I've spent four weeks...or maybe 5? Anyway, bloody ages, making something brand new which looks old. Something light which looks heavy. Something fake that looks real. All of that.

And once we've finished (next week) we'll send it off to the USA, upstate New York, to a private collection.

Here're some pics :)


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there y'go. They are indeed hanging off an 18mm MDF wall using only woodscrews. Woohooo.


In other news, Jojo and I are looking at a new flat tomorrow. A big mix of terrified and excited. Scared I'll like it...scared I won't. Scared I'll like it and they won't give me a mortgage! Terrifying all around.

It's in North Acton. It's almost time for bye-bye Brighton...hello London.

I'm so terrible at updating this thing.

Anyway, here I am. And I do still read my flist every day, I just don't post!

I work. I get the train. I get train rage. (£960 for my ticket for 3 months this time around, and they haven't got me home on time for two months now! And it'll be more when I renew at the end of March. IF I renew...because....)

We're probably moving to London. That's the big news. We've talked about it for ages, I've talked a bit with my Dad (he's already going to come with my step mum and stay and go to the theatre - yayes!) but this latest price increase, plus Jojo hopefully getting a job end of this month/next, will be the kicker that makes us move.

We're leaning toward Acton (not South! Ick. North, probably.). Wembley wouldn't be too bad. I really want to be North of the river, because of work, and I don't want to be out East, so it was North or West. I don't like Shepherd's Bush, so we needed to be further out than that! And Acton, whilst not wildly exciting, is affordable (sums are current rate +bills+travel must equal slightly less than potential rent + bills.) And I'd like to be able to cycle to work, therefore keeping travel costs to a minimum. Plus we're not big on the nightlife. We're old and calm nowadays! We'd just like to chill, have parks close-ish, a few amenities not too many miles away, that sort of thing.

My big renting issues are  No Lower ground/garden/basement/ground floor flats. Ugh, can't cope with being at (or under) street level. Double glazing is a must. GFCH. Good transport within walking distance. Enough room to swing a cat. We'd prefer unfurnished, but a lot is furnished, so we could cope. We only own 3 book cases and a bed, really! And I'm not wild about flats which weren't purpose built, but, that said, I've seen some nice ones.

Anyway, any of you Londoners, feel free to tell me Acton is terrible/brilliant/too stabby/boring/where else I should live!

...it wasn't frozen.

Burnley now have an almost-finished Rain Bow Gate.

I'm back. But tomorrow Jojo and I finally go on holiday. Feel like I've barely seen him recently, so this will be brilliant.


Look out for the rainbows...

I'm not.

What do I even pack? It needs to be everything I'll need, nothing I won't need, enough stuff to stop me being bored, but also nothing just in case we go out every night and blow our £30 daily expenses (except we don't have £30 daily expenses, because the boss didn't give us enough money for that.)

Aaaannnddd....

Can you all be extra nice to my lovely Jojo? (jonboy1) because I'm leaving him all alone until Saturday, when I get back from work :(


Aaaaaannnnddddd part 2...

If you've friended me, and I've never friended you and you think I jolly well should friend you (or, indeed, if you've never friended me, but would like to for some reason) or just...well, anything, then leave a comment telling me I should get on and reciprocate! I don't have email notifications set, so I don't ever know when people friend/defriend me. And I don't have any particular criteria for friending back (although clearly it's a plus if you write hot fic.) so yes. I can't organise myself. You organise me!

That being said, I shal barely check anything for the next week or so, because I'll be away.

Burnley (sorry if you live there) is BORING.

The one thing I will most definitely be reliably engaging in is:

The Blog of John Watson - Nanny to Sherlock (aged 5) and Mycroft (Aged 13).

And

The Blog of Greg Lestrade - Interesting Murders, Not Boring Stuff.

You should engage too.

On Weds, we planned to leave the workshop between 12 and 2pm, to get up to Burnley in good time.

Things happened.

We finally left London at 8pm. EIGHT.

Which meant we got to Burnley at just gone midnight.

Up again at 6, to get to Halifax...to find out that our expected delivery days of next Tues and Weds, would now be Weds and Fri. Which meant we had to rearrange our return trip to run Tues-Sat.

And when we got to site, back in Burnley, we found out that the delivery waiting there had forgotten half the stuff...so A had to drive back to Halifax in our van to fetch THAT.

