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It's chilly and foggy here today, much with the chilly and much with the foggy. Theoretically I get to collect Brick from the motor engineer today; sadly the oil leak persists; it's not a failed seal of any sort. The sump (which for those not in the know is the reservoir for oil) has a crack in it, apparently. How it gained this crack I don't know, although I have a sneaking suspicion that it had a crack before I bought it that had been sealed using glue, or pixie dust, because it started leaking pretty badly as soon as it was home. Unfortunately despite people fairly frequently chucking entire engines, without getting a whole and entire engine (which seems 'excessive' to me) I can't easily lay my hands on a sump. People've suggested waiting 'til I go to sort out the welding and then have the engine out / sump off / clean / weld / replace. But there's a fair amount of welding, and it's leaking oil at a frantic rate of knots, which makes me unhappy.
Another thing which makes me a little unhappy is this. See, I want to run all my vehicles on E85. I can't afford an (adequate) EV conversion, I can't do biodiesel, and I can't not commute to work. Even working in the hospital in the town where I live is far enough that I'd have to commute by car; so I'd be stuffed anyhow. So Morrisons starting to sell E85 is great, except that the nearest station is so far from me that I'd use half a tank getting there and back, and given that I'd have to adjust the timing and possibly the mixture once I'd filled up with E-85 I'd be a bit stuffed.
Come on guys (specifically, Esso, Jet, Tesco and Murco 'cos they're the ones I actually go near every week), let's have E85 at all the stations, then I can have a selection of much cleaner vehicles. Infact, they'd be heading for carbon neutral, which would rock. Well, theoretically at least. When E85 production methods improve there's a good chance for carbon neutrality.
Anyhow, so I had a really fantastic weekend. Which is odd, because I spent the second half of it (i.e. most of Sunday) tiling. I'm 3/4ths done in the shower cubicle though, I'd be tiling now before heading off to collect brick were it not, well, too early for diamond-saw noises. I misjudged the remaining number of tiles though. I thought I was down to about 200, but I'd neglected the ones that went in the spare room to use as a table when we had lauril staying (ah, the magic of a throw). At any rate, I don't know if the tiles are adhereing to the wood yet (or if they need *another* coat of paint) - if they are then I can commence that final section of tiling and the plan that we should be done and dusted by the end of the week could actually be true. I am not looking forward to grouting though. Kathryn's done a wall and a half, and between us we should get the rest done without too much pain. But it's still the most tedious thing in the world.
So, what else did I get up to this weekend; well, mostly I just spent time with Kathryn - which is a pleasure unsurpassed in my book. We went for a little wander down to what we thought was an abandoned abbey, but turned out to be an active abbey, and met a nun in purple. Apparently they're an Augustinian community; at any rate, the nun in question seemed nice :)
On the way back we stopped to disassemble a skip full of parts of an alarm. A shop'd been stripped out and there was a large amount of depressingly useful wood there, all of it being dumped, and also a significant quantity of electronics. It's always rather sad, I feel, when people strip out shops throwing away stuff that's potentially useful. We came away with two small plastic FixSystem bins (of which there are some more at my mum's house, somewhere (little plastic bins you put on the wall to store things in)), and some small piece of the alarm system. Then we headed home stopping at the local supermarket for provisions, 'cos Brick not being here, and us living where we do means that shopping on foot would be an activity unsupassed in it's tediousness.
Sunday was tiling day, although come the evening I took Kathryn's advice and actually had a break. I'd been tiling pretty much solidly from 1130 to 1700, which to be fair got 100 tiles on the wall, but did take it's toll on me. So, today I collect Kathryn's Xmas Prezzie which handily has arrived same time as my new nipod. This time I actually got a branded one though, the nipod's awful interface, and the fact that they don't show any shots of the interfaces on the adverts put me off getting another - although it was very small and cute.
And it did play video.
This one however is just a music player, and possibly not quite so robust being hard disk based (like the ipod) but hey, we'll see. Anyhow, shower, phone BeThere and then head off to collect the car, if it's ready (it bloody ought to be since they opted not to take the engine out and just to switch it to unleaded; I can do a head swap on an A+ in a few hours.... and I'm paying them for a few hours work). Anyhow, enough whining.
Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to tile I go...
Another thing which makes me a little unhappy is this. See, I want to run all my vehicles on E85. I can't afford an (adequate) EV conversion, I can't do biodiesel, and I can't not commute to work. Even working in the hospital in the town where I live is far enough that I'd have to commute by car; so I'd be stuffed anyhow. So Morrisons starting to sell E85 is great, except that the nearest station is so far from me that I'd use half a tank getting there and back, and given that I'd have to adjust the timing and possibly the mixture once I'd filled up with E-85 I'd be a bit stuffed.
Come on guys (specifically, Esso, Jet, Tesco and Murco 'cos they're the ones I actually go near every week), let's have E85 at all the stations, then I can have a selection of much cleaner vehicles. Infact, they'd be heading for carbon neutral, which would rock. Well, theoretically at least. When E85 production methods improve there's a good chance for carbon neutrality.
Anyhow, so I had a really fantastic weekend. Which is odd, because I spent the second half of it (i.e. most of Sunday) tiling. I'm 3/4ths done in the shower cubicle though, I'd be tiling now before heading off to collect brick were it not, well, too early for diamond-saw noises. I misjudged the remaining number of tiles though. I thought I was down to about 200, but I'd neglected the ones that went in the spare room to use as a table when we had lauril staying (ah, the magic of a throw). At any rate, I don't know if the tiles are adhereing to the wood yet (or if they need *another* coat of paint) - if they are then I can commence that final section of tiling and the plan that we should be done and dusted by the end of the week could actually be true. I am not looking forward to grouting though. Kathryn's done a wall and a half, and between us we should get the rest done without too much pain. But it's still the most tedious thing in the world.
So, what else did I get up to this weekend; well, mostly I just spent time with Kathryn - which is a pleasure unsurpassed in my book. We went for a little wander down to what we thought was an abandoned abbey, but turned out to be an active abbey, and met a nun in purple. Apparently they're an Augustinian community; at any rate, the nun in question seemed nice :)
On the way back we stopped to disassemble a skip full of parts of an alarm. A shop'd been stripped out and there was a large amount of depressingly useful wood there, all of it being dumped, and also a significant quantity of electronics. It's always rather sad, I feel, when people strip out shops throwing away stuff that's potentially useful. We came away with two small plastic FixSystem bins (of which there are some more at my mum's house, somewhere (little plastic bins you put on the wall to store things in)), and some small piece of the alarm system. Then we headed home stopping at the local supermarket for provisions, 'cos Brick not being here, and us living where we do means that shopping on foot would be an activity unsupassed in it's tediousness.
Sunday was tiling day, although come the evening I took Kathryn's advice and actually had a break. I'd been tiling pretty much solidly from 1130 to 1700, which to be fair got 100 tiles on the wall, but did take it's toll on me. So, today I collect Kathryn's Xmas Prezzie which handily has arrived same time as my new nipod. This time I actually got a branded one though, the nipod's awful interface, and the fact that they don't show any shots of the interfaces on the adverts put me off getting another - although it was very small and cute.
And it did play video.
This one however is just a music player, and possibly not quite so robust being hard disk based (like the ipod) but hey, we'll see. Anyhow, shower, phone BeThere and then head off to collect the car, if it's ready (it bloody ought to be since they opted not to take the engine out and just to switch it to unleaded; I can do a head swap on an A+ in a few hours.... and I'm paying them for a few hours work). Anyhow, enough whining.
Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to tile I go...
