Monthly Archives: May 2001

Jack was more his normal self on Tuesday… Louise, Jack & Eve went to Leila’s house up the valley a little (I do not recall Leila’s mum’s name..) for the day. Leila goes to the same school as Jack. It’s half term, so they’re both off school. She’s a bright engaging kid, but sometimes the other kids seem to find her a little too loud. She had a spell at Hamish’s school, & Hamish confessed he did not like her, as she was “too loud”. Hamish can be ‘sensitive’ like that. Anyway they all had a very good day. They went playing in the fields & a stream near the house. All sounded very idyllic & I forget the details that Louise told me… bah. Jack was in fine spirits on his return. The only area of contention that he was not wanting to get into the bath & he got mad at me for insisting that he did… but as he was in a better mood in general the tizzy was soon diffused.
The attic may be done, but we’ve not really moved anything back up there & I’m started to get ‘itchy’ to start sorting things out again… I have not even had the chance to clean up the room. It is still dusty from the builder’s finishing, but I cannot hoover in the evening for fear of disturbing the kids, & it is difficult to do in the day as the kids are still about & will want to go up there (& will end up well dusty… sigh). Now we have the eves sorted out for storage we can but hope that they will swallow the majority of the stuff that was otherwise all over the place up there before & keep the room itself a lot more tidy. That’s the theory. In the meantime, our bedroom – which need to be decorated so that the kids can move in there when we move upstairs – is still chocka full of boxes & stuff… bah. We seem to enforce a state of living in flux sometimes.
I think, for the last 3 days, Eve has not had a snooze during the day. She copes well as she must be tired in the evening. She did have a good cry last night when she fell over & Louise was not there. All she did was trip over a toy – something she does many times a day without any fuss – so it was the tiredness that took over – poor thing. Sometimes only mummy will do. Jack was tired as well. He had a full day. Even went off with Hamish (& his mum) to feed the ducks at the canal in town. This was about our teatime &… well, we had tea without him. We made sure that there was tea for his return, but when he came home, he said he wanted to have tea at Hamish’s, & dashed off round there again. I followed to see what all this was about as he said that they were having ‘pies’. Ruth, Hamish’s mum was just getting tea ready for her youngest, Amber, & all was a bit up in the air, but altho I sheepishly felt I was imposing on them, it was said to be OK. They had bought some cheese & onion pies at the supermarket when they were out, & were going to eat out, but the weather having turned a little less pleasant, had just come home. So Jack stayed for tea there. I went round to pick him up a little later (as he was having some chocolate dessert lucky boy). He eats much better at Hamish’s. I think he gets bored eating with us. He ate beans – he never normally eats beans. Although later, as the bath was running he said “I didn’t really want to have tea at Hamish’s…” …sigh.

Well, the Plaid album did not arrive… perhaps today. The Serial converter did tho! woo! I am rather pleased at this – I can transfer data – all these mumblings (previously I had to print out text, then scan it into my mac & OCR it to convert it to text again – not especially useful…). I now can plug them into each other & away I go! I’ve installed the ‘Internet Assistant’ thing as well – so hopefully I’ll get onto the net with it… altho that’s not really the intention. The intention is to use it for collecting emails when away from home. Difficult to really convey the delight of such a simple (& geeky) thing, but this is one of the reasons for using this in the 1st place – to be able to type on the train & feed it to my mac at home.
To realise this ability after a couple of months of use… ahhhh. Spent a bit too long last night messing about doing data transfers, & went to bed late… & then could not get the brain to turn off & stop little fits of glee that it was all working… silly.

A bank holiday over. Nice to have a long weekend!
