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Friday, November 7th, 2008
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12:49 am - Fingers Crossed and Breath Held
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OMG - was at work this lunch when the radio news announced the Bank of England's unprecedented decision to cut interest base rate by 1.5% to 3% in an attempt to try to kick start public spending and revive the stalling economy.
Truth be told, my jaw dropped (I always thought that was just a turn of phrase) and I caught my breath.
Speaking as someone with finance on our holiday cottage business, finance on our building plot for the new house as well as a rental outgoing on the cottage we live in, this could be really welcome news and could have a seriously positive effect on the household finances.
The only pause for concern is as to whether the greed and shareholder-focus of the financial institutions will derail the rate cut and stop it reaching our monthly mortgage payments.
Hence the baited breath and crossed digits...
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| Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
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9:52 pm - Meeting the Tall Man (Part 1)
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| Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
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8:09 pm - Severely Financially Deficited Underwear
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Been a bit bonkers the last few weeks what with music, work, J & E's end of term stuff and the self build, but I think I'm now starting to see wood for the trees.
Last weekend was spent almost entirely gigging with ceilidhs on Friday (60th birthday in Kelham nr Newark) and Saturday (wedding in Stratford on Avon), 3 hours of 'ambience' music at the Lincoln Farmers market for the town business improvement organisation on Saturday during the day and 3 slots at the Lincoln Water Festival on the Sunday afternoon. Bit tiring but very satisfying knowing that a big chunk of the holiday is paid for from that and the previous weekends fees. More to come this weekend as Friday and Saturday Fleetfoot Mike are booked to play in Bolton and Birkenhead respectively.
The self build is making steady progress dodging around other work and the weather but I reckon that we will finally be able to book the onsite training for the ICF blocks within the next 2 to 3 weeks and so should have some tangible above-ground structure up before the end of August. We've really been very lucky with the water situation as the village has had a number of instances of localised flooding over the last 3 weeks, yet the site has only had to deal with the rainfall directly out of the sky and not runoff from elsewhere. Having installed a sump with a submersible pump in it and having linked it into an old disused land drain that crossed the site which the JCB driver 'found' during the excavation stage, we only have to keep striking up a small generator to get rid of the water. I'm very relieved not to be the proud owner of a new village swimming pool.
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| Tuesday, December 5th, 2006
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6:34 pm - GIANT DIGGER!!!!
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Wahay - JCB has arrived today and Steve the bass guitar playing structural engineer has just gone home having dropped off the plans for the foundation design scheme. So tomorrow we'll know how deep we're digging.
Speed of progress will depend on whether there's any archaeology below the surface to record that may slow things up. On one hand we'd prefer that there isn't anything there as we have to pay for the archaeologists by the day plus their report writing time and the more they find the longer and more costly the job will be.
On the other hand the re-enactor born-again-history-buff bit of me would *love* there to be something which gave us some historical background / continuity to the place that we're going to be living.
Of course, a big bucket of gold would be lovely however long it took to dig up and document....
In other news, portaloo salesman didn't get back to me early enough today so didn't have time to fetch 'the turdis' (thank you Rafe!) and I'm now looking at the schedule for the rest of the week / fortnight wondering when I'm going to get down to Norwich with the truck.
Gigging tonight at The Drill Hall in Lincoln with  stevieannie and friends liam and Frank. Just some carolling as the musical spot during their monthly spoken verse night. Promises to be "interesting"....
current mood:  thoughtful
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| Monday, December 4th, 2006
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9:14 pm - Phew!
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Just managed to get back onto lj after a worrying couple of weeks (since stevieannie and I had the network trashing power surge and associated reconfiguration of replacement bits).
Thought for a while that my account had been terminated through lack of postings. X
Thought that maybe someone had hijacked the account and changed the password on me. X
Thought that little green men from Alpha Centauri had singled me out for psychological experimentation and evaluation through a series of tests that incrementally introduced more and more frustration into my computing experience and access rights... X (well.. not strictly true but just cos I'm not paranoid.......)
Needn't have worried as it turns out.
It is puzzling how attached you get to something that you don't use that much. I can't have posted more than a couple of handfuls of times in the last year and even then nothing much to say. Yet the feeling of not being able to post or of losing the identity, however sparingly used, rankles somewhat.
OK, in my mind I'd be posting on here on a daily basis and putting up piccies of the progress on the self-build but the realistic part of me knows that I'll be lucky to find time for maybe once a week when the project really gets going.
Anyway, the calm before the storm is here. The site is cleared of vegetation and marked out with pegs. The prep work is done for the excavation and the archaeologists, building inspectors and excavator are all booked for Wednesday, rain or shine.
