Blog

10 May 2000, 22:29.32.

Well, the new site’s uploaded – I’m still feeling rather down…but not as bad – I think that may be the effect of the Estrogen!

Anyway, Nina attempted to kill me yesterday – having just had £183 spent on a service (+ bits)….the intermittent cutting out thing was being a real problem – as in I didn’t get to work, I took the car back to the garage and they (who it must be said were excellent) – they spent the entire day looking at the car and were very honest when they said “we have no idea; nothing is actually wrong”……

So I have to put up with the fact my car may choose to up and die on me on the motorway…..until (hopefully) monday when the new fuel pump arrives, which might fix the problem.

I’ve then got more expense as there’s loads of “minor” jobs which also need doing! Arrgggh!

I had loads more to write, but the mood has just left me – I’m too tired as I’ve spent the entire evening making this site work exactly the way it should!….

So I think I deserve a break, and some sleep.

And I’m not really in the mood….

G’night

Kate….

07 May 2000, 01:22.23

It’s amazing; the capacity I have for not thinking about things which are upsetting me. What is the problem? I’ve got my ‘mones, I’ve got a letter saying I’m TS, I’ve got a job I like (though I have to leave it but…) and I’ve got parents who love and support me.

What did I miss out? Well, I’ve lost my girlfreind. By a mutual decision we have called it quits. Too different. Why did I say about not thinking about things? Becuase I sat online talking techie, and not thinking about the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, the tears just sitting behind my eyes, putting off the inevitable. And here it is.

I’m miserable. Absolutely miserable.

And to top it off the discussion on IRC started to sound like my old flat in Uni, which I miss dreadfully, most of the time it’s not too bad – indeed in general I don’t think about it – but adding that on – well that’s really made my day.

It’s funny – when I was in London yesterday (and I only just remembered this) I thought to myself – “this is all going very well for me, I wonder what disasters I should be preparing for” – which was kind of a light hearted sarcastic thought about the fact that whenever I’m happy something goes wrong to compensate.

Well, here it is. Here’s my disaster.

I think it’s the best thing to do – but that doesn’t make it any easier. And what makes it worse is Han doesn’t know if she want’s me as her friend anymore – which scarily is what I thought would happen – and that makes it doubly hard.

Anyway, I’m going to curl up in my bed now.

‘night

Kate

06 May 2000, 14:42.54

Quick update – my car was apparently “lucky” to get to the garage due to the near complete collapse of the pin that connects the gear lever to the gearbox….(at least that implies that it’s not actually the gearbox which is buggered) – bad news: they don’t have the part and can’t get it until monday morning….Arse!

I’ve finally finished porting the “in my brain” to the new style site – so it should be ready for upload fairly soon…

I’m still shattered, but I think I’m gonna go and get my drugs (using my mum’s car!)….

Byeeeeeeee

Kate….still tired

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06 May 2000, 12:37.48.

So….what’s up then?

It must be said that I look like hell today – and infact I feel pretty much like I look…but despite feeling life this I’m still grinning and would be bouncing around (except I’ve hurt my ankles!)…what’s this due to I hear you asking (yes, you, you – my only reader!)….

Well, I went to London to see someone, and for the first time so far I went into london as me, having spent hours on shaving and cleaning myself up – having headed into london, I popped on my heels and trundled across london on the underground….

Having got maybe 800 yards from my destination I was limping rather badly…why? becuase despite the fact I’d worn these heels before I didn’t realise that they weren’t quite broken in yet and thus they were cutting my ankles to ribbons! Now, I had two options – since I was actually scouting out my target as it were – and was intending to have some lunch then turn up (having worked out where it was)….one was to go with plan a, the other was to turn around; limp back across london – to the car where I had a pair of (one-star) trainers, loose the jacket (it’s my posh suit), and pray that I looked okay…

So, having walked about another 3 paces I went with plan B! Having got to the park near my car the shoes had to come off….so I walked across the park in just my tights (getting odd looks – and I’m not surprised!).

Struggled back to the car and swapped the shoes, lost the jacket and apparently looked okay…

Anwyay – I made it back to my destination, and this time only limping slightly disappeared down the stairs….

But where was I going? I was going to se Dr Russell Reid, to make some progress on this wanting my body to match my mind thing! After an hour long interview (which I believe is pretty much the norm) he offered me a prescription for ‘mones (which is exactly what I wanted :-)

Unfortuantely my plan (which was to see the doc and work out the prices of NHS as private prescriptions and decide if it was worth doing the conversion, however having done the sums (as best I can) I think it’s probably not worth it, and it’s certainly not worth taking a day off for this one!