Not so pleasant to be butting heads with Jack. He’s a whirls of ‘wants’ at the moment. Grumpy with it too. It must all seem so unfair to him as he perceives constant disappointment. Well, it was more Sunday & Monday that were like this. Saturday we went to Elaine’s – Louise’s sisters. Not something we especially like to do, but family & duty & all that. The kids enjoy it… but I’m not really sure that I had a conversation that lasted for more than a few non-sequiters. Did have a chat in the car going to the house about Mac techy stuff with Louise’s (&, I guess my — eep!) brother in-law Kyle, but Jack suddenly took a turn & wanted to get out for a moment. He gets car sick. Odd, but he doesn’t seem to get car sick in my Mum & Dad’s car, even with their at times erratic driving, but there you go… he must be distracted enough then, or something.
Kirk & his missus & kid were there. Louise was not overjoyed at the prospect of socialising with them due to the knock on’s she had the other week from her mum due to the problems that Kirk has with money… Still – the babe was there. 10 months (i think – not really sure). Amelia – she is just standing – so it won’t be long before she’s away & walking. Cute kid. Big cheeks make her look very square faced. They all seem besotted with her (heh – that’s babies for you). She seemed to like Jack, so Jack responded with charm & gave her a few hugs. They have a pond with fish, & Jack & Eve went out to ‘look’ at it. 1st time that Eve has had the chance to get close to it. It’s raised a little so that it’s just the right height for her to look over into. She can reach her hand in too – as she did – & started splashing the water about! Something that had never really occurred to Jack before, but as Eve was Jack did. It started off innocently enough, as Kyle encouraged them to put their hands into the water as the fish come up to your hand with the thought that there might be food. Degenerated soon enough though. Fish must have been having a great time as they disappeared to the bottom of the pond. Kyle didn’t seem to mind this, so it was lt to continue a little, until Eve was noticed to have gotten herself quite wet… then we went back inside. Fortunately we always carry a spare set of clothes for such emergencies.
Much chocolate (as always). Jack was running about a fair bit, came up to me, said he needed to go out & promptly threw up. Fortunately, although just next to me, he managed to miss me entirely! We managed to get away at s sensible hour. Being careless, we are dependent on they for transport too & from the train station in Bradford. I sat in the back with Jack this time & he curled up on my lap & hid himself away for the journey home. This worked well for him & he nearly drifted off to sleep. Eve certainly did… she was not awake will we were off the train at home. All in all relatively painless expedition. A little socially uncomfortable, but nothing that served to twist the knife (as was feared).
I’m trying to think if there were any warning signs that Jack was going to have a bad day on Sunday morning, but I cannot recall anything specific. The supermarket was the 1st flash point. We were going to the cafe there after shopping (as we often do on a Sunday) & Louise was getting some things & Jack wanted a tray as he usually does, except today he had it in his mind to have about 6 trays…., no, put them back… he did not – he wanted to take a heavy load of trays & presumably load them with something. Shouting on his part ensued, so we left – we did not go to the cafe – even though Louise was hungry & Jack must have been (as he had decided that he did not want any breakfast). He was very tearful at having left, but as we tried to tell him, if he does not listen to us he does not get what he wants. This could be considered one of his shortcomings – not listening, but then, I’m sure this is a common thing, not just at this age. He is wanting to push boundaries again, it seems – try to get away with more than we would like, & is finding that we do not make idle threats when it comes to getting ‘our’ way. Shame, as I really do not like the whole process. Having said that, he came in on his own last night for a bath when Hamish came round just as the bath was being run. Louise said he could go out for “2 minutes” & he was back in just as everything was ready. He did not go to sleep until 10 o’clock, but that’s another matter. He confessed that he “did not want to go to sleep”. No seeming reason, not really sure why. Don’t really think it’s bad dreams, but it’s all rather difficult to say. He woke up upset in the night, but that was perhaps as we had put him back into his own bed after finding that the only way to get him to go to sleep was to put him in our bed. He could well have been a bit disorientated due to that.
