UnorthodoxY Archive It's wasn't what you thought

November 16, 2007

More thoughts …

Filed under: Life,Travel — SpaceDog @ 10:43 pm

It’s occurred to me that my previous postings did focus somewhat on the staying-up-and-drinking aspects of this holiday. Perhaps this gives a bad impression.

The holiday, so far, has been great. I must admit that I didn’t quite expect the 8 am departures why it’s done that way. They manage to pack a lot of stuff into the time there is. We’re also getting some excellent local guides to show us around places, which is the sort of thing you’d not be able to sort out on your own.

The early nights/early mornings are still a bit strange to get used to but I may as well make the most of it. This last week is an optional extension and is supposed to be a bit more laid back so I should get a chance to relax a bit more. We’ve also lost almost half the group that aren’t doing the extension which is a bit strange, it also makes me one of the youngest people here — although I was always the youngest guy on the tour. Previously we’d all been kinda getting used to each other, but now with the smaller group it almost feels like a new tour.

It’s a bit to hot for me to sit here and think of anything else to write, a few days of rest, then a few more things to see and then off to Vegas.

October 29, 2007

Swollen

Filed under: Life,Travel — SpaceDog @ 5:29 pm

So got to California OK, got to the place I’m staying at and I’ve had a look around. No major hitches apart from it briefly looking like I’d have to reclaim and recheck my bags at Heathrow as I was flying BA and then Virgin. After some to-and-fro they managed to check my bags all the way through, and I managed to get through immigration, get my bags, get through customs and get out of the airport in under an hour. Something of a record I’m told.

Of course it couldn’t continue to go so well and yesterday the back of my throat swelled up impressively making it difficult to talk or even move without triggering my own gag reflex. Which is as pleasant as it sounds. A combination of that, jet-lag, and the heat led me to sleep from almost half of the last twenty-four hours. So having lost a day I’m rejigging my schedule a bit, hopefully it’ll all make more sense as things move on although it may mean that I’ll have to skip spending any time in Tijuana.

My throats feeling a bit more normal today, so I’m off into LA to do the tourist thing.

October 25, 2007

Out of the frying pan …

Filed under: Life,Travel — SpaceDog @ 3:23 pm

Well, I’m off tomorrow. And it’s been a busy couple of weeks, I’m actually quite looking forward having a ‘travel’ day where I’ll not really have to do very much but sit around and read. I was getting pretty frazzled on the lead up to this trip but doing the final packing last night everything just kinda ‘fell into place’. It reminds me that I’m always a bit stressed before a holiday, however once I’m away I can pretty much deal with whatever crops up, because by that point I’ve no other choice.

And it looks like a few things might crop up, considering a fair bit of the area along the route I’m following for the first week is pretty much on fire and places I’m going through for the last two weeks are frequently hit by hurricanes. When you think about it it kinda puts my concerns about my bathroom into perspective, at least I don’t need to worry about my home being flattened, flooded or fried by forces of nature while I’m away.

Anyway, expect updates as and when I can get them up. I’m going out tonight and I’m leaving early tomorrow so I’m not even going to bother checking my e-mail before I leave, if I there’s something I haven’t done then it’s not getting done. It can wait a month.

October 19, 2007

Just because you’re paranoid …

Filed under: Life,Travel — SpaceDog @ 9:41 pm

… doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

Sigh.

Maybe I spoke too soon yesterday. Today I went home for lunch, partly because it’s easier to do shopping at lunchtime and partly because I’m paranoid about the bathroom.

Apparently I’ve good cause to be. Just as I was leaving to go back to work I heard the dreaded sound of dripping. Yup, my bathroom ceiling slowly getting damper. Again.

I couldn’t get anyone to answer the door upstairs until after work, and we looked under their bath and it was depressingly dry. Running a bath and emptying it showed no leaks, but there had clearly been a fair amount of water run down my wall.

