Okay, this one is really hard. Maybe all y'all can help me think.

See, gummihuhn, stoneshop and me were going to visit a biker's meet on Dartmoor (*waves at miketroll*). And on the way we would stop to meet a BookCrosser or two, and pick up a teapot for my Teasmade, which I bought on E-bay (or actually, gummihuhn did the buying on my behalf).
But there's a problem. stoneshop cannot get many days off from work, so his time is restricted. And he figures it's a lot of kilometres in rather few days, to meet a group of people he's not all that involved with. We'd be on a rather tight schedule in order to make it to the ferry on time.
I can see his point, and even if I couldn't: if he doesn't want to go, I can't make him go, and I wouldn't want to if I could.

So if he stays home, why shouldn't I go? After all, I've been looking forward to this trip for quite some time.  Therre's going to be campfires, and greenlaning, and lots of biker's stories being swapped. It sounds like a lovely outing and I know that gummihuhn and I make fine travel companions (everything went quite well on our trip to the BookCrossing convention in London).

Well...
it's just that stoneshop and I haven't been on a proper holiday since I don't know when. I'd really enjoy a few days out and about together. Doesn't have to be just the two of us, can be in a group; but I do want him to be there or it wouldn't be the same.
Are there other things I'd like to do with those days off? Well... I've always wanted to go to Prague together. It's my favourite city in the whole world and I'd love to show it to him. Of course, that's about the same distance... but there are no boats involved, so we wouldn't be on such a tight schedule. We could even travel by bus and sleep on the way.

So what's a girl to do? Go for the fun bike trip, get down and dirty on the moor, drink lukewarm beer around a campfire with total strangers and probably have a whale of a time?
Or go for some quality time together with the big guy, in a city which I know I really love, and he may well love it as well?

Dear LJ, I know I've not been around much lately, but don't forsake me now that I come to you in my hour of need. Please advise.

I just went to the recycling centre / second hand shop across the street.
I took the shopping trolley that we keep in the Book Room as a receptacle for books that are falling apart, or that we can't possibly imagine anyone being happy about finding. The trolley was half full (although some people would say it was half empty).

I used the available space for pizza boxes from the kitchen, and empty glass jars and bottles. By the time there were none left in the kitchen, the trolley was more than full. This is a wine, peanut butter and pizza loving, four-person household (I use the term 'house' loosely).

While throwing the books and boxes in the waste paper container, I happened to find some books that were not falling apart, and suitable for BookCrossing purposes. So I took them home.

They were:
Room at the top (John Braine), Penguin, decent condition
A twist in the tale (Jeffrey Archer), paperback, decent condition
Serenade (Leon de Winter), a Dutch National Book Week gift, good condition
The incredible journey (Sheila Burnford), Dutch translation in reasonable condition
Brave new world (Aldous Huxley), nice tacky '50s Bantam pocket, rather brittle.

This last one goes straight onto Mt. TBR, no matter what miketroll says.

Inside the shop I bought an aluminium strainer, sieve or possibly a steaming dish, suitable for washing engine parts in a part washer such as stoneshop has.

All in all quite a useful little trip.

I found something odd in the boxes of books that I'd gotten for BookCrossing recently.
A book in Esperanto! I'd never seen one of those before.

There's no doubt about it: BookCrossers are the salt of the earth. One of them happens to live in the same city as the seller of the teapot does, and kindly offered to go and collect it for me!

I found one.

Some of you may remember this entry about my Goblin Teasmade. (The rest of you may just smile and nod and pretend they do.)
It's a teawaker, a wonderfully British contraption that came forth from the unholy union of a teapot, a kettle, an alarm clock and a bedside lamp.
Here's a pic of mine. Click makes big.

The mailman just brought me the new brake disc that gummihuhn ordered for me in Germany. It looks awesome. In fact it looks so awesome that it doesn't really suit the bike because *nothing*  else about that bike looks remotely this glamourous!


Here's my old brake disc, which needs to be replaced. Click to see the solid steel slice of awesomeness that just arrived.
To make things even better: it was dirt cheap, too.