Heh… Saturday night Eve got herself well over exited before bedtime & had a difficult time getting to sleep. She (as said before) fell asleep on the train home, so we were wary of setting them to bed to early, but thinking about it, she must have got overtired. Jack was reading a counting book with Louise & as there were some good pictures in it, Eve was joining in looking at it as well. She was told that the pictures of fish were ‘fishes’ & she picked up that new word – recognising them, perhaps from earlier in the day? She was joyous to learn this new word & ran to me to exclaim it… then… got over exited in general. Rushing back & forth – trying to wrench the book of Jack & myself when we were looking at it later, indulging in hugs with Jack & falling over the floor with him in an embrace – laughing & giggling. Even more full of life than she usually is. Running about like a thing possessed, she was. Sweet with it though… shame it all ended in tired frustration as she did not want to sleep even though too tired. When calmed down she fell asleep in seconds flat.
Now on the train home – wondering if the post has bought anything good. After my fruitless treks across Manchester the other day I decided to try to but a usb to serial adapter. I’m waiting for that to arrive, as well as the new Plaid album – which I ordered from the Warp website…
We shall see – patience of a boy on Xmas eve, has I.
I really want to get the link with this emate machine & my mac at home working…

The bloke came yesterday as stated to look at the ceiling to check as to what needed doing. As suspected, it just needs repairing. Louise had fun. He rang a couple of times, as he did not know where it was? Left garbled messages, only blurting out what his mobile number was on one message left. As Louise was finally deciphered it & was about to call, he turned up. He did his schpiel, told us it would need to be repaired, got the camera out to take some pictures, proclaiming that is what he was about to do, & then promptly asked where <his next destination> was… Louise having said she didn’t know he left in a fluster, leaving his camera & having taken no pictures. Louise had to then call him on his mobile to tell him that he’s lest his camera, so that he could bring it back… Sounded a right droid.
Glad to be sat down. I’ve been running over Manchester trying to find a ‘null modem connector’. No Joy. I figured that this is what I needed as I have both the Ethernet card & the modem card for this eMate I have now. Succeeded in the end in getting them from ebay… didn’t pay too much; could have paid less for the Ethernet card, but that’s the way it goes… The problem now is to install the software so that the Ethernet card works. It’s an old chicken & egg. The Ethernet card will work well as a connection thing – but I need to establish a connection to download the software to make the Ethernet card work… Bah. The modem, I thought, would be the key… but I’m now thining, perhaps not. I thought I might be able to establish something called a ‘null modem’ connection. Getting the modem on this eMate to talk to the modem on the iMac… in theory possible… but then I need some form of cable for the modems. It seems I may have misinterpreted the term ‘null modem’ in that respect, perhaps… as there seems to be no such thing that will connect the socket that the modem plugs into the phone line for each modem… sigh. I foolishly thought such a thing might be easy enough to find, but no. Having thought about it, I may still be able to work round the modem thing. Considering making a cable, but worried it might bugger things up. May be able to use the phone system to connect them up, rather that via the cables themselves.
Did eventually end up in a specialist Mac shop. Saw a new flowery iMac. Pretty – better than the pictures of them might indicate, as the translucence of the plastic does not come over.
Louise has been feeling a little icky in the early days of pregnancy.

Glorious morning. Both children were in our bed with Louise as I left. Eve woke just as I was about to go, so I took her from he got to Louise, & she fell directly asleep again. Too early for her to be stomping about really.
(train home) Again the day is sweltering. I am not ideally suited to such weather, burning to a crisp. Eve seems to have the sort of skin that could cope with the sun. She has got more & more brown as the summer days have set in. Louise describes her hands as being ‘black’. They do look like they could do with a good clean, but are in fact merely well tanned… Jack remains quite white compared to her increasingly olive complexion.
The contractors from the insurance are comming today (or suposed to have come today) to assess the damage that the pipe leak has done to our ceiling. Hopeully this will be on the road to resolution. The ceiling already is stained from previous water leaks from the broken seal on the bath – so with any luck that will be cleared up as well. I am not looking forward to yet more disruption, but if that is the way it is… that is the way it is.