Throughout my continuing bathroom fiasco I’ve been fairly upbeat, annoyingly finding the positive spin on everything, but it’s starting to wear on me now. For the first time I’ve had to consider what I’d do if I can’t get everything sorted by the time I’m due to go away. I’m not seriously considering changing my holiday plans but the idea of having to has moved from the not-a-chance box to the almost-certainly-not-going-to-happen box.

I’ve had to wonder what would I do if I wake up on the morning of my flights and there’s water cascading down my walls, how much would changing my flights cost, would that be covered by my insurance.

However, things are looking up. Upstairs dude found another potential source of the water that ties with everything (a leak in the bath that would only show up if water was left sitting in the bath) and I’ve had myself a nice steak and chips (the benefit of shopping at lunchtime is decent steak). My do-before-I-leave list is almost done, as is the bottle of wine I opened to go with the steak.

Back to the positive upbeat outlook then.

Six days until I’m on holiday.

October 18, 2007

Packing, Paranoia and Zombie Dogs?

Filed under: Film,Life,Travel — SpaceDog @ 10:46 pm

I’ve been putting off packing for my holiday mostly because the pile of stuff to go clearly doesn’t fit in the bag I have.

Normally I’d don’t take much stuff but since I’m going to a wedding whilst I’m away I need to take a full kilt outfit. Of course I could just put it in a suit bag and take it separately but I’m joining a tour after the wedding and I’m really limited to one bag. Fortunately it does look like it’ll all fit, with some work and some tweaking.

And if not there’s always plan B: duct tape the suit bag to my ruck sack and claim that it’s all one bag …

Life is complicated by the fact I keep investigating anything that sounds like dripping water, of course it’s just the normal sounds my flat but I’m a bit paranoid. Every shadow on the ceiling looks like a new waterstain and I just can’t help thinking that the first thing I’m going to find when I come back is my new bathroom ceiling collapsed in bits in the bath.

So, to take my mind off all of this, I went to see Resident Evil: Extinction. What can I say? It’s not high quality cinema, but it knows exactly what it is and delivers on all counts. A Perfect Popcorn Movie as one of the imdb reviews says. And it’s got Milla Jovovich being all superpowered and kicking ass. What more could you want?

October 17, 2007

Jeopardy

Filed under: Life — SpaceDog @ 10:40 am

I’ll take “Sounds” for 100 please.

This is the sound you don’t want to hear when the plumbing in your bathroom has been redone

Ah, easy “What is dripping water?”

Arrrgh!

My builder has just described my bathroom as “the Bermuda Triangle of bathrooms” due to all of the issues I keep having.

Turns out it was the upstairs neighbours leaking again and I probably caught it in enough time that I can let it dry out and we’ll be fine. However the guys that came in to check had some issues with plastering so now it looks like that might need touched up too.

The funny thing is, if you read this site you’d think my bathroom has been a bit of a fiasco but I’ve not posted about several of the major issues I’ve had as I pretty much lost the will to care about it several weeks back.

Sigh.

Ten days until I’m on holiday.

October 8, 2007

Progress

Filed under: Life — SpaceDog @ 8:33 pm

Should have done a few of these recently but I got a bit swamped over the summer, chances are I’ll only do one more wrap up at the end of the year.

People Visited: 20 (4) [July: 18/4]
Places Visited: 11 (3) [July: 8/2]
Countries Visited: 6 (2) [July: 6/2]

To be honest I would have done most of the same things over summer regardless of the resolution, and the same is probably true for the holiday I’ve got coming up. Perhaps it was too vague a resolution, or maybe just too easy. Or maybe I should make an effort in the last few months.

See the January post for the details and the rules.

September 27, 2007

Danger of Death

Filed under: Life — SpaceDog @ 5:38 pm

“Fucking Assholes!” said the electrician. This was the pinnacle of his profanity, but he’d been working up to it as he got steadily more incredulous over the last ten minutes.