However I may change my mind as my car has gone in for a service – however I’m getting ahead of myself here…having had my (rather groovy) appointment, I flew across london (not literally – though I’ve thrown myself at the ground on several occasions I’ve never quite got the hang of the missing the ground bit!).,,,,erm, yes, to meet up with a friend from Uni (Hi Soozy!)…

Whereupon I had a really nice (non alcoholic drink), and then we trundled off to Pizza Hut for a pizza – as she’s ill and hadn’t eaten all day, and I (because of the shoe incident) hadn’t had a chance, altough I actually didn’t feel terribly hungry!).

Anyway…after a very enjoyable evening I started back for home, the journey across london on the tube neing fairly uneventful…I reached my car, hopped in and about 20 minutes down the motorway she (the car) attempted to deposit me in the middle lane. This has happened once before, but it wasn’t that long ago and I’m worried it’s going to become habit forming…

Fortunately she was already booked in for a service today, however when I took her in I felt terrible as I listed all the faults….

Reversing lights, Gear Box, Engines’ dieing of fuel starvation on the motorway now and then, windscreen wipers making a metal-against-metal screech, front wheel bearings making an awful noise at low speed (all intermittent faults as well – although the reversing lights only seemed to work for the MOT!)….

So, I’m waiting on the call to say – your car needs about £8000 worth of work….

Meep.

But despite all this I’m still boucing (mentally at least – I didn’t get mych sleep last night, what with excitement, not getting to bed until (very) late and my ankles (sting like buggery & the plaster won’t stick becuase the only plasters I’ve got are about 20 years old (and that is true – literally).

Not only that, but the new version of Geiss for winamp doesn’t switch off the hourglass!

But I’m still mentally bouncing – although I feel like sh*t….

Anyway….I’m off to be knackered.

Lol

Kate….

28 Apr 2000, 19:23.55.

Well, I appologise for the long gap since my last installment – this is due to a variety of factors – mostly due to free internet access and IRC which allows me to occupy my entire evenings with nothing useful (well, that’s not strictly true, it keeps me sane….).

What have I been up to, well, at first glance some might consider that I had achieved nothing. Hannah and I had aonther falling out, but are back together again; I bought a few DVD’s, and made a doctor’s appointment.

But in this case it is the name of the doctor which is of importance; the doctor in this case is the consultant p/sych Dr Russell Reid. This particular doctor is the person I should have gone to see years ago, and I’m more than a little bit excited (and at the same time nervous)….it should hopefully start me down the road to the transition I want to complete….

Indeed, since making the appointment I’ve been bouncing around a fair bit…..*smiles*.

The DVD drive however has been causeing me stress, however this appears to be due to Paramount DVD’s. All my other DVD’s play fine; however my copy of “The Truman Show” DVD was unplayable, so I swapped it, for another unplayable one – having scoured the web I found other people had problems with Paramount disks….which was very annoying – indeed it was infurating as I spent hours (literally) changing DVD’s for others which were just as unlikely to work; 3 copies of the Truman Show passed through my hands in all, however in the end I exchange them for “Plunkett and Macleane” and “Analyze This”, both of which are cool.

I still want “The Truman Show”, but it’ll have to wait until either they produce a different type of disk which actually works on my player – or pioneer produce a firmware patch which take account of these (aledgedly) odd disks….

Finally, there’s the possibility of me having 2 Elastica Videos, which since I’ve searched for 4 years for the damn things is pretty damn cool, so that’s 2 down in 4 years….

I’ve also got the Dilbert DVD’s which are cool, if completely lacking in features. Either Columbia Tristar are money grabbing, petty minded gits, or else, alternatively they have no imagination whatsoever. Why in god’s name aren’t there some extra-features on there? The “Characterisation” isn’t a feature – showing me a clip of something which is elsewhere on the disk – without any extra information, voiceover, interview or anything is not a feature. It’s pointless.

If I’d have paid full price for these disks I’d have been fuming. They are awful (as interestingly enough is Region 2 edition of The Truman Show).

I don’t mind it when budget disks contain bugger all, althogh they should cost about £5.99, not £9.99 – but I can cope with it…But to charge £19.99 for a disk as valueless as these? It’s disgusting.

Anyway, enough ranting…..

So there you go, that’s my life….not too much exciting this time….