Meanwhile, driver-who-forgot-half-the-load burst the hydraulics on one of his outriggers, decided to try and drive off, grounded out on the road, got stuck across a busy junction...and I spent the next hour directing traffic and pedestrians. Whilst driver sat in his cab having a smoke and reading The Sun.

All this combined meant I got sunburn (In Burnley! Surely that should be impossible??), we didn't start work until lunchtime. We had to put the pull test off until today, and we didn't leave the site until 1930.

Which meant I finally got home at midnight.

Woke up at half seven this morning and happily lazed around in bed!! Then went to Osteo, who couldn't believe how set up my back was. And she happily sorted me out - or got a good way to sorting me. Might need to go back. I was so tense everything from my arse to the top of my head was like concrete.

And because the blasters cant deliver until Weds, I don't have to use my bank holiday Monday to head back up there :) Four day weekend!!!

And then I'll be up there from Tues-Saturday. On Sat my Dad and stepmum are coming to stay, so they may get to mine before I do, and Jojo will take care of them. They stay 'til Mon, and we go to Dundee on Weds! Yay!

I'm still here.

I still read my flist every day. I just don't post much.

Thanks to everyone who left/sent/posted birthday wishes last week - you're all very kind! And hell, I'm 30 - how did that happen?? XD

Have some pictures.
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I've got a headache. This shouldn't be surprising, right??

Sooo...here's what happened.
( discussion of blood and needles etc.! Look away now if that's not your thing.Collapse )

sooooooo. Long time etc. I always say that.

Work is...insane. Manic. Getting more so.

When I started working for the firm there were 11 of us. Since then, two other people have joined as full time staff.

Tomorrow, when one of the boys (who has worked there for 11 years) hands in his notice...there will be 5 of us, including the boss. No project managers, no admin assistant...and one welder. Me. I will be the second longest serving employee - and the other guy is only about 3 months ahead of me.

Everyone else has gone off to work for themselves, or got other jobs, or just left.

On the bright side, the people left are my favourite people. On the downside, there's only one welder. Me. I worked the last bank holiday, I've worked the last two Saturdays, and I'm still behind. I don't have time to train the others, because I'm never not working - and neither are they. Two of them have potential, too. Well, all three of them do, but two of them are closer. I think the youngest one sees (has seen) me (us) doing it, and thinks it looks easy... But it's not his fault, because there just isn't time for them to train.

So, yes, no end to the work, deadlines piling up, and...anyone want to learn to weld, then join me?

Am welding up a massive stage at the moment. It's like a huge climbing frame. We've been dangling off it and climbing through it to weld it for two days.

What don't you expect in the middle of your messy, dirty working day??

SURPRISE PHOTOSHOOT.

Yes, suddenly a photographer turned up (no, our boss didn't feel like he should tell us) and spends 6 hours shooting us at work, us doing cheesy poses, us working whilst doing cheesy poses...

Brilliant. All for a German design magazine (don't remember which one).

Still, it was a little bit of light relief. The Boss' Dad died on Tuesday, so the place has been rather quiet and sad. This gave us all something else to think about.
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The good. (Very bloody good). All my welding passed tests. And the guy even mentioned how good it looked. He said "You look relieved." I said "I am! This is the first time I've had any TIG work tested. I've never been trained, totally self taught, so I don't really know what I'm doing!" He just smiled. "I don't know what you're doing either, Love, but whatever it is, keep fucking doing it, because it's great!" (He even said how good the welds looked. I'm very proud, especially as half of them were left handed.)

The bad. The cruciform of the legs I'm welding is twisting really badly with the heat. Really badly. About 20-30 degrees of twist. So now I have to find a way to secure it back, which means adding internal framework. Really not ideal. And could have been avoided so easily, in the design stages. I did tell them the heat would move it a lot. I didn't really appreciate quite how much either, but still, can't believe they didn't think of it.

The ugly. All the MIG welds (about 40 metres) failed the weld test. Failed visual inspection, failed penetration. What does this mean? It means they've got a lot of grinding to do, and then I (and possibly one other) will TIG the reverse side to deliver full penetration. So potentially, I have 40 metres of overhead TIG welding to do. At full chat I can probably weld around about a millimetre a second, but you can only weld as far as your rod lasts. I use rods a metre long. This will deliver approx 40cms of weld, depending on how they grind it. But I'd probably have to stop halfway through the rod to re adjust my hold - you just can't pass the rod through gloved fingers fast enough to get the full metre down in one. So yeah, that's a lot of work, when you have to adjust your posture etc. every time too. As if I didn't have enough work to do!!!
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