Cars

Well, my car's through its MOT again for another year, predictably at more expense than I would have liked. Ah well, I supppose working brakes are a good thing.

I just have to keep reminding myself that I need the car in order to find work, so that I can afford to keep the car in working order ......... and I will have a life again some day .........

Stinkwheel

I went to this event on Sunday. Old bikes, cheap tools and a doughnut stall too - what more could a girl want?

I picked up a new chain wrench on the cheap. Even if it never sees much use on my car, it'll come in handy for scaring off the sex pests in my area.

Biker Babe

Well, I've finally overcome a long-standing phobia and actually ridden pillion behind a friend on his bike. It was only a short day trip, but a lot of fun, and I actually felt much safer than I'd expected to.

I've never had a problem with the idea of learning how to handle a bike on my own and keep it under my control - but trusting someone else to keep me safe, now that's always been a much more scary prospect. My friend actually agrees with me about this; he says there are very few people he'd be happy to ride behind, so that makes me feel like less of a coward.

But if the government are ever going to succeed in getting people out of their big gas-guzzlers and into something more fuel-efficient, they're really going to have to do something about the 'macho' attitude of so many drivers. I find it scary enough sometimes just in my car, but people on bikes are so much more vulnerable.

Well, I keep meaning to do something vaguely useful with this blog account, and now seems like a good enough time to start. It's four in the morning, I haven't been able to get any sleep and I'm supposed to be driving up to Manchester for a rape survivors' meeting in a few hours.

Blame it on the fact that I was having some particularly creepy nightmares last night, so I've been sort of scared to go to sleep again tonight; I've also been too tired and dazed to get any exercise today as a result of said creepy nightmares. I think this might be how vicious circles get started.

And it also hasn't helped that the damn police helicopter has been circling around my area again at an ungodly hour, presumably looking for more geeks who have tried to turn their spare rooms into growing rooms. Although they don't seem to be bothering about the loser across the road, who appears to think that no-one else will recognise the large cannabis plant that he keeps cunningly concealed behind an umbrella plant. But then again, it's not like we get many laughs in this area so I suppose it's quite considerate of the police to let us have something.

But I'm going to try not to let this first post descend into a completely pointless ramble; really it's just been an excuse to christen my new laptop (my old machine died last year and I've only just got round to replacing it.)

Now that I've customised my desktop, put a photo of my cat on for my icon and installed lots of boring but necessary software, I think the only thing left for me to do is search out lots of clever new gadgets to keep on the new sidebar thingy - oh, the excuses it'll give me to never do any real work! I might even download the blogger gadget if I can find out that it does anything useful, although at the moment I'm having rather more fun with the voodoo doll toy. I'm sure I'll find plenty of opportunities in the future to grumble about the police helicopter disturbing my sleep.