I'm exhausted. I've had a busy night. We had the rest of the wood delivered today to finish off the deck, so after tea (a love curry courtesy of Porl) we shifted all the wood off the patio and onto the deck frame, neatly arranged in the order Dad will need to use it. He hoping the weather brightens up so he can work on it this week. He wants to get it done as soon as possible. The aim is to get it finished and buy a shed before winter.

When we were halfway through shifting the wood the man arrived from the garage with my newly fixed and cleaned car. I'm so pleased to have it back, and so pleased my insurance is fully comp. £1600 it would have cost, and that's just mine, I haven't asked how much the Mercedes I hit is costing to repair.
I've just realized they got the horrid little Ka back with an extra £15 of petrol, I wasn't expecting to get mine back until Thursday/Friday, so I put petrol in last night.

After welcoming the car home I decided to rearrange the living room. I was going to put the sewing machine in one of the alcoves by the fire, but that would have meant I'd have to re-arrange the living room everytime I wanted to use it. So instead the Welsh Dresser has been moved into one of the fireside alcoves, and my sewing machine is where the dresser was. The living room looks nicer now too, bigger, but cosier...plus it's tidy which is always an improvement, wonder how long we'll keep that up for.

And now for bed... so tired.

If you aren't seeing huge differences here, then press F5. I've finally come up with a design I like, and have managed to get it finished and online before having time to go off it.
Please let me know any problems with it. As always constructive criticism greatly appreciated.

I've not just been doing webpages though. I've had a fun few days.

Friday night I went straight from work up to Ormskirk, Porl was already there. We did our usual thing, pizza, sillyness and vegging out. At about 2am I was browsing the local freebie paper and an ad caught my eye. Next morning, I phoned the number, and I'm now the proud owner of this...

Well I wanted a nice cabinet to go in the corner. But that's not what got me interested.
The fact that it's an antique treadle sewing machine too is what makes me love it.

It even has the original instructions, and loads of diffeent feet in their box.

I've wanted a treadle sewing machine for so long, but I didn't expect to be able to get one as nice as this. The woman had bought it as a decoration, she was told it worked when she got it but she'd never tried it. Looking at it I guessed that some WD40, wax polish and some TLC would do it the world of good, and I was right. A couple of hours work on it and it runs perfectly. I love it so much I feel all goo-ey inside.

I really enjoyed restoring it, and I've spent all day looking at other things I could restore. So you can understand why I'm trying very hard to resist replying to the Freecycle post from someone offering a 1920's Dolls House which needs a little restoration. She wants it to go to a good home.
I'm a girl. I've always wanted a Dolls House.

Lastly I forgot to post pictures of the 3 Belfast Sinks I got off Freecycle. I've started cleaning them up now and they look much better, there's no blue paint on them for a start. The planting scheme needs some work though, the corinador looks lonely.

I've tried so many times to make a catalogue of my books, but it's always failed, mainly because I have so many, and to do it properly (ISBN no, publishers etc) would take me forever. So Library Thing is the little godsend I've been hoping someone would come up with. It's so simple. You do a search for the book and it pulls up all the different version it can find on the Library of Congress gateway, and Amazon (US, UK, FR, Ger). If you can find the right version then all the details are there, ISBN, publisher, illustrator etc. It's frustrating at the moment that it doesn't find the UK versions very often, but the site has only been online for 2 weeks, and in that time the author has added many things that have been requested, getting the site to search the British Library is on his list of things to do, so I'll forgive him for now. You can add tags to books (like in Flickr & Delicious), write reviews, and see which other users you have most books in common with, which seems like a good way of finding new books to read. Now I'll just have to spend the next few weeks adding all my books into it.

In other news, the webdesign has come on leaps and bounds over the past couple of days. There's still a lot to do on the craft pages, but I'm hoping to get the rest online in the next couple of days.

Hurrah! They phoned this morning to let me know my car is fixable. I'm so relieved. It will take about 2 weeks to fix, but they delivered me a courtesy car this morning. It's a Silver Ford Ka (odd co-incidence as Jimmy just bought his first car a few days ago which is also a Silver Ford Ka.) I haven't been out in it yet, but I'll have to before Monday, I don't want my first trip out in it to be the journey to work.

I'm not hurting as much today, but I'm still sore. My head still feels like a heavy weight. I'm going to spend the day relaxing, maybe getting some webdesign done, some knitting, and maybe some glass painting. It's 80's Weekend on TMF, so I'm getting to see all the videos that went with the songs I loved so much growing up (and still do.) Everyone goes on about the bad dress sense of the 80's, but I'm sorry... the dancing! After watching Vanessa Paradis' video for Joe Le Taxi I'm wondering how she ended up getting Johnny Depp.

I've never been in a car crash before, I didn't know whiplash could hurt so much. My neck and back are killing me, I can move my neck, but if I move it too far the pain makes me feel sick, as does the occasional crunch that my neck keeps making. My head feels so heavy. My knee is fine though, so long as I don't touch it.

I had to go to the Police Station this afternoon to show them my driving license etc. Annoyingly I got off the bus far too early, as the Police Station that the Council website pointed me too has been shut for years, thankfully the nice lady in the library pointed me in the right direction, and had a moan about the state of the old building, and the fact that if anything happens to you outside mon-fri 9-5 then it's tough because the Station is closed.