I’m feeling a little short on things to waffle about really. There is nothing I feel I want to write about (excepting, perhaps one thing hinted at earlier, but I’m wanting to be coy there)… so perhaps I’ll do what ‘they’ all do & deconstruct, just a tad, & note that perhaps the good weather puts me in a better mood. I feel less of an urge to cleanse by writing. I would rather not be burdened by concentration.
Work is not too bothersome as things are settling in with the new company & the support issues thereof. I learn a little bit more here & there & sort out a little bit more here & there. It would be pleasant to actually have some definite under-pinning to my shaky logic on the perception of how things work, but the snippets I learn are keeping me happy enough for now. I actually feel vaguely confident that I will manage to learn some stuff here & there that will be useful.
Perhaps this ‘contentment’ will even transfer time being able to concentrate enough to do some organisation with ZUM!… That would be nice.

We now have hot water again.
Hattie came on Thursday & put a new connector from the lead to copper pipes. It drove her a bit barmy, as it appeared that it would not seal, so she redid it a couple of times… to no avail. Then she got some more light to it & found that the water was actually seeping through the fitting itself. Through the brass of the connector. Micro-fractures or some such… bother. The leak is still there albeit very slow now. I will have to take the floorboard up when we get home to empty the bowl.
Caroline came up for the weekend to see us. All the way from London for a weekend. Very good of her to venture. Had a very nice time. All pretty low key. Popped over to Hebden Bridge on the Sunday & that sort of thing. Eve was wary of her the last time she came, but aside from a few ‘who are you?’ frowns, she was very accepting. Eve has generally become more open with people since we had the builders in & out & messing about.
She fell over on Friday & broke a nail off. This time it was actually not one of her daredevil stunts that came a cropper. She was just pushing a toddler cart up the path. Must have fell badly.. Poor little tiny finger with half her nail hanging off… quite gruesome. She was stoic about & calmed down soon enough. I put a plaster on to help stop her banging it as it looked tender, but she just bit it off.
She came a cropper again about an hour later – standing on one of her trucks out back – fell over & banged her forehead. Had a whopper of a bruise for the evening, but it had calmed down by the next evening.
She has remained weaned since last week. No relapses. Getting more accepting of going to sleep; the new routine of actually just falling asleep… Both of them actually slept through the night last night. No one called out & no one pottered into our bed. Weird. Civilised, even! Eve’s teething seems to be calming down for the moment – she has molars now & can chew her food a little easier.

...(cont from previous entry)…
Nice one. He also muttered darkly about the lead in general. The pipes had might go at any moment & all that sort of crap. Thinking about it – he was most probably frightened of them. It’s curious to note that Hattie chose not to put any specialist lead to copper fittings there, but soldered the joins. The emergency plumber was unwilling to do any repair soldering because… he did not want any comeback that any work he might do may go wrong, or perhaps as well, he did not like the concept of lead pipes. His advise was to have them all ripped out as they were all rotten. Yes, well, he was a doom monger in general. In his line of work, I guess it pays to be. They should be replaced. – we would prefer it, but this is not something we have the means to do. He left it that there would be someone coming to assess the plumbing, & that they would most likely advise the need for replacement. Oh, & in his opinion the whole ceiling would need to go. Riiiight. I could even see that this was a highly dubious assertion. The paper on the ceiling had been damaged, but peeking thru a hole in the paper – the only thing that could be said to be wrong with the plaster was that it was still a little damp & it had a little crack in it.
So, after undermining our sensibility with his prophecies of doom, our cheery morbid hungover plumber was on his way. Caroline next door helped us with a ‘getting things into perspective’ type chat. We spoke to the people who had sent the plumber out & they felt no particular need to send anyone out to inspect the plumbing, so we await the return of Hattie from Spain to await the return of hot water to the house. Pan boiling & stair tramping to fill the bath for the kids on an evening is not such an onerous task.