Some of you may remember that the left mouse button on my laptop had worn out... and that I replaced the 'clickie thingie' underneath the button with the one from the middle mouse button, and eventually (when that wore out, too) the right. So I had to use a mouse with my Thinkpad because you do tend to use the right mouse button every now and then.
Well, no more!
The clickie thingies I ordered never arrived. The guy said that he'd sent them. Hmm.
But another solution was found: stoneshop's friend Charles in the States bought a keyboard for me on Ebay, took it with him to Germany when he went there for work, and then mailed it to me!
So I just took the old keyboard out of my X22 and replaced it with a brand new one.
Oh my! I've never seen such newness before, let alone touched it. The keys aren't even shiny, they're matted! And the trackpoint is bright red and clean! It makes the whole laptop seem new.
Interface = so important. Don't you agree?

Now I *heart* my Thinkpad even more. And Charles, of course, who made this possible!

I never realised I wanted silicone egg-poaching pods, but now I know that I do! Wouldn't these be perfect for poaching eggs to put in your instant noodle soup? And then there's the design. They have that whole retro- space age thing going on.
I'll be checking the fancy designish cookery gear shops around town soon...

...is a printer: a HP LaserJet 6L in working condition. It's not even empty. It's a nicely compact printer, too... not one of those huge monsters for use in offices (not that we'd mind).
We found it at the corner of the street near a dumpster for household garbage, and strapped it to the back of my bicycle and took it home.
I've long ago given up being amazed at the stuff people throw away. I guess I could be amazed at the fact that someone was too lazy to carry it across the street to the charity shop. But I can't be bothered really.
Never mind, it's in good hands now and it will eventually find a loving home and be useful to someone.

Fixing stuff is nice. I'm not overly technical, and I tend to be lazy, but sometimes I really enjoy tinkering and making things work again.
I'm currently working on a plastic ramp from my pinball machine. It's badly cracked and some pieces have fallen off, so stoneshop took it out so I could fix it.
First I glued all the pieces back together and now I'm putting coat after coat of clear two components expoxy glue on, filling the holes and cracks in the clear plastic and making it thicker and stronger. I can't mend it invisibly. But I can make it whole and strong again, and it's going to look reasonably good.
The glue dries in ten minutes after you mix the two components together. I'm using an infrared lamp to heat it up while drying, which makes it harden better. It's great stuff, there are a lot of things you can fix with it.

I think I'll bend a strip of thin copper into shape and glue that to the underside of the ramp, to reinforce it. It's in the middle of the playfield and the ball hits it really hard sometimes. I'm looking forward to reinstalling the ramp once it's finished.

The place is smelling of epoxy and so am I.
But I don't mind.

(Warning: anyone who can actually sew will find this laughable and/or pathetic. I can't sew my way out of a wet paper bag if my life depends on it.)

Today I made a tablecloth from two metres of fabric that I'd bought at Ikea. It's a thick cotton fabric and it's printed in a nice fifties-style pattern. I love that retro look, it goes well with my stuff. Here's what it looks like:

[Error: unknown template 'qotd'] I guess I'd have to say my Leatherman, even though it's strictly not a 'tool of my trade'. It's more of a Tool For Life. Being the girlfriend of a certified nerd, I had to get myself one of these, and when I found it on special somewhere, it would have been foolish not to get one.
I have bought a nice sleek black leather sheath from Victorinox, that it fits in very snugly.
My Leatherman is a Wave of the latest model, which appears to give me instant geek cred. But it's actually very useful in other ways, too.
Here's a list of all its features:

* Needlenose Pliers
* Regular Pliers
* Wire Cutters
* Hard-Wire Cutters
* Clip-Point Knife
* Serrated Knife
* Saw
* Scissors
* Wood/Metal File
* Diamond-Coated File
* Large Bit Driver
* Small Bit Driver
* Ruler (8 inch/19cm)
* Large Screwdriver
* Bottle/Can Opener
* Wire Stripper
* Lanyard Attachment

Impressive, huh. I do miss the corkscrew every now and then.

I got a free messenger type bag from my bank today, because I put some money aside and filled in a form  ;-)
It's a nice shoulder bag (not that I don't already own oodles of bags, but hey, it's free and I'm Dutch) albeit rather blue.
It has a transparent part in front, where you can put something you'd like to be visible from the outside.
Of course, that makes it totally suitable as an instant BookCrossing bag. Pimp my bag!
The slogan reads 'Read and Let Read'.

