Mornings

So, I finally got to watch last week's Dr Who. Bloody hell, that was a good episode, after the previous one; which was a bit of a re-hash (and not as good-er re-hash) of one from the previous series (it had nice sets, but it really missed out from being the same idea again, and being a squished one-parter) it was good to be reminded just how good, and how scary Dr Who can really be.

I really like the new companion, Martha, but she's still finding her feet I think - in scripting terms. But this episode, it played so well, I'm really impressed. I can't wait for this evening :-)

In other news, my morning has sucked a lot; my hayfever's acting up today, weirdly I'd got away without any hayfever for ages, and then suddenly this morning I'm all itching eyes and sneezing. The desloritadine seems to have taken it down to managable levels, although my left eye is still driving me gently insane. I've got to go to the Drs for a 'Medication Review' (*sighs*. Why do GPs do this shite, I've got an endocrinologist, if you think for a second I'm going to let you fiddle with my meds instead of him (when he has trouble convincing me to change anything) then you are sadly mistaken), so I'll use that and see if I can convince them to send me to the Allergy Clinic at Guy's.

I am still feeling the tired from yesterday - despite heading to bed at 2245 my body declined to let me sleep for a good half hour longer - annoyingly it spent that time informing me of how tired I was and that I should really be asleep. Hopefully it should resolve, but I've got lots to do today (I'm just waiting for the bathroom to reach 'warm' so I can shower, 'cos I couldn't shower yesterday, 'cos they were building the pipework).

Anyway, in a bit I'm going to zip (well, meander) over to B&Q and buy some bits - hopefully I can get the toilet installed upstairs - at least as far as is practicable. I'm hoping I can also lay in the pipework for the bathroom - at least some of the way. Downstairs I'm planning to use some compression joints so I can link it in to the current plumbing and then later when I redo the plumbing downstairs I can whip the compression joints out and put proper yorkshire's in.

There's a few other jobs to do, too.

Anyway, in non allergy and non-house news; Kara (howlsthunder) has added me on Facebook. I think I went and looked 'cos Naomi at work was talking about it; and asked if I was on it. A mere month or two later I decided to look (and felt it was rather clunky but joined and then neglected to do anything with it). Since Kara's friended me on there I've kind of felt I should update it to have at least some useful information - so uh, it's done. Hunt me down and friend me folks :-)

ETA: I remembered my other news. I've lost my fracking MP3 player. I had it when I came back from the cashpoint having got money to pay the builders, and I remember wandering around with it in my hand. But now I've no idea where I put it after that. I've looked at every obvious surface. In pockets, behind cushions, on the accessible shelves. I really have no clue where it's gone :(

Gah.

Running to stay still

So I went out this morning and collected together the bits I need to fit the toilet; including some random new tools. I got cistern internals, I got an isolation valve, and lots of bits and bobs. 100 quid later and I set to on various jobs. Only it didn't entirely go smoothly. It turns out it's harder to get a flush pipe for a high level cistern in chrome than I imagined (it's an order only part, apparently). So that's ordered. No where had brackets to support the cistern (well, not nice ones), so I'll have to buy them (off ebay, possibly).

The cistern is partially assembled, but for a reason which escapes me at the moment I had to not fit the float valve - I really can't recall why, but that's okay. And then I set to on the soil pipe. The soil pipe was meant to be a few hours work. Connector on, measure, cut, and add length of pipe, and then the right angle; then a few bits of floorboard work, and lo, the toilet would have been fitted.

Instead first up I found that my builders have run the soil pipe so close to the last joist that a connector wouldn't go on. Cue an hour of attacking the joist (which is not in the most convenient location) to reach the stage when I could actually get the connector in place. Only I couldn't get it on to the pipe. I'd noticed that the builders spent a lot of time swearing while doing the soil pipe, I'm now aware as to why. It's fucking impossible.

After a solid hour, lube, washing up liquid and heating the pipe all having been tried I had a break, returning to it and applying, essentially, brute force...lead to it finally going on.

So I cut the next section, raised more floorboards - by now I've decided that I'm going to have to ditch the original floorboards and have chipboard flooring - but I'm going to have to put a floor down; this has become apparent because the floorboards are too knackered to leave bare.

Anyhow I go to fit the pipe and...it won't go on. Brute force, washing up liquid, everything. I do keep managing to open up the clip-together-seal at the end. But it's not going on, and then the bloody thing went in, but with the clip together seal apart.

Now, I tried to reassemble the clip together seal with it there, but bear in mind that you can't reach one side of the clip, because... it's next to the joist. So I start trying to pull apart the connection. Only the wrong side of it is moving. I tried everything to get the side I wanted to come out but no. No. the fucking thing came apart from the side I'd just spent 1.5 hours getting on. Thus undoing all the work I'd done today, pretty much. And, in the process of getting it off the section of soil pipe that I'd cut? I broke the fucking connector.

So now I need a new connector and I get to start all over again.

I have never dealt with soil pipes, I've only ever done the clean side of plumbing, and plastic little sink-and-bath waste pipes. In future, I'm happy for it to stay that way.