We’ve been in the new flat for just over a week and I’m still trying to settle into the whole environment. At the moment, we still don’t have an internet connection in there, (coming Saturday), and we haven’t managed to hook up the TV due to some crazy aerial wiring.
Among other things, I still need to completely sort out my bedroom by getting the bookcases in there, and also setting up the big desk that I love so much, (I measured the room, it just fits where I want it to), all of which means I still don’t feel entirely at home there yet.
I didn’t expect it to be a quick process but I’d hoped I’d be a little more relaxed about it all by now. I suppose the fact that I lived on my own for over a year has imbedded a certain lifestyle, and freedom on me and it’s taking a little longer for that adjustment to sharing again to take hold.
It’s not really an issue. I simply find myself being a little reclusive now and again, while at the same time being slightly uncomfortable in the space I have open to me. It’s just going to take time.
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In other news… I seem to be developing something of a small Freelance Web Design business. That actually may be over exaggerating things slightly. Not long ago I had a request to do a web site for a guy that used to work for our London office, and then a friend found out about it, and asked me to look at their site. Then I received an email yesterday saying there’s a possibility of a third job on the horizon.
All of this came completely out of the blue, and well, I hope I can manage to do a decent job to avoid embarrassing myself. It does remind me that I really need to get the new design for SSDC finished. Then there’s also the fact that I’m not particularly happy with how this site looks these days. Add all that together and I’m busier with web related projects than I ever really intended to be.
It should all keep me out of trouble, and if all goes well, bring in a few extra quid too.
After five long weeks, I finally returned to Edinburgh.
We moved into the flat yesterday, and promptly realised it wasn’t as big as we remembered. The bedrooms were a little thinner, and the living room just a little smaller than our memory led us to believe. It’s not an insurmountable problem. It simply takes a little creative thinking with the furniture currently in the flat, and with any new items we plan on buying.
I spent most of last night, moving my bed, wardrobe, and desk in some twisted game of furniture Tetris in order to maximise my space. I think after a few hours of moving and swearing, I’ve found something that works with the space I have and allows me to add to it. In one instance I think I’ve managed to create enough space to bring my really good desk into the flat. It’s huge, so I never thought it would be an option. I’m taking out the measuring tape tonight to check if it’s going to fit into the part of my room I’ve set aside, and if it does it’s going to solve a lot of issues.
Essentially, I was hoping to have some clean desk space to write on, but also have somewhere I could setup my DVD player and Xbox360. With the current setup, the desk I have is big enough for one or the other, whereas my other desk is big enough to handle both tasks quite easily.
The whole situation is going to take a little while to settle down, for us all to unpack and make the place habitable, and for me to get used to living with other people again. I do think it’s going to be a fun flat, and I imagine that once this month is over, and we all have some spare money again, the social aspect of the flat will pick up and we’ll have various nights with people coming round for drinks.
While it was okay living back at home with my folks, (meals cooked for me, etc.), it is such a relief to finally regain a semblance of independence, coupled with the bonus of no longer commuting for hours anymore. It’s a twenty minute walk from the flat to work, and if I have to catch a bus, it takes all of five minutes. It’s pretty hard to top that.
For some reason I’ve been more sick in the last six months than I ever remember being. Every month or so I’ve picked up some bug. Usually they last for a day and just leave me sneezing and feeling a bit crappy, but this one is being annoying.
On Monday I started to feel a bit unwell, and the sneezing started that day. Not too much, but enough to know something wasn’t right. Tuesday came around and I felt terrible. I’d developed a pretty nasty cough, and had a headache that drove me to painkillers for the first time in a very long time. I was expecting to feel better today, and I do… sort off. I woke up around 6.30 and every muscle in my body hurts. Plus the headache is still there. So I dragged myself out of bed and shuffled, old man style, down the stairs to grab some more painkillers and some water.
It’s like the bug beat the crap out of me, and while I lay on the ground beaten to a pulp, decided as it walked away to come back and give me a few more kicks in the ribs, just to be sure.
The good news is, I think the bug has left me and I’m just dealing with the aftermath at the moment. I just wish it hadn’t left me in quite so much discomfort.
It’s been a highly frustrating couple of days. With the power cord for my MBP being destroyed, I can only use the laptop for a few minutes before I have to shut it down. I’m expecting the new power supply in a day or so, but in the meantime all of the work I had on there is out of reach, including the designs for SSDC that I had been working on.
It has been quite startling to see how heavily I rely on that laptop. It’s only really been out of use since yesterday afternoon, with the exeption of quick email checks, and I’m already at a loss without various areas of my digital lifestyle being constantly available.
In the past I’ve thought about unplugging for a few days to get away from everything, and never really managed it. I’m a child of the digital age, and without access to that playground I get a little twitchy. I suppose if I’d placed a self imposed restriction on my digital lifestyle I would be okay, but because I had no say whatsoever in my current exile I’m a bit more stabby than I really should be. It’s not like the world is going to end because I can’t access some documents I was working on. At the same time though it makes my day to day life a little more difficult.
I should stop complaining. It’s not as though I can’t get onto the net and access some of my emails though my ISP’s webmail functionality, or my contacts through .Mac, but there are a few things I really would like to get access to, but can’t.
I really hope that power adapter arrives soon.
As if I didn’t have enough issues going on at the moment, I’ve just had to spend £60 I didn’t really have spare on a new power adapter for my MacBook Pro. I hadn’t had any problems with the old one at all, until about ten minutes ago when it stopped charging the laptop. Completely confused by this I checked it was plugged into everything, and restarted the mac just on the off chance some power management setting had gone nuts.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something not quite right with the cable. I picked it up to find that the end of the cable, at the power pack had been completely frayed. This was fine yesterday, so what happened between then and now, I have no idea.
The timing of this is unbelievable. Not only do I have to spend a hell of a lot of money on the deposit for the new flat, I’d only just started getting myself out of a financial nightmare that was causing me no small amount of grief.
This puts a rather healthy dent in any money I’d managed to set aside, and means that I’m going to have less evenings out with friends than I’d initially hoped.
This. Just. Sucks.
