, the stupid set for their lair (I mean, office) bugged me loads and their use of the concept that ‘fuck’ and lots of sex makes an adult show in the first episode – well, it looked okay, but it failed to grab me – and what with my shifts not aligning with the BBC’s scheduling – that was kinda the end of it for me. I may see if I can borrow a copy and maybe watch it again, see if it really is as uninspired as I felt by it in the end. Tokko however had me scrabbling for the next episode, attempting to cram in all I could in the hours around work.

Being unsure as to whether it was intended to be a multi-series concept I was a bit worried that they were going to pounce on an ending like so many shows seem to; taking all that careful build up and throwing it away in a ties-everything-up-very-neatly-in-three-scenes ending, but they didn’t. So, uh, I’m happy, ‘cept that now I have to wait for Season 2 to appear.

So, Easter Sunday and I’m off. Handy, because I’m not off for another 2 weeks, well, I am, but I’ve managed to cunningly arrange a social life. A complete and busy one which means that even on some days when I’m working I’m actually going to be going other places (generally moderately far away places) after work.

The (very much an) upside of this is I get to see *lots* of Kathryn this month, which I’m dead pleased about, I also get to see friends I’ve not seen for a long time. But expect me to be knackered. Lots of the knackered. Anyhow, so I’ve got *today* and that’s really my day off. I need to clean, that much is very clear looking at the scattering of bits of crap on my lounge floor. Clean and indeed hoover. I need to do the washing up (as per usual), clean the fireplace, and the bathroom could do with a bit of a clean too. I need to wrap prezzies, which is a bit hard, ‘cos I still haven’t found *any* of the 3 or so rolls of sellotape I’m fairly certain are lurking in the house.

Which is annoying, ‘cos it means that yet again things’ll probably be wrapped using the rather more expensive medical tape I tend to also have kicking around. Strangely though, it’s not very good at sticking paper ;-)

I did however, despite it being Easter Sunday, manage to get to the supermarket. Possibly unfortunately, it was a Polish supermarket which whilst it had vegetables (although not the best quality ones) didn’t have any salad. Which was slightly annoying, or at least confusing. But I should have enough food to last out the week. Really though, the annoying thing was not noticing a much better little local supermarket directly opposite where I parked (I’d walked from there to the Polish one), which did appear to have salady stuff, but by then I’d bought more than enough to make up for absence of salad. Fooey. Bloody bank holidays :-)

Anyway, I suppose I should get on, although I’m trying to resist the urge to go and start work on the spare room. Part of me wants to get it done, and part of me knows that my arms hurt like hell from moving my mum’s TV stand and I really should rest them and let the muscles recover.