Things That Happened

To start things of, have a kitten. In a cup. Stolen from Simon's Cat, which is awesome. Great animations on YouTube as well, which should get checked out.

I can't believe it's almost November! This month had so many really quite good tings and loads of really stressful stuff happening as well.

Let's start off with our flat. We now have a working shower! It's actually the best shower I've had since coming to London, it's got proper water pressure and all that. The path towards it was long and painful, so I think we definitely deserve it. Our landlord and his trusted plumber came to the flat on said Wednesday and "concluded" that the power shower and the current setup was indeed sub-optimal. I can just imagine them both standing in front of the temperature changing shower, scratching their chins and going "yeah, that's f**ked". I was agreed that the plumber would rock up again the Monday after to connect the cold water mains to our bathroom taps and thereby rendering the power shower obsolete. Unsurprisingly, the plumber didn't show up on Monday. Emails and texts ensued and on Thursday I came home to find our power shower including pipes running towards it missing, an extra copper pipe decorating our already quite piped-up bathroom wall, nice little holes in the wall where the mounting for the shower pipes had been and a large amount of general mess. But we had, for the first time since moving in, a properly working shower! Celebrations followed, with more frustration after the discovery that they've managed to disconnect the washing machine while fixing the plumbing. Thank goodness this could be fixed pretty quickly.

There still was/is the issue of the impending sale, brought closer to our attention by finding random estate agents showing people around the flat when coming home. Lovely. It's still kinda there, although Nicki had a massive go at our landlord for not letting us know and after I spoke to him in regards of the washing machine (he had to come in and reconnect it, I can't move that thing) he told me that he's sort of changed his mind. Apparently he didn't really want to sell, but got pestered by estate agents and put the flat on the market at a quite ridiculous price to get them of his back. Yeah, right.

There haven't been any estate agents loitering outside our flat since then, so he might've actually told the truth. I don't trust him further than I can spit, but at the moment we're safe anyway coz due to that peculiar beast that is the British fixed term lease the earliest he can get us out is end of February.

If it wasn't for the landlord, the flat's really quite ok now. We've put the heating on for the first time last week and even on low the place gets warm and cozy in now time. There hasn't been a gas bill yet, so it might turn out that warm & cozy costs us insane amounts of money. For the time being I'm just marveling in the thought that I won't have to wear 3 jumpers inside once Winter arrives. We've also acquired thick curtains for the living room and are proud owners of a coffee table (lovingly assembled by yours truly, I actually enjoy building Ikea furniture). The living room would look amazing if it wasn't for that eyesore of a dangerous to use gas fire, we even had a curtain left over which will be decorating our front door as soon as I've found a telescopic curtain rod that fits in the gap.

Ok, enough of that domestic rambling now, I've been out and about a bit as well. Most remarkably there was a Planet Angel in the Lightbox, which turned out full of awesome and dancing and hugging and having fun, which was followed by a pretty cool, if quiet, afterparty. Saw lots of my friends and got reminded why I love these people so much. There also was a bit of shopping, I've now got flats and heels for the office that are comfy and cute and fluffy boots just because I could. I still don't have winter boots, my calves are a tad too big for most normal sized boots so I'm now going to check out Evans for cheap stuff and Duo boots for the nice but expensive boots.

A shopping spree will happen at some point this weekend, although I may be going to Kew Gardens for a friend's birthday celebrations tomorrow. If I get up early enough, that is, as they've decided to meet up there at noon.

Work (I haven't moaned about work for a while, haven't I?) is going alright. Not too busy, interesting stuff to do, still neither a promotion nor a raise, which is aggravating.

I think overall I'm quite pleased with my life at the moment. I probably should find some wood now to knock on it or I'll jinx it all again...

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!