Showers & Other Issues

You wouldn't believe what happened...

After sending a stream of emails to our landlord and then, after he just decided to put his head in the sand, to his brother (who's the "fixer" of the family & only springs into action if things are really bad) I've had a rather pleasant conversation with the latter last Saturday morning. He had to agree that, yes, the shower is indeed f***ked and the plumbings more than a tad dodgy. We agreed to give him a week to think about how to sort it out and I followed up on that a day or so ago. I really didn't expect what I got told yesterday. Good thing is, he's getting the plumber over next week Wednesday to assess the situation and see how it can be rectified. Bad thing is, they've put our flat on the market to sell! Great way to solve any issues if there ever was one.

According to our contract we still got until end of February next year, which is the earliest they can get us out. I'm not entirely sure I want to wait that long. I mean, why stay somewhere they don't want me, in the knowledge that in 4 month I have to leave anyway. I'm not sure if they would let us leave earlier and I don't know if my flatmate (who's still AWOL on holiday, thought she'd be back today but she isn't) would want to. But I see not point in staying here, I'd rather start flat hunting again straight away in the hopes to find somewhere nicer & cheaper (preferably), a flat with a fully functional bathroom, that's quiet(er) and maybe not in a council block (even if our council block is just a very small council block, it's still a council block). I want to stay in this area, I like where I am at the moment.

So, yeah, things aren't going entirely smooth right now.

This whole situation but a bit of a damper on my mood, which wasn't really that bad before I read that email. It would've helped to have Nicki here to discuss stuff, I think she's back tomorrow (if she isn't I'm starting to get worried).

Anyway, I can't change what's happening and part of me keeps thinking that maybe it's for the best - I like our flat, but there's always that thought in the back of my head that there may be even nicer places for less money (with better landlords) around. This might be just a dream and I should know better from experience. But still, I keep hoping.

Babs and I went to an improv theater last night called "Cellblock - 26 hours of voluntary imprisonment" and it was mostly fun. I like improv, well done improv, that is. We had a ticket for 2 hours of the 26, and 1.5 of those were really good. The rest was a bit awkward, sometimes you could feel the scene hanging a little and you just want them to come up with something cool and they don't. But all in all a very good experience and I don't regret spending £10 for the entertainment.

Today I went to Kingston, which is becoming my favourite shopping destination. It reminds me a little of my hometown, what with the older houses and less masses of people. I've been on a mission to find new winter boots for the last few weeks, slightly hampered by the extremely warm and sunny weather we had last week (can't think about boots when I'm wearing flip flops). The weather's back to it's more appropriate grey & cool now, so I should be ready to get them boots. The problem is, I really, really hate buying shoes. My feet are slightly to oddly shaped for shoes and my calves are just a tad too big to comfortably fit into boots. I've actually tried on every single boot in Clark's and even though some of them fit(!), none of them looked good on me. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood, I also tried on loads of dresses/skirts and most of them fit, but I didn't feel like buying stuff. I'll make another attempt on Thursday on Oxford Street, my old boots broke this spring and I also need new office shoes as mine are falling apart, so I really have not option than to get over my shoe shopping phobia (for the record, I've got no problems buying silly, totally not appropriate shoes, I just struggle with the real life shoes).

I'm sure I'll find my shopping mojo again at some point and it's not that I've got nothing to wear. I still haven't got my act together in terms of loosing weight (I'm a size 14 at the moment, I'd like to be a 12) and I've so far avoided going back to the yoga studio in Wimbledon. I don't particularly like the setup there, which doesn't help, and I'm contemplating going to Chiswick straight after work.

My life keeps falling apart each time I think it's finally found its groove, which is bloody annoying.

The thought of maybe, eventually, heading back to Germany keeps popping into my head every now and again, but there's nothing there for me at the moment and seeing that my brother is still living at my parent's coz building his house is taking longer than expected (new completion date is sometime May-ish) I can't even go back there.

I am going to Germany for a long weekend beginning of November, let's see what I think after that...

Hello Reality

I'm definitely very much back in the default world. And it's not all that bad, possibly because I was already expecting a festival come-down x 10 and was prepared for it.

As I've said in my last post, there weren't any major epiphanies while on the Playa. For me, Burning Man changes come over time, sometimes I don't even notice that something inside me has changed until I catch myself doing stuff I would not have done before or think thoughts that would never have crossed my mind previous to the event.