LOL

Kate

18 Apr 2000, 23:10.36.

Arse. I really should be in bed….this is the third night in a row Windows 95 has kept me from my bed (at least until a ridiculously late hour).

I’ve been intendting to do a new in my brain for a long time, but I’ve simply been flooded with computer issues, and I’ve been dead busy (social life ‘n’ all)….so I best say what I’ve been up to…

Well, there was the almost splitting up with Hannah incident. Some problems which had been quitely festering came to the fore during a preiod of stress and we spent a lot of time dicussing the future, but we’re back together now. Han came down for my Birthday, which I’d been stressing about for a while. However before then came a big day. My sister (and her husband) were informed on Sri Lankan new year about my TS status (why then? becuase my dad’s birthday happens to fall on the same date, and thus we went there for a meal).

Anyway, I wouldn’t say they took it spectacularly well, but not spectacularly badly either – so, she now knows…which is fortunate since about 80% of my cards were to “Kate” *smiles*.

So. anyway, then there was the day Han came down, that was a little tense (shall we say), but we’ve sorted it out – and infact we went in to Reading and had a really nice day shopping, met up with James and Nikki for pizza in the evening (so a big Hi to them), then we trundled to the pub….

Unfortunately I offered James a lift home. Now I say unfortunately because we got back to the car and found that some fool had left the lights on (fx: “hum, hum hum, mmmm…do, do doo..me?? never!”). But fair play to the AA who managed to get someone (Bromley recovery) to us within an hour…and the bloke was dead friendly – didn’t laugh at Nina, and I nearly killed his battery when I tried to start mine (let’s say mine was a weeee bit flat *g*).

So, then we trundled back to James’ flat – and I spent far too much time being techie (because Han litterally was asleep on her feet!).

Anyway, my birthday went really well, I even went for a wander with Hannah (yes, I left my computer behind!)…. Which was cool, my sister came down, which was also nice, and I had a great meal (and more importantly a chocolate cake *vbg*)….

Also my DVD decoder means I can finally watch my DVD’s in non-skipo-vision….and on my TV! Unfortunately it’s shown up that my TV really does need its colour settings adjusted….so if anyone has instructions for setting up a Fergason Colourstar Mark 1 TV I’d be very grateful (I know that it’s best to adjust things in a specific order – I just don’t know which order….! Also I’ll have to fish out the Beeb ‘cos it’s the only thing I know which’ll reliably provide some basic simple colour bars…..

Yes, so next up is that….then of course there’s windows. Well actually there’s my curse – which means that windows is causing grief again…you see I’ve got this new toy, it’s a USB camera, so after much searching I managed to find some USB ports to add to my computer (it had the motherboard connector but no backplane connector) – anyway, I enabled it (the USB) in the Bios and Lo and behold Windows detected it and then Hung. After many repeats of this I’ve managed to get it so that windows detects it, then installs a “driver” which fails to work despite apparently being the best available.

Then theres MS US who seem remarkably helpful, and MS UK who seem to think that money should be involved in the “helping users” situation….

So I’m currently thinking about the W2000 option….which expensive though it (might) be may lead to more of a sucess on the old USB front. Except that most of my hardware seems to be a little erm, shall we say, different….!

Anyway, that’s enough techiness for one night….

But there’s more stuff, and it’s non-techie! First of all I now truly do believe that herbal hormones do definately do something for me….I’m not saying they do for everyone but they do for me…

I actually do find it much harder not to clean up – as in leaving dirty mugs/plates/pans – it really bugs me….My rooms still a tip – but that’s due to being fed up with being so cramped. I simply cannot bother to tidy since last time it lasted about 1 day before it become a mess because of needing to move X to get to Y….

So there’s that, and the other thing is I can’t leave the house unshaven….indeed I find it much harder to be slobby outside than I used to. I even crawl out of bed marginally earlier to ensure that I am in a fit state to be seen; this isn’t fair!

The other (and totally unrelated to the above) thing was something which happened onto my way to work. There’s this theory about there being an infinite number of universes with every combination of every decision possible. Thus there are more universes every second…..

Anyway, I was coming towards this junction and I felt the car start to pull out in front of the car in front of me, and I felt it braking and swerving. However neither of these happened. Infact I wanted to brake but somehow I knew it hadn’t actually happened; it was really quite bizzare….

Anyway, I best be off to bed (well acutally I’m chatting on mIRC at the mo)….so…night folks

kate (aged 1!).