Bought a site portaloo today on eBay. Tomorrow it's site fencing. Wednesday - big hole in the ground! Will try to keep posting......
current mood:  excited
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| Sunday, September 17th, 2006
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10:09 pm
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No postings for heavens knows how long - busy busy busy..........
Another relaxing weekend of doing nothing :-)
Then I woke up.
Looking forward to an uncomplicated week this week.
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| Thursday, June 16th, 2005
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4:34 pm - Fingers crossed for Tim...
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...who is sitting his last electrical exam today. Having looked at some of his past papers, I think we can quite safely say that I'm not going to be an electrician any day soon. "Difficult" doesn't even begin to cover it. I don't even know the names for half of the equations and calculations that he has to do. My husband is a brainbox.
Tim is still *kind of* enjoying his new phone (the SPV M2000, or "MPV" as I accidentally keep calling it). The only drawback we have found so far is that it has an average battery life on par with the longevity of a mayfly. And when he changed batteries, it decided to lose all his saved info. How crap is that? We're undecided as to whether he's going to take it back and try a Treo instead. We'll see.
Driving was... interesting today. I seem to be channelling crap right now. Rain made my 3 point turns and reversing round a corner moves pretty difficult - what no mirrors! I'm having my doubts about that "end of August" test date that Steve mentioned. However, I can't give up, as Cuthbert, (the little red Fiesta who could) is sitting in the drive, and just had a full service with new tyres, new wingmirrors, new oil/air filters etc. etc. *Sigh* I just wish I was finding it easier.
Cute thing of the week - Jared has a violin recital at the end of term. How does he term this to me?
"Hey, Mum! I got a gig!"
My son. My son...
Into the studio for *hopefully* the last time on this project, tonight. Backing vocals (could be interesting!) and belltree. Looking forwards to hearing the finished project *sooooo* much!
current mood:  tired
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| Saturday, March 5th, 2005
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11:41 am - ditto...
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| Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005
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10:47 pm - School's Out (for slush)!
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In recognition of lengthy postings so far I'm going to try to keep it a bit shorter today.
Hit snooze too many times this morning but woke up to stunning sunrise over a crispy snow covered garden. Ground temperatures dropped suddenly last night and the roads were a sheet of ice. The radio news was filled with reports of vehicles in ditches, minor collisions, general mayhem and a steadily growing list of school closures. OK the road / driving conditions *were* pretty tricky but why are we so unprepared for cold, icy and snowy weather in the UK.
I remember talking to decadentdavedecadentdave about Winnipeg winters and the several feet of snow and temperatures hitting minus 40 and him saying how life went on just as normal but with more clothes. Here we have a well forecast cold snap with one night of hard freeze and 3 to 4 inches of snow on top and the schools close, the road accident rate soars and chaos ensues.
The school closures are probably the most frustrating bit as the snow had mostly thawed off by mid morning but with half of the teachers living 30 miles away and unable / unwilling to travel in the early morning chaos, Jared's school was shut for the day. Fortunately for us Annie now works from home but with a school population of about 70 there must be at least half of the kids where both parents work full or at least part time - so maybe 3 dozen families (and employers) having the days schedule turned on it's head in the community of a small primary school.
On a wider county scale - who knows how many families and businesses disrupted. Financial result to the local area £?
Whatever happened to employing teachers from the local area?
current mood:  frustrated
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12:56 am - La, la, la - what's that? Louder? OK - LA, LA, LA
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Just about to head for bed, but getting kind of addicted to this LJ thing (see if the novelty wears off in a week or two..).
More satisfying progress at work today but dodging snow showers. The weather (sun/pending storm/snow/sun/pending storm/snow etc..) and the panoramic view to see it with reminded of the Stan Rogers lyric "you can see it come for miles, so you guess you've got a while".
Well we pulled the hat brim and the nice large blue tarpaulin down and got quite a bit done inside. Rest of blockwork for the utility, removed temporary partition screen that was keeping the weather out before the tarp went up, put in the joist hangars and the joists for the rest of the bathroom floor and cut the ceiling joists for the lean to bit at the back of the building. All coming on nicely but still too treacherous to risk taking the roof off. Sooner or later I'll have to include some piccies here (or a link) so you can see what I'm up to.
Got home, ate a quick tea, played with Ellie and Jared for a bit, then ran J off to cubscouts. Then back quick to get changed and go out to choral practice in Grantham. I got asked a couple of months ago if I would help bolster the men's section in the town choral society as they were a bit low on numbers and like a fool I didn't immediately say no. Yes, I know I'm already overcommitted timewise but it was a challenge, something I'd not done before and music.... (I keep telling myself it's only for this *one* concert..). It is kind of fun, however, despite having used my voice to sing with since childhood, the level of control I'm finding I need to have and the amount of effort that it takes is coming as a bit of a surprise.