One change that has materialized already is that I've started to look deeper into EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). I've attended two workshops by Sonya Sophia at Burning Man because I wanted to check out what it was all about. The subjects she covered weren't too close to what I was looking for but it was a great introduction into tapping on subjects you're dealing with. I really liked that you don't have to actually believe in EFT for it to work, although it probably helps, which appealed to the skeptic in me. I started out tapping for my inflamed shoulder joint (my body has the tendency to randomly fall apart without warning which is kinda annoying) last weekend and I'm not sure if it was the EFT or the fast application of pain killers, but the pain subsided much faster than expected and I only had to take diclofenac for a day or to. It usually takes 5 days for stuff like that to go away. I'm now exploring tapping into other things I want to change in my life. It won't do any harm and who knows, it actually might work.

I also seem to be happier and more relaxed, less fazed by stuff that would normally drive me up the wall. This obviously could just be because I had 2 1/2 weeks off work, but I'm hoping it's something that'll stay with me for longer than just post holiday glow. And there's enough going on that has the potential to get to me. Work's busy as usual but no major drama at the moment. The flat, however, keeps causing problems. Don't get me wrong, I'm not insanely unhappy - I like the place and I like where I live and who I live with. It's the bathroom, in particular our shower, that's a source of never-ending issues. This is mainly due to our landlord being a cheapskate and always looking for the cheapest option. He also, unfortunately, has absolutely no clue on how to fix things. What happened is that our shower has stopped working again, it was just dead on Monday morning. Not exactly what you want to wake up to. It got fixed the same day, but now the temperature regulation, which was not great in the first place, is even more fucked than ever. I know why we've got these issues (combi boiler & power shower aren't a good match) and I've got a vague clue what could be done about it (thanks to the interwebs & my inquisitive nature) but I don't think we can expect our landlord to do anything about it because it costs money. He'd rather rock up ever week or so and pay a useless handyman £35 to temporarily fix it.

What he'd need to do is sort out the dodgy plumbing in our bath once and for all. Yes, it'll cost him a few hundred pounds but once it's done he won't get bothered by his tenants anymore (and I can assure you that his tenants would be delighted to not bother him).

That aside we're really rather happy with the place.

Apart from getting on my landlord's nerves, there's a party coming up this weekend. I'm actually feeling way too lazy to go out, but I want to see my friends and still have all winter to hole up and hide underneath a blanket & watch TV. That's my reasoning, anyway. I also really should get myself back into the yoga studio and a sugar detox has been on the cards for a while now. I'm without flatmate for the next 3 weeks so this might be the right time to do it.

Upwards & onwards. Maybe a bit sideways. Here we go!

You can get the girl out of the playa, but you can't get the playa out of the girl*

* quite literally, unfortunately, I'm pretty sure there's particles of playa permanently logged in my lungs...


I'm very pleased to report that Burning Man & our little road-trip were a great success. Getting an RV instead of staying in a tent was awesome, although driving that thing took a bit of getting used to. Thank God American streets are wide and usually pretty empty outside of cities.

But let's start from the beginning...

The last few days of work before my holiday were kinda hectic, loads of stuff to do and things to put into place as I didn't want to leave a big mess for my boss who had to take care of it all while I was away. By the time I finally got away I was rather stressed. Which continued into my packing as I had to discover that BA had scrapped their 2 bag policy and were now only allowing 1 checked-in bag weighing 23kg. Panic ensued. In the end I bought myself an extra bag and was slightly less stressed. Still, I think I've never packed that badly in my life.

The rest of the travel process went much more smoothly and I arrived safe but pretty tired in Las Vegas. Got myself a taxi to the hotel (Super 8 Las Vegas Strip - classy as fuck), checked-in and, after a very thorough inspection of the room and the bed (I'd read reports about bedbug attacks in that particular establishment), collapsed into bed.

The next morning brought the discovery that it was still boiling hot (a pleasant 40 degrees or so) and that the hotel was not quite as close to the Strip as it claimed to be. Found myself some breakfast in the nearby casino and then braved the treck to the Strip, where I explored the shopping options (there are many).

Headed back to the motel in the afternoon to meet Frani and chill for a bit before heading back to where the action was to have dinner.

The next morning, after breakfast and some more explorations, we folded ourselves into a cab and went to pick up the RV. An hour or so later I had the pleasure to be the first driver of the vehicle and to try and get us to the nearest Walmart. About four hours of almost non-stop shopping later we had most of our supplies and made our way to the RV park.

