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On Thursday I woke up feeling headachey and dizzy and generally grotty, so called in sick to work. Spent most of the morning doing nothing, and by afternoon was feeling well enough to get lots of stuff done -- only little bits and pieces, but it was probably the most productive day I've had in weeks!
Things I managed to get done:
- Phoned Iain Allen ("Minor Services" in Witchford) to ask about taking my car in for servicing. He was helpful & friendly, and is happy for me to bring the car in any time.
- Phoned two counselling organisations in Cambridge. Got no reply, so this wasn't actually very useful, but it sort of got me past the mental block of not being able to phone them.
- Phoned the National Blood Service to get them to take my name off their list, since I have no intention of stopping sleeping with a man who has slept with a man. (Sigh.) They didn't seem remotely bothered, weren't interested in why I wanted to be taken off their list, but needed all my details -- date of birth, address, phone number etc. -- in order to take me off the list. Makes you wonder what the unique "donor number" is for...
- Wrote (most of) a job application, albeit for a job that I don't really want. Still, it's good practice.
- Did washing-up
- Washed my gi (karate outfit)
- Took rubbish out, and washed the kitchen bins
- Picked up my tax disc from the Post Office.
- Posted two things that needed posting (credit card payment, and some money to pay in to savings account)
- Picked up RealCity (local free listings magazine -- handy for TV papers and occasionally has interesting stuff)
- Bought JobFinder (there were some good jobs in it, but despite this being the new JobFinder they turned out to have already passed their closing date!)
- Bought a tyre pressure gauge, and (later) checked my car tyres (they were very low, and uneven at that, which may partly explain the dragging-to-the-left) and pumped them up.
- Washed the car
Not bad for a day's faff. I've written all this down here so that I can look at it when I feel like I never get anything done...
Didn't get so much done on Friday but had fun anyway.
I drove my car into work, and had it duly admired by some more cow-orkers. The main reason I drove it in was so that I could go straight from work to the sword class (which took the place of my normal lesson this week) and take my katana with me. It was a good class, only four of us plus sensei (more than that waving live blades around would be dangerous anyway!), but very tiring, and my hand ended up quite bruised from the zubi pressing against it.
Managed to finish the job application that I started yesterday, and write another one in only about half an hour. Definitely getting quicker at writing them, though this time I just cut-and-pasted quite a few paragraphs from the previous application, & it's not that often that I can do that as I'm applying for lots of subtly different types of job and thus having to massage my actual experience/qualifications slightly differently each time.
After the sword class I picked
lnr and ewx up in the car and brought them back to ours, along with the lovely veggie chilli (and accompanying very garlicky salsa) that lnr had made for dinner. Mmmmm. Spent the rest of the evening with them just sitting around pottering and chatting, nice and relaxing way to spend an evening.On Saturday I
addedentry's long-awaited visit. Picked
addedentry up at the station in the Morris; possibly should have warned him about the lack of seatbelts (and warned him better about my driving!) but he didn't seem to be gripping the edge of the seat too tightly. After he had duly admired the library and the rest of the house, we settled down to listen to music and play Scrabble. I suspect
sion_a was pleasantly surprised to find that one of my friends actually wanted to listen to his music... Though I'm ashamed to confess that I actually found myself liking one of the Laurie Anderson tracks. If only she'd stick to music and singing all the time, she might be listenable to! As for the Scrabble, I'm terribly out of practice, at least that was my excuse for losing; though in the end there were only a scant handful of points between myself and addedentry with sion_a convincingly in the lead. Meandered into town later and (after considerable faff) ended up at the Free Press, where we also met up with
lnr, ewx and <not-lj-user="Art">. Some of us enjoyed more drinks than we should have done, and by the time we left the pub to go our separate ways -- addedentry to his train, and the rest of us homewards in different directions -- sion_a was feeling too ill to be able to face going to ceb's party (and I didn't really want to walk there on my own, and was tired anyway). Sorry to those who were expecting us there.Spent some of the rest of the evening pottering on the computer, mostly following up the few vaguely interesting bits and bobs I'd found in this month's Bizarre, some of which proved entertainingly distracting both to myself and
sion_a (who was by then feeling a lot better). Mm.Sunday was absolutely saturated with Morris Minors. :-)
Art came round in the morning to admire the car and show me how it all worked; it was incredibly useful just having somebody around to show me that I didn't have to be afraid of taking bits of car off and putting them back on again, and I learned some useful bits and bobs (and discovered a few more things that need fixing/replacing/etc.).
I'd promised him a test drive, so he drove us over to his parents' house in Cambridge where his own moggy was garaged (having sadly failed its MOT a couple of days ago), and we took some pictures of the two cars
Art took some great photos of the event; I took some as well, but they're not as good, and I haven't got round to uploading them yet.
Unfortunately, when it came to driving home, I had my first real taste of the downsides of owning a 50-year-old car; the poor thing started okay, but as soon as I tried to drive her forwards she juddered to a halt within a few yards. Could have been a lot worse, though, since breaking down while surrounded by classic car enthusiasts is probably the best time to do it. A bevy of friendly moggy-owners immediately surrounded the poor ailing car, offering all kinds of advice and spare parts. Turned out that her spark plugs were attached in the wrong order (this probably happened while we were fiddling with her innards at the Tech Museum), so we sorted that out, and gave the plugs a good clean (they were thick with soot). During this process one of the other club members noticed that the choke cable was frayed, which explained the soot -- the choke probably wasn't doing very much at all -- and the choke was leaking slightly.
Got her going eventually and managed to get her back home, but I must confess I'm not really looking forward to the drive to Witchford (to see the local moggy mechanic) later this week -- it's a bit of a trek and I do not fancy breaking down on the A10.
Rest of Sunday passed peacefully: a bit more chatting with Art before he went home; pies (I LIEK PIES) for dinner; a bit of pottering around the house. Didn't feel up to much more by that point; I'd developed a sore throat late on Saturday night, and by Sunday night I was feeling bunged up and generally grotty. Took myself and my cold off to bed, via bath.
Feeling grotty-ish now with cough/cold. Hopefully tonight I'll sleep a bit better than I have done the last few nights... Friday night my sore throat kept me awake, Saturday night there were lots of people faffing around in cars on our road and I kept worrying about what was going on, and trying to see if I could see anything out of the window. Last night I took aspirin for the sore throat, Valium for sleep (and to relax the muscles in my aching back and shoulder), and herbal sleeping tablets (for the belt-and-braces attitude to sleep), and slept through more of the night. I want to sleep for about a week, please.
