Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in racyray's LiveJournal:

Saturday, October 7th, 2006
11:00 pm	4 months... apparently it's been that long since I couldn't be bothered with a journal entry! After a hectic start to an otherwise lifeless duvet day, all is back on an even keel in the mad land of ray. I did yet more putting-off the servicing on the Landrover ready for next week. The morning was spent viewing a naff car on behalf of a friend - thank goodness she didn't buy it without a second opinion! Kate-Bob has gone tinternet-cold-turkey! Therefore I've resorted to talking to myself (more sanity there than usual) I will be glad when this year is over. A 2500 mile round trip in an uncomfortable slow noisy car to fetch a car that is worth very little (in monetary terms) and also having to deal with the Landrover MOT will keep this month and next month active. Church stuff seems to be going well but I'm pulled in 2 directions as my nasty selfish desires keep leading me on a tangent. So the question is: Will branching out from British classic cars, to a communist iconic car make me any difference? The jury is out on that one atm. Happiness is taking a pill regularly and sleeping well (I wish) (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 3rd, 2006
1:44 pm	grrr to technology - how to waste valuable car resto time :( well the traveller donor engine is clean but not quite clean enough to paint. Sunlight is good but allows one to see what you can't see otherwise. When the engine was dry some little nooks and crannys looked wet - due to remnants of oily sludge. Right now I ought to be putting that right and painting it... but my MP3 playing phone has been getting on my nerves for a month! Time to sort it NOW (why? good question!) When I got my 6230 I messed about and eventually got it to play all tracks in a folder from sub folders in the nice big memory card. Great - I thought! Then I swapped my 6230 with a friend (as theirs was locked to T mobile and I had a t-mob contract). The new 6230 was refusing to play more than 1 track at a time in media player and music player refused even to open GRRRRRRR. An MP3 player that will only play one track is not really a 'player' it's more of an 'annoyer' Have looked on lots of websites regarding this problem and it is common but their fixes didn't seem to be what I wanted. Anyway - I'm now a lot closer and might have even cracked it - Huzzah. Should soon be able to work on the car with pocket tunes via the phone again! (Comment on this)
12:21 pm	Oo er missus! You mucky lad. Yesterday: Have removed the front panel and grille off the traveller and all is laid bare. At this point I decided to drag the donor engine out of the hidden depths in the garage. I remembered the engine as being a really good runner - what I didn't remember was that it was 3" deep in oily cack. I got it round the side of the garage to gunk it and immediately ran out of gunk. No problem thinks I. "I'll just wash it down with petrol". 1 hour later and I've decided that petrol isn't going to get the job done well enough so it's off to Halfords for some more gunk. Got home and changed back into dirty clothes (very dirty by this point - ckeaning a disgusting mucky engine with petrol using a brush is not condusive to being clean). At this point ex g/f comes round to collect some stuff and that's nearly all the evening gone (quickly glossing ovet the 2.5 hours of non Morris Minor activity) Anyway ex g/f finally clears off at 9ish so back on with the engine cleaning. By this point I need my floodlights to see properly, but as floodlights go they are brilliant :D. The engine is cleaned some more, then washed down and I oiled the bores to cope with whatever water ingress there has been. At 10:30 I got the engine back into the garage so it can start drying off and put my tools away. Got back inside before 11 feeling very hungry but Jo phoned so nearly another hour gone. Had to cut it short with Jo as I wanted to have my tea before midnight!! She wants me to go up to Scotland near the end of July so I'll have to check dates with the JOGLE. After an evening of petrol and gunk muckiness it was time for a long bath! Crawling into bed after all that was a blessing. Ho hum - Staurday will be more of the same. Hopefully the engine will look ok in daylight and not need too much more cleaning before I can paint it. If it stays sunny the paint should be dry enough by the evening to get it into the car... Doh - promises promises yet again!! will I ever learn? (Comment on this)
Friday, June 2nd, 2006
3:45 pm	Slow.. very slow progress but more than none. Well it's the weekend again. Since last weekend I managed to do 'nearly' nothing on the traveller. I've removed the radiator, front bumper, front spotlights and all the front panel fixings apart from the hockey sticks. I've put release fluid on the hockey stick fixings over the last few days but I'm expecting them to break anyway. Yesterday I thought I'd have the engine out but only got as far as draining the oil (and mowing the lawn and doing 3 hours washing up). I guess it all counts! So if I can have the hockey sticks off before tea time I might have the engine in and running by the end of Saturday... I've not got enough heater hose left to replace them so we'll see how things go (I could bypass the heater for now as it's going to be replaced). Hopfully it'll be a good weekend however my hayfever has started up. Grrr (I was kidding myself that I'd be ok this year despite being in adreadful snotty + sore eyed state last year) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006
