deja vu

my boiler's exploded.

haven't we been here before?

:(

soft fluffy joy!

my new carpets are all down and last night Liz, Anita and I put the livingroom back to rights. I still need to clear up the aftermath downstairs and SuperPlumber is coming tomorrow morning to put in bypass piping by the boiler that should prevent any more hiccoughs with the heating (which has actually been working faultlessly for the last week anyway but shhh) but home is back to being a calming comfy space that I enjoy - comfier than it was before by a long way, and it was pretty comfy before.

I can't quite get over the carpet - it's another of the big changes I've made that once finished looks as if that's how it's always been, it just seems exactly right.

:)

warm again!

joy! house is simultaneously warm and dry again... and on Monday men are bringing carpet for me, life is good.

"fshhhhht"*

Guess what happened today? it rained inside my house! This is not good.

We've been working on getting the house ready for its new carpets - Liz came over to help and we pulled up all the remaining laminate and cleaned the floor and stuff... then we decided to lift a bit of the floor to fix some wiring: when the plumbers were installing the pipe work they encountered some crazy wiring (surprise!) and accidentally cut through it. It wasn't live or powering anything so that didn't really matter. However I know what the line was for and without going into too much boring detail I worked out after the plumbers left that it'd be quite useful to reconnect it and use that line for something else, so while we were working tonight I decided to lift some of the floor and fix the wiring...

The sections of floor that were lifted were all screwed back down (by the baby apprentice plumber) so taking them up to do maintenance is a doddle, I've already re-laid the house's network cabling and replaced the floor so I wasn't expecting a problem... I certainly wasn't expecting to take a screw out and have a fountain appear in my livingroom... what would you have thought was the first thing you teach apprentice plumbers? perhaps don't put screws through pipes? yeah...

After I'd shut off the water I called Super-Plumber, he's very cross with his apprentice (the phrase "I'll ring his bloody neck" cropped up repeatedly) and is coming tomorrow to fix it.

*sigh*

On the bright side this showed up before the carpet was laid.

*having already used the title "splosh" I thought I'd try and recreate the sound water makes when escaping from one's floor at high pressure...

PANCAKES!

Last night we celebrated Pancake Day at Liz's. Liz played with her frying pan and made millions and millions of pancakes which were eaten by the hungry hoardes occupying her kitchen. They were very good pancakes too made with duck eggs from the Farmers' Market... mmmm

On my way over I fired off text messages to my family (only one of whom has so far replied - harumph!) because pancakes are an intrinsically 'family' thing to me: My folks have the best pancake pan in the known universe and bottles of ancient homemade raspberry vinegar which, while it might not sound it, but is actually one of the very best things ever to put on pancakes. Pancake Day was a very special occasion as a child, probably ranks up there in my memory with family birthdays and xmas, only it was for everyone at once (unlike birthdays) and Dad enjoyed it too (unlike xmas which used to just make him grumpy) which made it better than those!

When I left home to go to University, the first couple of years' Pancake Days went by unmarked - I remember the puzzled voices of family members down University payphone recievers, how could I have forgotten? Not that they were repudiating me for a lapsed observance, just that they were shocked I could have forgotten about such a big day. Since we all began living sepperate adult lives my family and I have through necessity made Pancake Day more of a movable feast. My big brother has a particular knack for knowing just when to suggest we make pancakes (you do have to be careful not to let them become an everyday food after all) but I still very seldom make them myself (even though I actually have a pretty good pan of my own nowadays, as well as good pancake-making genes.)

I'd never really thought about it until I was walking back to the car from Liz's last night, but pancakes for me are a deeply and intrinsically social thing: they're almost a kind of ritualised familial inclusion, and as much as anything that's why I only seem to ever eat them with groups of people that I love. Pancakes with 'the Gang' last night was probably the first time that Pancake Day has really felt like Pancake Day since I left home in 1996. My own oddball (and subconscious) emotional/ritual perspective on this particular food probably also explains why certain Canadian friends bitching about what constitutes a "real" pancake when I was making some for them last year upset me as much as it did.

Isn't it great when you manage to make sense of yourself?

bah!

I'm being referer-log spammed... at least I very much doubt that so many of you are arriving here via links on poker websites, that would make no sense... stupid spammers.

on the bright side of site statistics only about 18% of traffic so fra this month arrived at the old blog address, yay! my audience (mostly) remembers to update their bookmarks - thanks folks... and how will I replay you? by posting about my usage stats of course.

yeah. sorry about that. Real post to follow soon, I'm just still a bit zonked after the plumbing adventures.

my love is like a...

... busted clutch.

I love my car, we've covered that. Well it's a bad love and it's no good for me: I just got a massive repair bill this morning for fixing the clutch - something that really shouldn't have failed at this point in the car's three and a half year short life. The waranty of course ran out in September, and the clutch is broken so it must be repaired. I might very well get my money back from the manufacturer (who agree that at the car's young age this isn't something I should be dealing with.) but they need to see the old clutch first and determine why it failed and whether it's their fault or mine (how can it be mine?!) before they'll cough up... so in the meantime I'm saddled with a massive bill in order to get the car I rely on back working.

I really do love it though, I love driving it especially and it's a source of great joy to me, as well as being a gaping fanancial black-hole. - Generalisation: Patrick likes things which are very bad for him. boo.

I was describing to a friend the other night how I used to drive everyone everywhere in my first car - I loved that car too. I loved (and still love) driving for its own sake, and we were both observing that the same appears to be true for another mutual friend who recently passed his test. There are people for whom driving is a chore, and others who are frightened of it but there are also those who light up when they're behind the wheel and I'm very much one of them. Driving rocks.

Owning a car however... owning a car is hard. That first car I used to drive everyone everywhere in as a teenager had to go in the end because my money ran out and it just kept breaking... After I'd stopped mourning the loss of my wheels back then, I gradually began to realise how freeing it is not to own a car and if I could have afforded to stay living in the city I doubt I would ever have bought another... ironic really that I've been forced into owning another motorised money pit because couldn't afford to live where I didn't need one.

And yet, I still love it. Something must be wired wrong in my brain.