Lucy in the car, with meowing

I drove my cat Lucy up to her new home last weekend, living with my sister in the Midlands. She meowed all the way up, with a brief interlude when I put Simon and Garfunkel on, which I think might have knocked her out.

It's been noticably different without her here. On the up side, I don't have to hastily shut the front door every time it gets opened to stop the cat getting out, I don't have to put up with being pummelled at 5 in the morning and I can shut the double doors into the conservatory, which makes the house a bit warmer. On the down side, I really miss her and for the first few days I kept thinking I could hear her behind me. She's got a weird little noise that she makes - sort of a cross between a purr and a sneeze, like she's trying to clear her nose, and I'm sure I've heard that a couple of times. Apparently she's been wreaking all sorts of havoc at my sister's end too. When she moved to my house, she didn't eat for three days and took to pooing in corners. I thought it was because she had managed to poison herself by eating lilies, and had forgotten all about it anyway, but apparently she's been doing the same thing at my sister's. I think it's stopped now though. She's also been terrorizing my sister's cat who is a big wuss but understandably pissed off. I hope they manage to put up with each other though because I really don't want to move her again.

I went to Machynlleth last weekend (where CAT is) to find a place to live. I'm going to be lodging with a lovely woman called Fiona and her daughter and two cats, in her house which is about 4 miles from Mach, and 7 1/2 miles away from CAT. I'm hoping I can bike to work, which I manage it will make me super fit in no time. I've been trying to lose a bit of weight too, as it makes biking easier. I don't hold out that much hope of being good with biking - I might start out well but I'm sure I'll lose motivation after a while. I fitted my bike with a computer this afternoon to measure the speed, distance etc - hopefully that will motivate me a bit. Maybe I can reward myself when I reach distance milestones.

Preparation efforts on the car front are storming ahead. After finding a place to live and realising I'd need a car, I booked Sid (my red K-reg mini) in for his MOT last Tuesday, having finally got the engine back together and the passenger window replaced. It took me a while to start him (mostly because in the months he's been in the garage I had forgotten which knob was the choke and was trying to get him going by turning on the heater). I finally got him going and was cheering as I started to pull him out of the garage, at which point he lurched forward twice and then refused to go into gear, and I stopped cheering. I concluded that the clutch had gone, called my dad and burst into tears.

My dad advised me to call a specialist mini garage, so I got out the Yellow Pages and searched for one. I found one in Cottenham which is really close and phoned them up. They told me that they didn't deal with old minis, although they had heard of a bloke who called himself 'Mr. Mini', who lived somewhere nearby. Through my powers of internet geekery I eventually managed to track him down and called him up. He doesn't call himself Mr. Mini any more apparently, because BMW decided there was some sort of copyright conflict of interest, and the small guy always loses out in that kind of wrangle. So now he's Dean's Minis in Soham. He came and picked Sid up at half past three with a special mini towing contraption, and Sid's now being cared for by arguably the most competent and genial mini mechanic in Cambridgeshire. In the meantime my lovely dad came down from the Midlands and cheered me up by taking me out to lunch.

With luck, I should have Sid back by the end of next week, with a new rear subframe, new rear and front brakes, new handbrake and working clutch. Hope so!

Jokes

It's nothing to do with jobseeking, but I heard a couple of jokes on the radio today that made me chuckle:

Doctor doctor, can you give me something for wind?
How about this kite?

This Christmas I bought my wife a wooden leg. It's not her main present, just a stocking filler.

Both Tommy Cooper I think :)

Getting prepared

I bought a fantastic mac in the sale today, in preparation for rainy Wales. It's bright red. I'd like it to rain just so I can show it off.

I wonder if Shirley from Garbage had just bought a new mac when she wrote 'Only happy when it rains'.

Speed Clean Freak

I had the Man from Bush here today to take pictures of my house from various angles so it can be advertised. I also signed a scary looking agreement which basically gave away the right for me to live in my house.

The Man from Bush very considerately set the appointment for half way through the morning, which meant I had a couple of hours to tidy up and get myself in order. I needed the whole 2 hours as well - I had only just switched off the hoover when I spotted him crossing the drive.

My house now looks immaculate (apart from the cupboard under the stairs, which is where I 'tidied' everything into :)). I've been busy selling stuff and giving stuff away too - Alex's car (which was sitting in front of the house and will presumably be featured in the rental ad) is full of about 10 bags of clothes and other stuff for charity shops. I'm trying to work out where I can take it to because all the places on Mill Road haven't got any parking, with the exception of the Sally Army but I'm not taking it there because my friend has forbidden me (apparently they were really snotty when she dropped off some stuff there). If anyone reading this knows of a good place to take stuff, feel free to pipe up.