8:11 pm	May 24, 2006 20:11 blogging 2 days in a row - I must be poorly. Work might have forgotten what I look like but they remembered my phone number and phoned to check I wasn't lying dead in the hallway. Aw sweet. No I'm sitting at home with a cricked neck again, but prescription painkillers work wonders so they'll see me soon. Have accomplished bugger all, but doc has increased my happy pills. I tried this myself a few weeks ago but when I went back down to regular dose I got a week of cronic fatigue. Maybe it was because I'd had a cold or maybe not. Got my first official counselling session tomorrow after a year of false starts, pre-assessments, assessmement interviews, re-assessment interviews, group therapy, emergency assessment , and last week I got a pre-counselling session. My last GF chucked her dummy out of the pram last week on account of lots of reasons. Within 12 hours of 'not bieing in contact with me' she phoned me up and we just about managed not to argue too much. As soon as I was back from a weekend away she was in touch a lot more times blaming me for stuff and cricising my behaviour. Fair enough, but what happened to not being in touch? Anyway I put her straight on a bunch of things she imagined I was up to, and after apologising, she made out she'd not been jumping to conclusions despite having put her thoughts in writing to proove the opposite. My friend moved house at the weekend and part way through clearing ut her junk she got a pile of Christmas chocolate and put it in my bag. Fortunatley I've eaten it all and don't care that I've put on half a stone, but the cherry liquer chocolates I ate today have given me bad indigestion - no kiddin. lol There's a woman I've heard of through church house group who's fostered a child that sounds like the kind of things you see in movies, although i can't mention details. The kid was from London, so the London social workers are responsible - but they have only done half a job and left her in the lurch (which they admit and apologise for...). All you hear on the media is about people using fostering to make a living - you don't hear about the people put through a nightmare and left peniless waiting for money they should have got 7 months earlier just for basic needs. People with a genuine hard life make me remember to do a bit less navel gazing! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
11:13 pm	still here - just! ... alive an kikin (ish) Well I'm still on planet earth although there's little evidence in my blog. Single life is keeping me pretty busy but at least I'm getting out more :D I'm no longer a piercing virgin thanks to 'sharp practise' in Salisbury. She (woman with big painful needle) was very polite saying it was normal for your eye to water when getting an eyebrow pierced - personally I think I was just crying due to the pain! lol By the end of this week I should't be a 'big block' virgin either! In theory there will be a nice pair of V8 engines in my garage - I flipping hope there's room to get a car in next to them! A major clear out and sort out and tidy up and reorganisation is going to be needed for car parts otherwise I'll be using one V8 engine as a sofa and another as a coffee table, and the custom chassi... hmm a bed frame? Nah - best to organise the garage instead! That way I'll be inspired to finish the traveller and then get going on my 57 after leaving it in the lurch for 14 years :( sniff. My mower is making those unpleasant burning electrical smells that say 'don't even think about getting me to cut long wet grass again - I'm already burnt out from a lifetime of cutting long wet grass'. So my long wet grass is going to get very long and even more wet unless we have a (rain free) hot and sunny week! By which time the grass will be so long that sun will make no difference and it's going to stay wet. Either way, my mower isn't going to last another year. Fortunately the mower lasted a lot longer than my last 3 irons - none of which have lasted a year, and if I was less honest I could ignore having dropped them a few times and get a free replacement. Well - dodging the subject i've been off work poorly for a few days. My neck still hurts a bit but I'm not planning on skiving tomorrow. Church housegroup was pretty good today. Hopefully they can keep going in that direction. Personal life - hmm. Not sure I've got one to speak of although most people would disagree as I'm always off doing stuff! Ho hum Got psycho counselling on Thursdays from now on. With any luck life will be a bed of roses once she's ripped my head apart and band-aided it back together in a more sensible manner. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