Welcome to the latest episode in the continuing story of my bathroom. The electricity to the shower was reconnected this week so the plasterer can come in and try and make the place look less like a post-apocalyptic nightmare.

It’s taken a while to sort out the mess left by the previous guys — the second lot I got in and then fired after three days as they were useless. There were a few wires lying around which the electrician had assumed were just old wires. I suspected they were in fact the main wires for the shower and the lights, and so he tested them.

“Well, it’s very live,” said the electrician, looking somewhat surprised.

“Is that bad?” I asked, wondering if something could be ‘very’ live and if it was in someway worse than normally live.

“Well I wouldn’t touch it,” he advised.

Well quite, fortunately I’ve been avoiding the dangerous looking cable for the last few weeks as it flapped it’s exposed connections around about eye level. In fact I tucked it behind a convenient pipe, which may have been less wise than I originally thought.

Suddenly it occurred to me what had happened, because the roof has been raised a few feet the last lot cut the wires to take down the roof and left them one end dangling, the other must be behind the roof. The electrician said they wouldn’t have done that, but I explained that they were a bit of a dubious lot and so he looked for the other end of the wires and discovered them lurking behind a roof panel.

So the last lot had just killed the power, snipped the wires disconnecting the earth to the pipes and then turned the power back on leaving the live lights and shower wires hanging out of the wall.

Danger of Death

Finally convinced beyond doubt that they’d really done that the electrician completed his stream of profanities by pronouncing them “Fucking Assholes.”

“They were cowboys, that’s why I binned them,” I said.

“You just don’t do that though. It’s really dangerous, in the bathroom with all the water, you could have been frazzled …”

Eeek.

It’s all fixed now, just the plastering, tiling, and painting to go.

September 25, 2007

Madness

Filed under: Life,Travel — SpaceDog @ 8:58 am

With the benefit of hindsight I can now see that camping in Ullapool in September wasn’t the most sensible idea in the world.

There were some good points. The bands were mostly good, the beer was reasonably priced, and the food was a good notch above the usual festival crap. The campsite is in a lovely spot, sandwiched between Ullapool itself and the sea and it has proper facilities. Ullapool is small enough that everything is in easy strolling distance, so you can always head to the shops or the pub.

There were some bad points. We arrived really late (because Ullapool is miles away) and started off the weekend well by having two of our bags nicked as we were trying to set up the tents. The staff seemed shocked (shocked!) by this so it looks like this year has brought a lot more wankers out of the woodwork to travel up here. The atmosphere on the campsite wasn’t what I expected, I’d been looking forward to something more relaxed and ned-free but it didn’t really happen. Although people were pitching in to help each other put up tents it did seem that over the weekend another group of people were doing their best to unpeg them again.

Apparently there were more thefts over the weekend and there were warning signs posted on the Saturday night. I wonder if the fact that Franz Ferdinand were headlining had any effect on the dynamics of the whole thing. Security seemed pretty poor overall, particular campsite security, it’s a shame that even such a small event should need serious security coverage but it seems to be the case.

I can’t really complain about the weather, it was the windiest campsite I’ve ever stayed at but I should have expected that. It did manage to utterly destroy my tent, but the old thing had had a good life and it was probably time for it to be taken out back and shot anyway.

Am I glad I went? Well, it was an experience and you have to try these things.

Would I do it again? Well certainly not the camping, but I think it might be worth going if you can get room in a hotel or a B&B or can rent a cottage nearby. The problem is by the time you know what the lineup will be all the rooms will already be nabbed.

No pictures as I opted not to take my camera, but if you’re on Facebook you’ll be able to find some tagged to my profile.

September 23, 2007

A list

Filed under: Life,Travel — SpaceDog @ 6:26 pm

Things I may never be again, a list:

  • Completely Warm
  • Completely Dry
  • Completely Clean
  • Camping in Ullapool in September

More details once I’ve had time to relax and recover.

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