Ginger Karate Blog
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
I'm back, with almost two weeks since a post. The primary reason for this is of course the house move, which has monopolised the majority of my time. The secondary move is because my PC blew up (The third reason is apathy). More of the PC stuff in a while, first lets go back to the 6th June {insert wobbly time effect here}.
I left work fairly early on the Friday. Jo had gotten out of a meeting early and was heading to Basingstoke to pick up the keys and meet me at the house. The only problem in this is that although she did very well in finding the estate agents (after some help from me), she couldn't find our house. She had in fact been only a few hundred yards away but kept turning the wrong way at some traffic lights. She did this 3 times at the same set of lights before realising she should try the other way! :o)
It was a great feeling walking into the house. I felt a combination of elation at having my own place and impending stress at what needed to be done to it (not much bar some decorating). We childlishly ran around for a bit, as there are two ways from the lounge to the dining room, before settling down for some painting. I know, I know, it may have sounded a bit premature, but we were short of time. Jo's parents were due in on the following Tuesday, and what with 2 days given to the move and the flat clean/check out we had 3 days to decorate, organise and tidying the house and garden.
The lounge was two tone. Green above the dado rail, red below. We painted the green a nice cream colour, which helped to make the room much brighter. We then broke after a coat or two for dinner. First proper curry in about six months. Bloody fantastic, although we had to venture to a dodgy part of the neighbourhood to get it. Indian takeaways aren't as bountiful in Basingstoke as they are in Reading!
Saturday was a pain in the arse. After two false starts we picked up the van. Big bugger it were, with one of those tail-lifts. Jo didn't like its up/down sensation though, so I of course didn't advantage of that >:o).
Took us two trips to get the majority of our stuff moved. Wasn't too bad to be honest. It was easier than the move to the flat, possibly because we left some of the furniture behind (some cheap MFI stuff I've had for years). Took about 8 hours in total, including returning the van. We celebrated with a chip supper (more junk food) and sausage in batter. Yum. Of the neighbours we knew, 2 said goodbye, good luck. The moaning old cow who lived below us just had a peek out of her window and waved after I waved back. She didn't come to say goodbye, and neither did we. Good riddance I say!
Speaking of neighbours, our closest ones are very nice: Ken and Pauline. We've met them, and several of their family, who always seem to be popping round. They're all very helpful and pleasant. Met the chap the other side just the once, as he says he's away a lot.
Back to the house. Spent Sunday finishing off the lounge. It looks lovely, if a little spartan. We're still waiting for the entertainment unit, which should be with us sometime next week. Treated ourselves to pizza (aargh, my diet!), but it was fucking good, pardon my French. I love Dominos. We also started to remove the horrid border in the bedroom, so that we could start painting. Finally finished the bedroom last night. It's purple and cream (with a picture rail I hung) and looks damn good even if I do say so myself!
The inventory went well. We got all of our deposit back, which surprised me after the hell of the previous letting agents. Got back after the check out and decided to plug my PC in and have a fiddle to get the modem working with an AOL CD (ADSL was still to be ordered at this point).
It blew up!... Spectacularly. The power supply blew, I'm guessing caused by a problem with the monitor/graphics card that has been manifesting itself as a screen flicker for a few weeks. The surge also took out the motherboard, both CD-ROM drives, the floppy drive, and my back up hard drive. Of course I didn't realise this at first. I first bought a new power supply and almost fried it. So I also bough a new motherboard and definately fried that (although the PSU is fine).
In the end I decided to replace the lot. New case, motherboard, CPU, RAM, CD-Writer and Graphics card. Lovely jubbly.
Not quite. Some conflict is hardware/software cause the windows installation to be corrupted. I would have erased the hard disk and started a fresh one, but I wanted to keep the data I had, and the CD-Writer (which I bought from work) doesn't work in Windows XP. New one ordered. *sigh* At least ADSL is up and running....
Jo's parents came down for five days during the week off. I much prefer their company when in my own house, as opposed to theirs, as I've more things to do if I'm bored, such as DIY, reading, cleaning etc. Of course I couldn't use my PC at the time!
Anyway, I'm bored of typing now. I'll try to restrict future updates to being a few paragraphs (and interesting to boot). I'll try to get Jo blogging too. This was supposed to be a joint thing.
I've probably missed loads out, but it's not that enthralling. The only other thing I can think of it that I got my next Karate belt. Brown and one white stripe - 2nd Kyu grade. That means I'm possibly only 9 months from a black belt, assuming I put the training in, which I haven't since grading as I've been busy with the house/apathetic.
Right, I really am off now. Ta ta.
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