11:46 pm	Novelty quickly wears off - unless you're an addict I guess I'm addicted to Morris Minors - because after all these years of shredded knuckles, frostbitten nether regions, finishing a journey with grimy hands etc... I still love morris Minors. As for people - they can be much harder to love. Especially the ones with a tendency to cry a lot and/or use their lack of emotional stability to get an unfair advantage. One such person has messed about my freind, myself and her dad by dreaming that a Morris Minor was needed. After a few months of searching for one in the nearly-free price range I found a good one, worked on it for a few days, tested it, her dad paid for it, my friend collected it and thanked me a lot. And the sum total of that is now that 'said person' (allegedly an adult) has done a "don't want it" sulk and yet again everyone will jump to attention and sort it out. Not that anyone will get thanked. Fortunately I'm in a good mood and just feel sad on their behalf for their lack of life skills. Being a bloke it's not something I'm going to loose sleep over. As for lacking life skills - I spent the weekend in Aberystwyth relaxing sleeping and making general merryment. The amount of scarily wierldly dressed groups of people was surreal. Either there was a joke I've missed out on or this was prime time hen party / stag weekend Bank holiday seaside resort 'ritual' of dressing up with a dozen mates as an anne-summers-saileress or ska-lookalikey or even worse. Thank goodness my lack of life skills has kept me away from such conformist muppetry. Being a silly old git I had the occasion to be heavily impressed by a young lady who could burp in public far louder and more frequently than me :D Sadly not many people would appreciate that talent, but each to his/her own. Poor young lady was in fact not a well bunny, with a immune system defect that led to all kinds of illnesses and subsequently lost most of her hair. Not what most 24 year old women would want but some handle life better than others. My friend Bec [surely to be famous one day for being the most hated woman (stupidly intelligent, honest, open, attractive and not an ounce of ego problem and not even a sexist chip on her shoulder). If she ever stops being a hippy and hangs out with normal women she might need a body guard!] had been co_organising the Welsh anti-Globalisation festival / seminary / gathering / induction training events, and had found the time to invite us Africa-driving-buddies along. Despite the Saturday night town experience of fake tanned oddly dressed people, the evening went swimmingly well and Pizza on the beach washed down with a bottle of red was followed by a few swift halves and onto the 'student squat'. As far as squats go - it was kind of how I imagined it to be - full of laptops and very well-to-do students who would have joined the rat race a decade ago if daddy hadn't left them the occasional silver spoon. Don't get me wrong, they were fabulous and fun people but I don't really think a place can really be classed as a squat if they turn a dirty disused pub into a little heaven. I did however meet a minor celebrity - the non-leader of the rebel clown army :S The non-leader was running induction classes for the rebel clown army and gave a good gab on why it was a really good thing. After thinking long and hard, I'm still not convinced that dressing as a clown and running around with a bunch of pacifist anarchists (generally making people laugh and not helping the police take themselves seriously) on demonstrations against the G8 etc... will make any difference to anyone anywhere... ever. They were all pretty gutted that they only got an off peak BBC documentary, as Geldoff's parties stole all the limelight. Not sure who deserved it most as neither have made an impact. Well -I've not blogged for months and who knows if it will be months before the next one. But just in case I do blog again I can spout off about quitting my job, ending up finishing another car wreck of a relationship, and the mid life crisis of trying to get an eyebrow piercing in Wales on a bank holiday weekend (I failed despite visiting 3 towns over 2 days - Tatto/piercing personel seem to think a bank holiday weekend is for their own enjoyment and not for working - too right!) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006
9:43 pm	bad blogger 0/10 must do better... well it's just over 10 days since I wrote in this thing so at this rate it'll be pretty empty. 10 days of rollercoaster crappyness interspersed with happiness. Travelling to Germaland every week is dreadful as it feels like my own life lasts 1 day before the weekend comes again and weekends weren't going great. However Saturday (25th?) was a nice change - got up early and went to Birmingham for a "Men's" day. Listened to a good speaker, just a shame it didn't feel like anything I don't already know. They had dreadful IT problems to run video clips, but being Christians nobody swore too much (except me under my breath, maybe...) Sunday was a pleasant one. Mum cam over before church, and when we got there she was shocked to see who was leading worship, and equally shocked that I'd never heard of the guy. Apparently the guy wrote nearly every hymn in the last 40 years and is world famous. Spoke with Ross who'd been playing guitar, and (after a bit of Ross gushing) we of course agreed that Ross had played