If I can give you any advice, it's don't stay in an RV in Las Vegas. Well, not if that particular RV has the noisiest A/C you can imagine (it made the whole car vibrate whenever it came on). We didn't get much sleep that night, which didn't make the long, long drive ahead of us any more appealing. A short stop at Whole Foods later we were on the road, coordinates on the TomTom set to Playa. We didn't get all that far that day, but we made it to Fallon before it got dark and after our previous experiences with the A/C booked ourselves into the Motel 6.

A good sleep and an even better sleep later we got back on the road. There was breakfast, a long drive, a long wait for petrol at the petrol station in Empire (which never arrived) and an even longer wait to finally fill up the tank in Gerlach. Oh, and a 5 hour wait to get onto the playa. We arrived in camp around midnight, parked our RV and went to bed.

The following days were made of dust, lovely people, interesting talks and pure awesomeness. Around Thursday morning it dawned on me that I was home, where I belonged, with people I wanted to be with. Obviously not all can be hunky-dory, even in a place like this. The camp's take on vegan/vegetarian food was rather hazy and someone stole my poi out of the lost & found box in our camp (I have to admit I'd left them out for a fellow campmate to play with who then abandoned them, which was foolish, but they got placed in lost & found and disappeared from there, which hints to someone purposefully removing them). But the food was tasty nevertheless and hey, I kinda wanted new poi anyway (actually, Crafty gave me some she'd made herself, yay!).

My second Burn didn't change my life, I didn't have any major epiphanies, but I very much enjoyed myself and that's all that counts, really.

Exodus on Monday came with another 5 hour wait in queue, not made any better by two campmates who'd hitched a ride with us and turned out to be sparkle ponies (i.e. annoying freeloaders who didn't even offer petrol money but munched their way to our food instead). We abandoned these individuals in the parking lot of our Reno hotel, checked in and had the longest and most satisfying showers EVER.

The next day featured a rather scenic drive out to Lake Tahoe, where we checked into a motel and got on our (playafied) bikes for exploration. Said bikes were left unlocked in the parking lot of the Marina later that day and I very much hope they've found new owners that gave the a bit of TLC. They deserve it, they were awesome bikes.

I can definitely recommend a stay at the lake, it's quiet and pretty and for us it was just the ticket to relax and decompress.

On the following day we hit the road again and caned it all the way to Vegas. It was a long drive on a very boring road...

Back in Vegas we hit the Motel 6 (which might go down in history as one of the more depressing of it's kind), cooked some food in the RV and then retreated to our air-conditioned room.

We managed to return the RV on time, despite getting a bit lost in search of the petrol station, and without any problems (we spent 3 hours cleaning the inside of the RV in Lake Tahoe, it was cleaner than it was when we picked it up). El Monte even operates a shuttle back to the Strip as it's quite far out, so we didn't even have to pay to get to the MGM.

The rest of the day was spent lounging at the pool. Frani had to leave early the next morning and retreated to the room after dinner, while I had bought myself a ticket to see the Blue Man Group. It was a cheap ticket ($70) which should have been a seat in towards the side in the middle - for some reason I ended up center third row and in the 'splash' zone. I didn't get dirty (they give you plastic raincoats) but bumped into some campmates that had the same marvelous idea but slightly better seats. Great coincidence, wasn't it? We had drinks afterwards and I made it back to the hotel around 2am.

My flight only left in the evening the next day, which meant I had another full day of shopping and pool lounging before I had to go to the airport. Didn't buy much, but it was a good ending to a great holiday.

The flight back was ok, BA really aren't great on long-haul flights, the leg-room is abysmally bad even if you're as short as I am and they seem to have no concept of vegan food. I did manage to catch up on movies I'd missed (although I fell asleep halfway through 'Bridesmaids', which probably wasn't much of a loss).

I'm already making plans for my next holiday, Toronto's looking quite likely as I now seem to know loads of people who live there. I'll follow up on that plan once my bank account stops hyperventilating...

Lee-Ho!!

It was quite an eventful week. Went to yoga on Monday and Thursday, which as usual ate  up the whole evening. Had 2 fillings replaced on Tuesday (might have to go back, though, one of them feels slightly too high). Went sailing on Wednesday, which was awesome and reminded me how much I love the sea. Not enough to get my own sailing licence, I still prefer being in the water to being on top of the water, but I'm planning on visiting Brighton this autumn, just to sit at the beach.