See here.
What is it?
It's our kitchencam:
an old dinosaur of a HP digicam; that I bought second hand back in 1997, and that we now use as a webcam so we can see if the breadmaker has finished.
(Our living room is rather far away from the kitchen.)
But currently it's pointed at a LED display board Stoneshop found in a dumpster somewhere, and got back into working order.
Yes, he's a tinkerer. It's one of my favourite things about him.
The display board is running in demo mode, since he hasn't yet found a way to communicate with it and program it. It's strutting its stuff, so to speak; spouting seemingly random words and graphics just to show what it can do.
The camera takes a picture every 45 seconds, which is sent to a PC and shown on the page. Which is then shown on the internets, because we can.
The result is unpredictable.
Techno-poetry. Made with obsolete techology. I love it.

(It probably looks better when seen at night. Like it is now. Here, that is.)

...but it would not let me because of the picture. Well, I hadn't saved it, so it isn't exactly the same posting, but it went something like this.

People who talk on the (non-handsfree) phone while driving tick me off.
Why? Because they're driving with one hand and with their mind elsewhere, or fiddling with the buttons, or even looking at the phone while doing so.
And you can tell from a distance, by their behaviour: swerving from left to right, driving at oddly slow or irregular speeds, clinging to one of the white lines. Yep, as you get closer you'll always see them holding a phone to their ear and merrily yapping away.
It's not just annoying, it's also dangerous.

And illegal. In my country you're not allowed to use a telephone while driving, except with some kind of handsfree device. That's great. And it would be even greater if that law was more actively enforced, so that there'd be a chance of actually getting nabbed.

I used to switch my phone off while driving (and I still do while riding the motorbike, since I don't need the distraction if it goes off and I wouldn't hear it anyway. Okay, so those two are mutually exclusive. Sue me.)
But no more. Because for a mere 20 euros I have purchased a tiny, lightweight bluetooth headset thingie. It allows me to answer the phone with just one push of a button, without ever taking my eyes off the road. Really, I cannot imagine why people would rather risk an accident or a 140 euro fine!
I don't mind wearing it at all, it's quite comfortable. And (and this is almost reason enough!) it has a bright blue LED that flashes.
Isn't that cool?
I *heart* blue LEDs. It's almost like a geeky kind of jewellery. It makes me feel like Seven of Nine!

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Look what I got.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Or actually, I was entered into a prize drawing because I filled in a survey.
Or in fact I filled in the survey because it said you could win a watch, and then I was never asked for my e-mail address or any other personal data, so how could anyone ever win it? That's what I asked them in an e-mail, and they answered me, saying: Hmm, you may have a point there.
(Sounds familiar? Check this older blog entry. Am I the only one that notices these things?)
And so they decided that they'd let me win the watch. Either that or I'm the only one they had an e-mail address for.
Today it arrived! And they haven't been cheap about it. The watch looks great.


Yes, I know that it's a men's watch. I don't care. I'm going to have the strap shortened and wear it with pride.
Go, Läkerol!

(Originally posted on MySpace)
My boyfriend just bought himself another motorcycle. It's a little 350 cc Jawa, type 634, much like this one:


It's all the bike one could hope to buy for 80 euros. A nice project for next winter. Of course, at a price like that, it's not much of a surprise if some odds and ends are missing. In this case, the front end of one of the exhaust pipes.

So I thought: didn't I have something like that stowed away somewhere? Given to me by a friend, the way it often happens with Jawa parts, while mumbling 'you never know, you may find a use for it some day'?
I started digging in my supplies. And found:
- a nice set of pipes for my own Jawa, that I'd forgotten all about, in decent condition!
- a muffler for my Jawa, to replace the one that was ruined by battery acid this summer on the way to Finowfurt! This one's in decent condition, too.
- and last but not least... the pipe I was looking for. Not only did it turn out to be for the right type of bike, it's the right side as well. And it looks brand new. *does the happy dance*

OK, so being a packrat makes you surround yourself with a lot of rubbish... but every now and then, among the rubbish you'll find just what you need!

(Originally posted on MySpace.)
My father came over and visited me, and he gave me a lovely, lovely gift. Here it is:

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Time for some shameless showing off here!
Yesterday we went to visit my aunt who had invited us for a family tea & tapas party. Good news all by itself as she has excellent taste in food. A good time was had by all.
Just before we left, she asked me if I'd like something really silly. Of course I said yes. Silly is good.
And then she presented me with something I'd been secretly desiring for years: her Goblin Teasmade!