Oh, & the store we bought the lights from yesterday called to advise thst they would, in fact be sending the lights out to us (as we fully expected) &they should arrive… in the next few days to a week.. or so (depending on how lethargic their post room is.
Stress at work yesterday. Still working like billio on our ‘support mailbox’ that is drowning in correspondence. Passed on an urgent query from last week to the technical manager, which caused ripples, as it should have been sent on…. last week. Another dissatisfied customer. Oh, & said technical manager actually shouted at me. I asked him a query from a customer on the phone that I could not answer. Typed it into the IRC channel that all the staff use to communicate & he was not looking, so I tried a few tricks to alert him, still nothing, so I resorted to leaving the phone & going into the next room where he sits to check he was there & point out I had a customer query – so he shouts “what is the question?!” – yeah – right. It’s in channel, but let me get back to my desk & I’ll type it again if you want. sheesh. Sure the customer heard his foolish bellowing. That makes the company look professional dunnit. That’s good for all round staff moral innit. Bloody fool. He has shouted at a couple of the other lads. as well. We all rant, rave & fulminate, but not directly at each other. There are common grounds of decency.
At home, the attic is on the home straight… it’s looking really good and Louise had some news for me when I got home yesterday, but perhaps more on that later.
Above going into work – now headed home.
Much better day at work – stress levels seem to be returning to normal.
He had green marker pen on his arm & face yesterday when he came home. A testament to the foolish over excitement that playing with his pal Tom Kelly produces. Tom is a little wild at the edges & Jack reflects it when he plays with him. He was none too appreciative of me rubbing off the marker in the bath that night. Fortunately it came off with basically little fuss, but I’m not sure Jack would agree on that one. Hopefully that will prove as a deterrent.
I’ve had my thrills over the past couple of days. I say an item on Ebay (Internet auctions) that I wanted as it would be useful (thinks I) – so I bid for it. I had a budget to keep to, & was well within that & the highest bidder for a good long while. Unfortunately the bidding closed after I left work (where I was keeping an eye on it) & I was outbid. But then the person who strategically outbid me was pipped within the final 30 seconds of the auction by someone else completely new to the bidding – which I thought very cheeky! Even if I had been watching the bidding, & seen that final (below my budget) bid, I don’t think I would have been able to do much about it. PAH!
I guess I’ll have to wait for other chances.

…(cont from previous entry)…
They did the next day & I took the call & was perhaps more pliant than I should have been – so Louise took over while I went to get another bit of information from the packaging. She was more strident with them & ended up with another call back from the manager where she had to argue the point that we did buy it on the premise that there were bulbs included, we bought extra bulbs for another set of lights that did not have them included & just because you buy something in the sale that you do not expect to get substandard bulbs. The manager capitulated & we should be being sent the missing bulbs. Having said that – they should have called us yesterday to confirm… Maybe we will have to yet resort to ‘customer services’. The manager of course blamed the shop assistant who sold it to us, but them she was only passed the products at the last moment by a ‘floor assistant’ who was dealing with us & gathering up the stock (from the back room where it was not supposed to have been moved). I worry that someone will get the rocket for a mistake that we have highlighted & was not her fault… Perhaps I worry too much about the other person.
Oh – the quip earlier about it raining in our back room: Friday night – just as Jack had fallen off to sleep. I heard a whooshing sound & Louise yelp. I wondered why Louise had seemingly poured a great deal of water into the bath next door, just as Jack was slipping into slumber. Louise than called me from downstairs… eh? Not next door in the bathroom? As Jack seemed off I bobbed downstairs. Louise had been standing in the back room when a great whoosh of water fell from the ceiling. There was a burst pipe! Suspecting it was the hot water I turned the boiler off. The water was only really dripping & it died down soon enough. The whoosh was because of the build up of a ‘bubble’ of water under the wallpaper on the ceiling, which ‘burst’. SHAG! Having just been on the phone with the lighting department earlier this evening, it was back on the phone to the insurance agency (after some scrabbling around for the appropriate bits of paper). So then – we explained what we thought it would be to the bloke who coordinated the emergency plumbers who is subcontracted by the insurance agency. (Arcane comes to mind as a description of a system here.) We thought that it would be the join from the old lead pipes to the new pipes that had been installed with the new boiler. Seemed plausible, as that was what Hattie (our plumber) had been worried about. She could not come to help, as she was in Spain, on holiday, as we found when we called her mobile & got through to her – on holiday… in Spain… oops. Ah well.