I know that there are several of you out there who have done a lot of this type of singing (not least the members of nMC) so I'm bracing myself for a few "yep we've got a stack of T-Shirts" comments. I take my virtual hat off to those of you who can...
Anyway, we got through the whole piece for the first time tonight after 8 weeks of practising various blocks in detail. Wow. What a piece of music. I think I need to temper my volume though - after one section we went back and had another run with the instruction "I need more from the basses here, really go for it" I got a raised eyebrow and look of surprise for my efforts - I think I may need to *blend* more....Well he *did* say Go For It :-)
For anyone who is interested: Grantham Choral Society - Rossini - Petite Messe Solennelle - St Wulframs Church, Grantham - March 12th at 7:30pm
Darn this LJ thing, just noticed the time. Early up in the morning - time to pumpkin - Night all...
current mood:  satisfied
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| Monday, February 21st, 2005
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8:01 pm - Brrr - It's a bit chilly for roof work...
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Today's plan of starting to remove the old roof from the building that Dad and I are converting into a 2 bed cottage ended up being scotched due to a sudden snowfall. If truth be told we kind of expected it as the forecasts were looking a bit dismal on Friday, but, hey, they sometimes get it wrong so we stuck to the plan until we arrived to find a wet-snow covering, icy tiles on the roof and skies full of snow intermittenly heading our way. Putting up scaffolding and prancing about on the roof looked like a very dicey idea just from a safety point of view let alone opening up the building to potential indoor snowdrifts...
So we opted instead for building up the internal blockwork partition wall between what will be the kitchen and the new utility room. Still not much fun mixing mortar in the cold but the exercise soon warmed me up. We got the new wall toothed into the external wall and built up to about 6ft high before the mortar ran out. However, the weather was closing in again and we had to get back to the builders merchants before they closed for some stuff for tomorrow. This meant that there wouldn't be enough time to use another mix up. So we called it a day and packed up.
It often strikes me, when we do get 5 minutes for a coffee break in the van, staring out across the River Witham flood plain towards Horncastle and the Lincolnshire Wolds, beneath an ever changing 360 degree skyscape, just how much I enjoy living where I do and working out in the open (even with wet and cold) and really seeing the world *happening* around me.
Don't think I'll be trading in for a deskjob again any day soon.
Other news today - Got the ball rolling on the Archaeological Watching Brief for the new building plot (basically, because the house plot is somewhere where there *might* be some archaeology, the council planning permission said we need a boffin to record any findings while we're digging - it just so happens that the caller in the ceilidh band I play with is a *senior boffin* and is helping us to sort out the necessary paperwork..)
- Had a meeting with a professional hole digger on the new plot (actually a managerial hole digger bloke!). So that Annie and I can determine whether we can afford to build a basement on th enew house we need the necessary geotechnical survey to see what type of underground strata there are and what type foundations/basement construction type/groundwater management systems we are going to have to put in. Keep your fingers crossed for us that the results will allow us to do the basement - recording/rehearsal studio, projects room and kids play room really would all be better off down there.....
Feeling tired but having accomplished plenty today...
current mood:  busy
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| Sunday, February 20th, 2005
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1:05 pm - Scary new tech thing...
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Annie just sorted me out with a livejournal ID and wandered away from the PC having completed the setup nonchalantly saying "there you go it's all set up, now write something... and make it entertaining damn you..."
So of course I now have total writers block - it's like saying "sing something" to someone. As soon as the words appear from the singee's mouth, the singer loses their entire repertoire.
Anyway, in line with the current fad
10 things I've done that my friends are unlikely to have..
1. Thrown 10,000 loaves of bread into the waste bin at 3am in the morning.
2. Played trumpet for Omar Sharif.
3. Got a tune out of a bath towel.
4. Crashed into the local deputy chief constable of police's car and not got booked.
5. Organised a political demonstration against unfair regulation of public music performance.
6. Appeared on stage at the 100 Club, Oxford Street.
7. Had my chest hair named.
8. Carried out underpinning to a building's foundations.
9. Played on the same bill as a 3 legged ballerina, a bottle orchestra, an adult rated Punch and Judy show and PJ Proby (OK PJ Proby could probably say he'd done this - but the guy was a jerk so I'm not worried about having him as a friend..).
10. Added the outline of my shoe to the number of other tradesmens shoe tracings on a lead church roof as part of the 4-500 year tradition of leaving a mark to show you'd worked there.
By the way, if anyone out there knows what a meme is please let me know. :-)
current mood:  cheerful
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geeky