The weekend turned out to be rather more expensive than I imagined. It started off ok. I went into town and popped into work to upgrade Samba. All went well.

I then went into town to buy some trousers to replace the pair which last monday got smeared with gear oil from another bike whilst I was parking my own in the departmental bike racks. (Sainsbury’s Novon washing powder failed to remove the oil after three full washes at 90C). That was £35 out of the bank.

I saw that Electronic Boutique had Half-life for sale at £9.99 and so I bought that. It had at last come down to a price I think is reasonable for games. Don’t get me started on the time when £5.99 was concidered the upper bound for games software pricing.

I then popped into Sainsbury’s at Hayford Hill. I usually get my money out on a Saturday for the whole week. It was a great pain, therefore that all the cash machines decided that although they knew who I was and that my PIN was correct that they wouldn’t offer me any services at all, simply telling me that “This service is temporarily unavailable.” Hmmm.. :-/ It’s a good thing the tills still thought my card was fine.

Anyway, Saturday evening was spent playing Half-Life.. ’til 2am when I noticed the time. oops!

Sunday morning was spent sleeping. At about 1pm I went out hunting for car wax and various other things to give my car it’s 1st birthday wash and brush-up. On the way back I popped into Sainsbury’s and this time the cash machines weren’t as snooty.

So, it was about 2:15pm.. I thought I’d have plenty of time to wash the car before the sun went down.. I got out the hose, started the washing process, then… Sploosh! The hose buldges and explodes half way along its length.

So it was a case of packing everything away, washing hands, getting changed and off out to Homebase to buy a new hose and reel.. That was another £50 out the bank.

By the time I got back home, assembled the complicated Hoselock hose reel and got everything ready to start the wash it was now 3:30pm and the sun was sinking fast.

By the time I’d washed the car, dried it, chamois leathered it and got the wax on it was now 4:30pm and the light had almost gone.. By the time I had finished getting the wax off again it had totally gone.

Looking this morning there are some obvious places I missed. Oh well. It’s surprising I did as well as I did with the lack of light

Anyway, by the time I’d finished I was aching from all the “Wax on. Wax off.” (If you don’t know the reference, don’t worry.)

I might as well add some entries now and again.

OK. Fun week at work with Solaris Maintenance Update 5 breaking almost everything on our main server over the weekend. Things are gradually getting back to normal though, thank goodness!

I got my bike’s rear de-railier replaced due to the spring going.. unfortunately, the extra working of the gear lever has sent that up the spout. One a minor problem.. other than it’s part of the brake lever unit.. and they are only sold by Shimano in pairs.. so that’s £50 out the door. So, with the cost of the de-railier (about £35) and the chain guard (£18) this bike’s costing a lot of money! Still, it’s cheaper than the bus fare.