So we stayed in on Saturday & waited. It was a nice day – so it was no bother. We had intended to go out on a shopping expedition to get back a pair of sandals for this hot weather we were having. It was a glorious day, so it was pleasant enough to be out & about in the garden & so forth. Chatting to our neighbour Caroline (who has been so good to us) she said that there were some sandals in the cobblers. They stock new shoes, cheap. There were & they were good. Jack has his new sandals. No urgent need to be away. So, we were in when we received the call from the plumber expected to visit mid to late afternoon. He was in Stockport. He could still make it today if required, but it would be about 9:00… yeah, right. So we opted for the next day. Up bright & breezy again, & he did turn up on his 1st visit. All tattoos & complaining of a hangover. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that Hattie, our plumber was not, in fact, a man. As that seemed to be what the source of the problem was – a woman doing it… ah, ok then. fine. So, after sawing his way through a few floorboards to access the point that Hattie seemed not to have needed to saw the boards to reach he told us what we suspected – the lead to copper seals had gone… He was ‘not told’ that there would be lead to copper – so had not brought any fittings that would fix them.

Really shite day at work on Thursday. I got on the train slumped down, got a magazine out of my bag to slump my brain into for the return journey home, & noticed my packed lunch had not managed to get out of my bag. I had not eaten it & not realised it! We were a tad busy…
I noticed that there was something up when I tried to dial in to collect some expectant email & note the I had been outbid once more on a pcmcia network card for this emate on ebay…. yet again. The new BT provided phone lines were not giving authentication on our dialup . Uh oh. Changed to another number to pop into the IRC channel we use for work & see if there was anyone there to check up on it. Not really. OK – well it may be nothing. Unfortunately it was not ‘nothing’. As soon as I put the phone on the hook at work it was going crazy. As feared there was something wrong with the lines & EVERYONE who we had tried to get in on these new BT numbers (including the ‘surftime’ thing) was getting authentication failure. The BT system was somehow not passing the calls on correctly to our authentication servers: people’s username & password were being messed up in the transition & nobody could get on. AAAAAAAA!
We have just been spending an age trying to get people onto these lines as they are supposedly going to be more reliable in their routing than the lines we already have (& the company gets more kickback on them). Good ol’ BT. The problem was cured about midday. The afternoon was spent helping people with over complicated little problems. One nice old lady (who made me miss my usual train as the call took so long) had had her computer set up by her son who had since departed to Europe. Nothing wrong in that, but the mail application was Quickmail Pro for Windows. One of the more obscure mail applications I have come across. The error messages it was giving were misleading (but it lead me to ‘cleaning up’ a sloppy set up) but after a few goes we got there in the end. Nice to get a result in such muddled circumstances. In the middle of the phone problem mayhem I had a call from a little Mr. Angry; who rather than want his problems sorting out seemed to want to go on & on & on…
Friday was a much better day. Back to the usual level of calls (i.e:. I could breathe between calls,
UG. Never rains, but it pours (in our back room.). Jill (electrician Jill) was fitting the lights in the attic. I went up to see her was doing when I got home from work on Friday & all looked tickety-boo. That is except for the fact that the halogen strip had no bulbs (!). Box said that they were included & as they can be a fiver each, easily, this is not something we would slip up on. Phoned the department store we bought them from in Leeds there & then. Dithering on the part of the shop assistant on the phone had them leaving to call back.