On Friday, I went out on a date. I'm not very good at online dating, I just loose interest way too fast and am not online often enough to keep conversations going, but that guy sounded ok and I thought, hey, why not. We had a pretty pleasant evening, there was a bit of holding-hands and kissing, but unfortunately there wasn't any spark between us. I'm just too busy to keep up half-hearted things, it's not fair on anyone either, so I've had to let him got. The date did, however, confirm that there's nice guys out there who are interested in me and I'm convinced there will be one that's just right. I just have to find him and date a few frogs until then. Could be worse.

On Saturday I got up at an ungodly 8am to trek over to Ealing to put an end to the ex-flatshare situation. It all took way too long, Haart is probably the worst estate agency ever as no-one seems to know what they're doing. After almost 3(!) hours and a lot of phone calls to the absent administrator (who had failed to let us know that she's on holiday), they signed the new contract and I got the leftover money. I still can't quite believe that it's done, over, I don't have to deal with them again, but that's it! Went home and for a celebratory lunch with my new flatmate, then relaxed a bit and gave wardrobe advice, then headed out to Waterloo to meet my friends at Namco. It was Jo's 35th birthday and he'd decided he needed a bit of childish fun. The original idea was to hit Trocadero, but apparently that's closed down (haven't noticed at all). So Namco it was. Spent the evening bowling, playing DDR (I'm ok at beginner level, suck at everything else) and Guitar Hero (totally rock the easy stage, but struggle at medium). Loads of fun was had, it was great to see everyone again.

Today will be mostly made of lazy. I've been to the supermarket and around the shops in Wimbledon, I had planned to go sit in the park for a bit but now the sun's gone, people are meeting in Richmond but I can't be arsed to get myself on the train, so I'm probably just going to stay in and cook something interesting tonight.

I might also do some Burning Man outfit trials, I've just discovered that BA has reduced the baggage allowance to 1 bag/23kg which is not great at all. I'm contemplating paying for an extra bag (£68) just to be on the safe side, but can do that once I've started packing. I didn't loose enough weight to be totally comfortable in skimpy outfits (I'm still hovering around the 75kg mark, last time I was down to 71kg and those 4kg really annoy me) but should be fine with the stuff I've got.

The Man burns in 20 days!

Mostly Optimistic

Well, there's good news and slightly not so good (but not really bad) news. Good news is, I'm still loving living in the new place, still get along really well with my new flatmate and Burning Man planning is mostly done. I even have fluffy stuff and el-wire for my bike (the one I'll have to buy in Walmart in Las Vegas). I've been to Bikram Yoga 6 out of 10 days of the trial, which is pretty good, and I'm getting a 5 class pass to cover the next 2 weeks. I've also bought a swimsuit today (black, Speedo, the cheapest I could find) which means I can go check out the leisure centre pool which shouldn't be all that far away from where I am. Yay! (can't believe I'm getting excited about exercising)

The slightly not so good (but not really bad) news is that my ex-flatmates finally seem to have found someone (goddess bless that poor soul) to take my room. Bad news is, the contract starts end of next week and I have to cover the rent (and the council tax, apparently, because my ex-flatmates are mental) until then. I really hope that this is final now and we're done, I don't want to deal with them or see them or speak to them ever again. I'll get about half my deposit back, which obviously is better than nothing. And I'm insanely glad I'm out of there, as apart from the stress related to dealing with ex-flatmates my life's currently more awesome than it has been for a long time.

So, back to the awesomeness. I had a little shopping spree today, apart from the swimsuit I bought a lovely lacey top and a dress. And a bra, well, because it was only £5 and made my boobs look nice. I think I've lost a bit of weight or at least toned up more, don't feel as flabby anymore although changing room light still causes bouts of depression. But I think it does that for almost everyone.

Oh, and I might have a date next week. Who'd have thought?

To make things absolutely great (and causes frequent little bouts of excitement) I'm going on holiday in a little more than 2 weeks!

Squeeeeeeee!

Moving Forward

I'm seeing a bit too much of IKEA lately... went there again today, to get boxes for the kitchen and a living room lamp. We still need to buy a coffee table and a rug or two, more curtains for the lounge, venetian blinds for the bedroom would be great as well as currently it gets really bright in my room around 5am, despite having black-out curtains. But that'll have to wait until we get paid, as we're both navigating around the limit at the moment. I also want new glasses and have two fillings that need replacement. Oh, and there's Burning Man, too.