a big role in it and had taught 'Mr.Superstar' a thing or 2... He was a pretty good worship leader, but I'm glad we've got Jonathan pretty often as he's one of the best. El was around when we got back and cooked beany squash thing for Sunday lunch which on the whole is a million times better than the sum of the ingredients. Church again in the evening with El who'd stayed in bed rather than go in the morning, and should really have gone to the pub but with the prospect of a week away my joi-de-vivre was flagging. Monday work was not something to write home about but after learning that all the Germanese were on holiday due to Carnival I promptly rearranged all my travel and hoped that nobody over there would notice I was missing (cunning plan) Monday evening was fab - it's nice to be appreciative of the little things like 'being in your own house'. El's interview went well and 4 hours before hand she was offered the job from a previous interview. So by Tuesday she's gone from having no future job to having to choose - part of me was happy the rest is looking for the black cloud that must be attached to any silver lining. Tuesday evening and moody Ray came to take over his shift from happy Ray. Big pancake session was nice at Jo's house but my brain had decided to be grumpy to El all evening. And today - well the bits from ESM arrived to (hopefully) fix Els car but some were missing. They replied to my mail and appologised for not letting me know that some were on back order and will arrive shortly. I didn't need them today anyway, and then I realised I'd ordered tappet chest gaskets instead of rocker cover gaskets (by mistake) so wouldn't make any difference if they hadn't been missing. brought the stuff home at lunchtime on a 'test drive' (free car) which is mightily handy now I'm limited to a pushbike yet again. I'm sooooo looking forward to gettin my Honda back from my mum's - only about a week to go, although I need to fix her Punto cylinder head before the car takes root permanently! After 3 months the Punto's brakes are probably seized, but at least I oiled the bores before leaving the head off so long! Even the pushbike was in need of TLC which turned out just to be a stiff chain link making it skip. Job done but as the grass outside went 'crunch crunch' when I walked on it I decided it was far to cold to actually do any work on Wilberforce. Boy am I being a real procrastinator! Better luck tomorrow? Brrrr - seen weather forecast, maybe not. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 18th, 2006
7:26 pm	3 cheers made it outside today without being coerced - first Saturday in a month! Weekends are becoming wierd... ah no that'll be me. Made it into the garage - got the traveller running giving myself a nice dose of oily CO in the process. Didn't last long before getting very angry with a pile of junk that was not quite in the right place. After loosing my rag with a few inanimate objects, decided it was best to leave things for a while and lie down until heartbeat stopped racing and the desire to bounce yet more things off the walls subsided. After all that even managed to start work on Wilberforce before getting the urge to check mail and messageboards. May even get some jobs finished before the day is out - Air filer is dirty after next to no time, which is no surprise as whole of engine bay is getting sprayed with oil from somewhere at the front :( (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
5:02 pm	Alive an kikin Did a big slide show presentation last night showing the highlights of my Africa trip to a captive audience (captivated? hmm best not ask). The guys and gals from church made good signs of some interest therefore it can be ticked off as 'ok'. Got really annoyed with ER when we got home as we were both overtired and she wanted to make a point about something I'd done. Ho hum. Got up today, went to work for the second day in a row, and despite the looming project disasters I wasn't too miserable and by the end of the day I even made it up to feeling 'positive'. eek. Spent over an hour writing on uncyclopedia to avoid boredom (Robert Louis Stephenson's Rocket will be immortal... or not, depending if it gets deleted) Had a chat with my boss, and explained that I have no motivation to do my job so I need out of it ASAP before the roof comes in! He didn't try to see any other side and just asked me to write out a job description for an engineering role. Hmm - me thinks that walking into an engineering job that's right on my doorstep without even having to update my CV is something worth considering. Aaahg [for no apparent reason.] Came home early to avoid more work and will see how far I can get before going to bed... Hmm not far then! Serves me right for staing up til 2am to write a magazine article. zzz (Comment on this)
Monday, February 6th, 2006
