Something & Nothing

Quite a lot has happened since my last entry, but none of it relates to any of the things I intended to blog about.

February 6th saw Pickfords collect our stuff from Whitby; after which I ran the vacuum cleaner around, jumped in the car, waved good bye to Whitby, and headed south. I called it quits somewhere near Peterborough (even though I was only 80 miles from my destination) and stayed over at a Travel Lodge because I was too knackered to continue. It was bloody cold that night too. The following morning I went straight to our new bungalow in Weeting and got there just as the Pickford's guys were arriving. Everything was unloaded by lunchtime so at 1pm I went to Dee's folks (where she was staying while I sorted all of this out), some 9 miles away for a spot of lunch. So far, so good.

The fun all started when we went back two hours later to find water pouring through the ceilings in the kitchen, living room, bathroom and hallway. To cut the story short, a pipe in the loft had frozen in the night, remained frozen in the morning while I was round there, and thawed out while I was away having lunch.

20 days later, Dee and I reckon we were kind of lucky because, as they had just been delivered, none of our kitchen appliances were plugged in and are working again now they've dried out. Our stuff in the living room that got wet was still boxed and the boxes protected most things. We unpacked them into the bedrooms immediately we'd shut off the water and the only thing to have suffered is our CD collection, about half of which now has crinkly booklets.

Our landlords have been less fortunate because the kitchen ceiling eventually collapsed, the living room ceiling is warped and needs replacing, the carpets in the kitchen, hallway and bathroom were unsalvageable, and all four rooms need redecorating. The worst part however is that they forgot to tell their insurance company when the last tennant moved out in October. This has invalidated their insurance so they are having to foot the bill themselves.

In a way I guess they are lucky too. As it stands they are looking at having to pay for several hundreds of pounds of repairs. If the place has burned down...

I've volunteered to do most of the work, if they pay for the materials as I figure that it will get the job done faster, more conveniently, and with materials of our choosing. It does however mean that I've had little time for MacBooks, blogs, Fedora, Beetles, or anything else. Things are settling down a little now but there's still a heck of a lot of work to do so my 'Blog Projects' are likely to be taking a back seat for a good few weeks. Expect another update around the end of March.

A (Lack of) Progress Report

Although it looks a bit like I might have changed my mind after all and given up on this blogging lark, this is not the case. The fact is that nothing relevant has happened because life has been getting in the way.

You know how it is: you're staying with relatives over Christmas and while you're out and about, you walk into an estate agents (like you shouldn't), and the next thing you know, you're moving house. In this case a 250 mile 'flit' from the wilds of North Yorkshire to the swamps of Norfolk. Don't you just know they are going to love me down there?

The 250 miles, in case you are not entirely familiar with the geography of the British Isles, is by road as opposed to how the crow flies, but as we'll be going by car (as opposed to by crow) I reckon that the distance by road was the more relevant figure to quote even if the crow can reduce it somewhat.

Anyway, the point is that making the necessary preparations has been using up all of the time that I might otherwise have spent messing about with my MacBook (the original inspiration for my blog) or Fedora (my stated 'new project'). I will be returning to these subjects when the dust settles on our move and will hopefully be adding a new topic which might, had I chosen to go down the route of maintaining more than one blog, have resulted in the creation of a new blog called "Diary of a VW Beetle Virgin". Lunatic Antics is DEFINITELY a more appropriate banner for what I get up to. #-)

Lunatic Antics

A little over three months ago I created my first blog, Diary of a Mac Virgin, and used it to record my first experiences of using an Apple Mac. I found it a useful exercise and as I'm planning to embark on a few new projects this year I thought I'd start a new blog, with a more general title, on which to record the whole shebang.

Just in case anybody is wondering, the name "Lunatic Antics" is mis-heard from the Bauhaus song "She's in Parties". The actual line is "Special effects by loonatik and drinks". I don't know what they hell it's supposed to mean but as I said, I misheard it, and there was a time when I used to label some of my work as having "Special Effects by Lunatic Antics".