Archives: January
Monday, January 16th
Ships that pass in the night
Soundtrack: Easyworld - Kill the Last Romantic
Mood: A bit lonely
It's been one of those weeks. Our big project deadline at work is at the end of the month, so I worked 52 hours last week, including 6 hours on saturday (my standard week is 37.5). What little weekend was left was mostly spent servicing the CG125 and finally fitting the new ignition coil to (hopefully) bring the reliability issues to an end. It certainly seemed so when it fired up first kick this morning. All was good until the handling started getting a bit wayward about three miles short of the office. That'll be a rapidly deflating rear tyre then, courtesy of a nice wood screw. In my last post I reported that trying to kickstart a dead bike for half an hour has a tendency to reduce you to a sweaty mess. I can now add that walking three miles in full winter gear has a very similar effect.
I'm now sat at home on my own because Sarah's just left for work. As part of her graduate scheme with 'a certain Derbyshire-based car manufacturer' she has to spend 8 weeks on the line, four of which are on the night shift. I think it's going to be very strange, particularly with me working long days, as we will probably only see each other for an hour or so at each end of the day.
On the bright side, we had another damn good time at Rock City on Saturday. It is now functioning as our weekly exercise - dancing on and off for five or six hours. I seem to have lost the ability to dance without bouncing around the place crazily!
posted by David @ 07:56 PM [link]
Tuesday, January 3rd
Sparks flying...
Today was never going to be a good day really was it? First day back at work after the Christmas break, and to add to the fun Sarah was starting early, which meant the alarm went off at 5:30am. Surprisingly I actually woke up fairly quickly, and managed to leave the house at about 7, which ought to have got me to work about half an hour early.
Or it would have done, had I not spent half an hour kicking the CG125 before finally getting it to start, reducing me to a shaking, swearing, sweaty mess. Lovely.
Of course it wouldn't start when I tried to come home either, so I called Sarah to come and get me with the van. While waiting for her I managed to get it to start, and as it was dark by this point I was able to see the blue sparks crawling all over the HT lead end cap. That might explain a few things. New end cap is on order, and until then we are going to have to make one car take us both to work in opposite directions! More early mornings then.
We own three bikes. Of the other two, one is waiting to go to the garage for a rattly camchain, and the other is sat in Birmingham, reasonably healthy but with no MOT/Tax/Insurance (although I may have to try and resolve this at the weekend).
posted by David @ 07:07 PM [link]
Sunday, January 1st
Happy New Year
So, yeah, 2005 went, erm, somewhere. I'm now no longer a student, and 150 miles north of where I was this time last year. The one constant is that I am still living with a rather lovely young lady.
We saw in the New Year at Rock City. Capdown were rather excellent and being on early when hardly anyone was in there we actually had space to dance right in front of the stage. Bullet for my Valentine...were ok, in a cheesy old-school metal kinda way. Midnight came, and 2006 began with us dancing to 'Don't stop me now'.
We eventually gave in to fatigue and hunger just after 2am (they were open till six), came home and collapsed. Today has been spent trying to find somewhere to put all the stuff we brought back from our travels over christmas.