5:36 pm	Sleeping sickness This morning I needed to go to work. This 'should have been ok' as I'd slept nearly all the way through the weekend and therefore my cold is departing. My body had a very different agenda to my mind, thus 4 hours of bizarre surreal mental antics followed. None of which actually happened, which is the good thing about dreams except that at the time you know you're dreaming and it's stressful [and except when you physically act out your dreams but that's another story] Dreaming about actually getting up - dreaming that I was getting up but I was actually in my Grandparents house (3 hours away) and it was therefore already late the afternoon. Dreaming about phoning in to the office to explain my absence, then waking up again an hour later and seeing the phone on the pillow next to me. Dreams about phones like mine or not at all like mine that didn't work. Trying to fix the phones but then finding myself trying to fix equipment that I was working on many years ago and that I was in an imaginary factory (the one that is in many of my dreams - loosely based on a place where I worked in Birmingham merged with the place where I did my apprenticeship near Wolverhampton). In this imaginary factory I was still trying to get this stuff fixed, but had to dodge my old bosses as I no longer work there, and wouldn't be able to explain what I was doing there today! Dreaming that I should have gone home last night and had inadvertently stayed somewhere else and forgotten to get up on a work day, and was now in a strange bedroom, not knowing which side of the bed I should get out of, or indeed what town I was in. Dreaming that I was now awake and aware that 'thank goodness' I was in my own bed then getting up but my arms and legs were too heavy to be moved despite extreme efforts, straining to lift my my head off the pillow - to be followed by the same blurry view of my pillow a few seconds later [thus realising that my eyes were open but I was still asleep and had only dreamed about straining to pick my head up off the pillow, but anable to actually move as I had been asleep] Followed by more of the same dreams about being desperate to get up, or about actually getting up but being in another house somewhere else where everyone had already left and I'd overslept and was going to get into trouble for overstaying my welcome, mixed together in any random order. Eventually I woke up [for real this time, and for more than half a second, therefore actually awake not just dreaming it] , but it was now lunchtime and my head wasn't working. In the afternoon I phoned work... but my phone didn't work properly. Ugh - I'm actually awake - right? I phoned work again and just left a message, hoping that I'd go to work in the afternoon. Today just didn't happen. The afternoon is already gone, but in its place remains some of my sanity. Phew. Best not to overdo things in the remains of the day :S Went online later in the day but for no other reason than for a bit of mental stimulation. Improved a couple of uncyclopedia pages and made the usual 1 liner Morris Minor advices on MMOC msg board. The advice there is pretty good anyway so it's not like I'd be missed much, and if I gave the puter a break, the g/f wouldn't get jealous of 'it'. Got a hospital appointment tomorrow - hope they realise what they're meant to be doing. I ought to tell them about my oncoming insanity - waking up on Saturday night jumping out of bed in sheer panic + having to heavy breathe for 5 minutes is unlikely to be just from having a cold, more likely is from running out of pills a few days ago. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
9:51 pm	:( Grrr. LJ just lost todays blog. Serves me right for writing one... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
10:52 pm	Another day another dollar 10 days down, 82 days left... until something different! Got back to work today to fight a manageable but annoying wave of stressyness caused by my not being there yesterday. Booked myself on yet more flights (again) at less than 24hrs notice. Deja-Vu Driving a Minor in the UK is such an easy ride that I don't feel obliged to wear a seatbelt (which I know is silly and totally against my own advice) however compared to many days of kamikazee driving across Africa there just isn't enough risk! Wilberforce is behaving very well as a daily driving Minor (despite the missfire when driving at low revs). El mailed me and asked to re-gain her Minor instead of the Rover, which I had to agree with. At least her next crash will be on her own insurance, unlike Monday... I'll miss my daily dose of full throttle Minoring :( If only it was nice and warm - then I'd be tempted to fix my own Minors, however with my present grotty cold I'm not even tempted to get out of bed in the morning. Sniff, cough cough, 'throat clearing noise', sniff. Would be 'awful' if all my customers come down with a crappy cold after tomorrows meeting. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
3:44 pm	poorly in the afternoon as well! hmph. Was thinking about going back to work this afternoon but wasn't really inspired to do so. Having ventured downstairs this afternoon for more tea and comfort food I re-found my headache, cough and had a good sneeze whilst I was at it, therefore felt thoroughly not guilty about being at home. Work stress is going to be immense tomorrow but hey ho! (Comment on this)
2:00 pm	A blog... why oh why oh why am I not doing something more useful?? If I'd not been poorly this morning I could have gone to work and done 'something'. Something is better than nothing... (Comment on this)