In other news, today I worked out how much you'd need to heat a metal bar to make it exert 250kN of pressure on its mounting.

Back on the OU study train

I got my new pack of OU reading materials the other day, so I'm back studying again. This involves getting up an hour early every morning, and studying before going to work. A simple system, which was surprisingly hard to come by last year. I got in a real mess at the beginning when I was trying to work out how to organise myself, and I fell behind straight away. I was struggling to keep up most of last year, but I'm determined that this year that won't happen.

This year's course is looking harder already. It's level 2 and has some maths in it - luckily not as difficult as the maths course last year as yet which literally had me crying in frustration midway through September when I was trying to figure out how on earth I'd worked out population sequences back in January. It was one of those moments when you see your own work and you're astounded that you clearly understood what you'd been writing about at the time, like when you open your uni notes after having let your brain rot at work for a few years. But instead of there being a gap of years into which the information was lost, there was only a few months. Dang!

I'm really enjoying the course so far, and I'm feeling really driven at the moment. Temping seems to be really sharpening my vision about what I want from life. I mean, at the moment, I'm not really using any of my skills or education. It's fun and challenging and I'm doing things that I never did in my previous job, but it's really making me want to have a path again. It also makes me want to learn enough to get a proper job, a proper career and a proper wage. On my wage at the moment, my aspirations of a double-fronted house with a workshop and a couple of acres are a total pipe dream. Unless it was in Bulgaria maybe.

Job Psychology in a Nutshell

I forgot to write a bit about the results of my careers interview. It was actually more of a occupational psychology thing - I did a load of tests about a year ago to create a profile of the sort of jobs I'd be suited to. It took me until June to return the tests - in fact I wasn't going to return them originally because I couldn't afford it and it seemed a bit pointless, but I started getting disillusioned with my OU course and decided to see if I was doing the right thing. I ended up having the interview to discuss the results four days before my 30th birthday, and about a week before I went off for my week of Science Fun in Bath (an OU residential course which was meant to be full of serious scientific experiments - it was, but my group were brilliant and it ended up being pretty much the most fun I've ever had. We spent the whole week laughing like drains). The careers interview is basically what kicked all this off in the first place and was with a lovely guy called David Cook who I would recommend if anyone reading this is feeling lost in Careerland.

The tests were standard ones like MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), FIRO (Fundamental Interpersonal Relationships Orientation), 16PF5 (General Personality indicator) and various Preferences tests. The test results I found most interesting were the MBTI ones - I'm apparently INFJ (Introvert/Intuitive/Feeling/Judging) bordering on INTJ (I/N/Thinking/J). This type apparently works with perseverance, sensitivity and originality. The difference in the INTJ is that they tend to be more concerned with patterns than people - they're working out the solution rather than considering how everyone will feel about it :). I'm happy being both of those. I found FIRO quite interesting as well, because the test answers can not only tell you what relationships you have in general, but break them down into what you give to others, what you expect from them, and what you actually get.

The funniest thing about the tests was that I actually managed to cheat - albeit subconciously. At the time I'd just started my Engineering degree and was so keen to show that I was doing the right thing that I answered the questions in the way that I thought would skew me towards Engineering. Luckily I was found out because there was a sizeable difference in the results of two tests that should have shown the same thing. Busted!

The results of the test were basically that I like innovation, and I like people. That surprised me, because I've always thought of myself as kind of antisocial. I think it was that that made me realise I wasn't going to get what I wanted from Technical Writing, because it's basically a solitary job, and one of its key requirements is that there is no innovation whatsoever - if you're being creative, you're doing it wrong.

David was very impressed with my Bike BagTM, which I presented to him with great enthusiasm when he asked me about it. I think he thinks I should go into business. It did make me wonder, could I make money out of having ideas? Basically, invent things, then sell the design and patent for megabucks? That really appeals to me - I love thinking about how to solve problems, and I get ideas for problem-solving things all the time. Plus it would mean I wouldn't have to do the setting up-building up-keeping going part of creating a product, which I think would probably not interest me that much and I'm probably too lazy to do. If I invented something really special, I could just sell the idea and then sit with my feet up in the Bahamas sipping pina coladas while the money rolled in. Watch this space, someday there will be a Theaker on the market - who knows what it will be, or what you will use it for, but someday it'll be out there!!