next entryPaint, Travel & Upgrade
Out with the old...
It's my turn (as in actually me rather than workmen) to be busy today.
Since I have the whole day to do stuff, the first thing I set about doing is some more decorating in the hallway. Having painted the walls white with a base coat, the ceiling suddenly looks really scummy, and so I give the ceiling a coat of matt white paint to freshen it up, and it looks much much better.
Next I set about giving the walls their first coat of coloured paint. I've gone with white with a hint of green, to try and tie it into the carpet a little. And it goes on ok, the problem is that because it's so hot at the moment it's drying too quick and therefore not leaving such a nice finish. Doing the hallway walls takes me the best part of the day, and by the time I'm done I think I've sweated more sweat than paint gone on the walls! The thing is now I think I'll probably have to give the walls another coat of paint, which is no biggy, but I may well wait until the evening to do it, or until the weather has cooled down a little to prevent killing myself with exhaustion and to limit the chances of the paint drying too quickly again.
I've also sorted out my mobile phone contract and handset. I've been wanting to change my phone for some time, it's a Nokia 8910 (the one with the titanium casing) and whilst it look cool and all of that, actually its a bit of a pain in the butt to use. It doesn't have any backlighting on the keypad, and the keys are quite tricky to press, especially if you have long nails as I do (or did until I started decorating and things).
As for my contract, well I've been on the same one since I signed up with vodafone, so whilst it was only £11 a month for line rental I was getting quite high call charges because I only had free minutes at certain times of the day and only to land lines.
So after a little investigation, and realising that despite the fact I had a month left on my existing contract I could still upgrade now, I decide to upgrade to vodafones Anytime 200 (plus stop the clock) package. It gives me plentiful free minutes to any mobile network or landline and the stop the clock bit means that I can talk for an hour and only pay for the first 3 minutes. Pretty handy.
As for the handset, well I've gone for a motorola RAZR V3, which looks pretty cool. However, I am a motorola virgin, so I'm not sure how well I'll adjust to the menus after spending so long traversing the Nokia "menu's for dummies" idealisation.
Anyway, its all ordered and hopefully I should have the phone tomorrow.
In with the new...
In the evening, Phil and I pop over to my friends house (the ones who have emigrated to the States) and pick up a portable air conditioning unit. We don't leave here until 8pm, meaning that we don't arrive there until gone 9. And by the time we've loaded up the unit, and shifted some furniture around it's late enough that we don't get home until about 11.30 pm. I have to say it was worth the travelling time and diesel, our bedroom was icey cold after about 10 minutes of turning the unit on, a most welcome relief considering it is so hot and muggy here at the moment.
Did I mention that our Canon EOS 350d camera arrived today too? Well it did, and it looks well impressive. We haven't had much time to play with it yet, but did watch the DVD that came with it promoting what you can do, and of course more importantly what accessories you can buy to get the most out of you new camera ;) I think of all the things I'd most like next to buy for it though would be a macro lens, although I'm not good a photos, I do like taking piccies of things close up, so a macro lens would probably keep me entertained for hours and hours!
I will say though that the software that comes with the camera has drivers of a different kind, because it managed to DRIVE Phil up the wall into a right tiss-was... no worries though, I think he managed to take most of his stress out on his sister :\ (in a good and productive way!).
p.s. I forgot to mention that the etyres people came out and fixed my second punctured tyre. And I have to say, a fantastic service with a great fitter who was very professional indeed (I'd go so far as to say he gave a better service than what I got at the BMW garage when I went with the first flat tyre). Very considerate towards those of us with Alloy wheels, didnt scratch them at all, he even cleaned them! Explained everything as he went along, made sure the pressures were right, made sure the balancing was right, even made sure the nuts on the wheel were tightened to the correct torque! If anyone needs a mobile tyre fitting service I'd recommend you give them a call and see what they can quote you on for your tyres (if you live in the UK obviously!).
Posted by Abi on the July 12, 2005 11:32 PM
I hope it didn't drive Phil up the wall before the wall paint dried (imagining pink-panter style footprints leading from a silouette mark on the wall *grin* )
btw pure plain white walls have the advantage that you can change the colour by simply changing the lightbulb. Want light green walls, just use a geen lamp, want pink walls for that one-off party evening, just swap in a pink lamp (and remove it after the party).