I'm slightly broke.

All of this is not made better by the fact that my ex-flatmates still haven't found a new member for their household, which means I'm still waiting to get my 6 weeks deposit back. I should get my bonus this month, tho, so might avoid total money crisis.

In better news, we have a working shower now, I think, haven't tested it yet as they've only fixed it this afternoon (after it was impossible to turn off and scalding hot even on the coldest setting). We're still working on window issues, they seem to be more severely broken than we originally thought. The keys don't turn, the handles are irreversibly stuck, even a large dose of WD40 couldn't unstick the stuckness. Landlord is now talking to property manager.

Tomorrow there will be a huge fry-up for breakfast (Nicki needs to get rid of eggs, which lead to additional hash browns, toast and beans on toast) and I'm cooking dinner (Mushroom Stroganoff). The afternoon will be filled with Burning Man organisational stuff with the neighbour. I'm planning to get back to Bikram Yoga on Monday, which should fill evenings up nicely for the next 10 days (it's only a 10 days for £15 offer, boo). And next week there's a vintage thing going on at South Bank which I want to check out. Oh, and there's plans for getting my hair cut, yeah!

Now I only need to get my motivation back for work (have been slagging a bit, I must admit) & we're fine :)

All Shiny, With A Few Flaws

The move went well, thanks for asking. The van showed up an hour late with one man missing, but despite of that it still only took 2 hours, cost me less than £100 and didn't involve me carrying heavy stuff. I had most of my shit stowed away by the time I had to go to bed to be ready for work the next day. It took about a week for the dust to settle and it'll probably take about a month for the flat to be as great as we'd like it to be.

Because... there's quite a lot of things that need a bit of TLC in here. We didn't notice when we first saw the place, because you don't give the shower a test run and open & close all the windows. Which is where a lot of the problems are located. The power shower, while great in theory (yay, decent water pressure), has been either dangerous (current running through the hose, anyone?) or not working (it's leaking from somewhere & doesn't get properly hot at the moment). We've had the electrician in today & he's said that the plumber needs to come in to fix it. Which obviously our landlord, who's keen to not spent money, won't be pleased to hear.

We've also got one window that doesn't open due to being locked and one window that doesn't close due to being locked. The key to solve these problems is missing. We've also got a window with a broken top hinge, which obviously is the one that's hardest to get to. While our landlord can't really help with the missing key issue (I've been inquiring at the neighbours), we've requested him to fix the window hinge issue. Which will cost him more money, of course. Drama.

Well, actually, he's been quite ok so far. I'm sure we'll get him to get a plumber to fix the shower and the builder is coming in on Monday (after having cancelled on Wednesday) to paint the wall (previous tenants did an excellent job patching up the walls... glossy paint patches on matte walls, srsly), fix various little things, possibly hang up a new bathroom shelf/an additional kitchen shelf, waterproof the bathtub edges (currently leaking down to the neighbours) and hopefully take a look at that window hinge.

We remain positive that the flat will live up to its full awesomeness by the end of the month. Because, well, it's pretty awesome. Our bedrooms are at the back of the building, which means I can leave the window open and get a good night's sleep. I very much approve. My bedroom is big and easily fits my chests of drawers, another chest of drawers, bedside table and the wardrobe. There is still space. Yes, really. The bathroom, once it includes a properly working shower and close-able window, is well proportioned and the bathtub is nice enough to have me contemplating taking a bath. The kitchen is small but light, will have a shelf soon and got additional under-counter storage courtesy of IKEA today. We don't have a fan oven, which I think is a shame, but we have windows (albeit with broken hinges and dirty as f***k, but I'm willing to scrub them into shinyness). The lounge looked rather bleak until today, now has white curtains and a grey rug, which matches the black sleeper sofa and white IKEA shelf. It does have an old, ugly, un-useable gas heater on one wall, a proper eyesore. We're thinking of either boxing it in or covering it with a throw. Putting a flower on top of it seems to have done something to detract from it already.

And now you're probably asking yourself, what's the new flatmate like? She's absolutely lovely. We're obviously still in our honeymoon period, but so far it's going really well. We've got similar taste, have loads to talk about and she's sociable.

For the first time in months I find myself looking forward to coming home in the evening.

All the stuff that needs fixing is stressing me out slightly, but I want to remain optimistic and trust our landlord to get everything done.

Now all I need is to get my social life back, which has really suffered in the past 4 weeks. Sorry for that.