I spent the rest of the day knitting my first pair of socks, watching daytime telly (I'm sure it used to be better), falling asleep, and trying to find out about my car. Apparently the insurance people were assessing whether it could be fixed, but no one phoned me back to let me know, and I fell asleep at half 4 so missed calling them back. They will only let me have a courtesy car if they are going to fix it, and I can't have on until they've decided. They can't deliver a car until Monday, but if they have made by tomorrow morning then I could go and pick one up. However that would probably cost a fortune in taxi fares, and I don't feel up to driving yet anyway.

If they don't fix the car then I have to buy a new one which will take several days, including taking a trip to Sheffield to get some savings (best way of saving money, have a obscure bank account where the nearest branch is 35 miles away.) I wouldn't be entitled to a courtesy car, so I'd have to hire one because commuting to work by train isn't an option I fancy. I worked out it would take me roughly 2 hours from door to desk. I start work at 8am, so I'd have to leave at 6. Not good.

Why is nothing ever easy?

Nanana nana Nanana nana naaaaa We're gonna crash!

I've crashed my little brum brum... it's very poorly, possibly dead. I'm waiting for someone to phone and tell me what's happening.

Now that I've calmed down I'm okay, just very sore, my neck, back and right arm are getting stiffer by the minute, probably whiplash, and I'm going to have a cracking bruise on right knee. I was a complete nervous wreck when it happened, in shock, I couldn't think what to do, the other driver had to tell me to get the car onto the hard shoulder, then it took me about 4 attempts to get the work number right. The other drivers involved are all okay, no one hurt, and their cars were fine to drive away. The car I hit was a Mercedes, he'll probably get a new back bumper, although it would probably clean up with some T-cut, but the front of mine just crumpled.

It all happened on the M60 on the way to work this morning, I wasn't going too fast, probably about 50mph, but it was wet, and my brakes just wouldn't work in time. An ambulance came to check me out, and I spent about an hour sat in a police car waiting for the AA, then got driven home.
An eventful morning, but I can think of better ways to get out of work.

I've had 'Crash' by The Primitives going round my head since it happened, but boy am I glad I opted for projecting my 5 years no claims when I renewed my car insurance just 4 days ago!

Oh fiddlesticks!

When will I learn that colours on the laptop are always totally different to how they should really look?

I'm having another of those "determind efforts" at getting the new site online. This time it's more of an effort though, I really am fed up with purple, so the desk has been cleared, I've brought a comfy computer chair downstairs rather than using a dinng chair, and I'm going to try to get somewhere.

The problem is, that the colours which on the laptop were various shades of blue, are now a mixture of purple and green. I'm trying to decide if I like it or not.
I think not.

Back to the drawing board, I will get there eventually.

Lots of thoughts in my head at the moment. Lots of things I should post about. Lots of things I'm ranting about. Porl is pretending to listen, I don't blame him for zoning out. Most are trivial, some are big, I'll try to keep each as brief as possible.

# What is is with everyone leaving their jobs at the moment? At least half the people I know are. I'd say who, but I'm not sure whether employers have been informed in all cases :) Good luck to everyone though, I hope we all end up significantly happier.

# I hate the Royal Mail. Why do they always manage to deliver the junk and lose the important stuff? And why haven't my new Knitting Needles arrived yet?

# Again I'm grateful I live in the UK, where guns aren't sold in supermarkets, and communities can get organised - I keep seeing news reports showing aid being dropped into New Orleans and seeing a few people grabbing it and it not being shared. I wonder why no-one is challenging this and trying to get things organised. Then I remember that I wouldn't challenge someone who may have a gun, so why should they?

# I'm also getting sick of seeing Americans moaning about the cost of petrol.
When I filled up the car on Wednesday it was about 92p a litre. After doing complicated late night maths (3.8 litres per US Gallon, then $1.81 to the £Sterling,) I worked out that's $6.44 per US Gallon. Nearly double what prices are in America right now.
These are the normal prices, they haven't gone up yet because of Katrina, we'll probably be paying over a pound per litre by Monday, and no doubt it will keep going up.
I sounds like I'm moaning, "ooh poor us and our high petrol prices" but I'm not, I think it's good that driving my car is expensive.
Driving is bad.
Pollution is bad.
Making people think twice about driving somewhere that they could walk to is good.
I'm far from perfect, the car is easy, and I'm lazy, but I'm paying for my laziness. I also realized that because I work so far from home I spend around 10% of my wages on petrol. That is stupid, I need to work closer to home.
Also, the worlds' biggest polluter has been effected by a natural disaster, the severity of which is a pretty good sign of the effects of Global Warming. Then people are complaining about no longer being able to put petrol in their cars and continue to pollute the Earth... it seems like there are a few skewed perspectives.
< / rant>

# Freecyle is being good to me at the moment. Hopefully by next week I'll be the proud own of 3 Belfast sinks which I can use as plant pots in the garden. I'll also have got rid of the other computer monitor.

# Had a HUGE thunderstorm the other night, which I managed to completely miss. Heard a few rumbles down at work, I think I must have driven around the storm on the way home because I didn't see anything. It took me an hour and a half to get back, several substations were hit so there was a big powercut and all traffic lights were out. Fun! By the time I got home, the power was back on. Porl was a bit jittery though, I love thunderstorms, he doesn't. He saw lots of sheet lightening, then fork lightening hit the field across the road, then he heard an even bigger bang round the back of the house. He saw a fire engine not long after.

# Going to the Stitching and Creative Craft show at the G-Mex tomorrow with Shell. I'll try to be good and not spend too much money.