Caz counts it down

hiddenshadow

Hello, found your diary! Will need to catch up properly this weekend, but the crofting sounds exciting (if a bit dire, judging by the article above :rotfl:).

cazmanian_minx

So how did I do?

[STRIKE]- finish NEL's file
- ideally finish Journalist #3's file, although she does know it may be Saturday morning[/STRIKE]
- catch up with the educational project files
- do some analysis for Mr RPC along with whatever else he throws at me
- accounts for me
- accounts for Mr RPC
[STRIKE]- laundry
- massive ironing pile
- clean house
- attempt to shampoo dried mud out of dog's feathers[/STRIKE]
- catch up on the mucking out

Not bad - didn't manage the mucking out because the weather has been so filthy. Didn't get to go and look at the haybaler either, because the guy's stuck on Orkney, but he'll let me know as soon as he's got back across the firth.

I made a decision not to do any work this weekend, which on the plus side has meant I've caught up with the housework, but I don't actually feel like I've had any more of a rest than I do on weekends I work.

cazmanian_minx

Hooray, hooray, it's invoicing day Invoices for £1,205.59 sent out, along with gentle reminders about £173.33 still outstanding from various people. I'll also have the educational project to invoice for when it completes next week and NEL has already sent me a couple of files this month, really interesting ones too.

I am aware that my debt reduction has stalled massively at the moment, but I am putting £6-700 a month aside for the tax bill, so once that's sorted it'll be full steam ahead once more.

cazmanian_minx

Huh, I should have got round to updating my signature sooner! I've gone through £23,000 of debt paid off and £28,000 of the mortgage paid off

hiddenshadow

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Huh, I should have got round to updating my signature sooner! I've gone through £23,000 of debt paid off and £28,000 of the mortgage paid off

:T Amazing progress!

EssexHebridean

Wow- superb! :T:T:T

As for your lists of things you got done/had to do - I'm tired just reading them!

Verbatim

Great progress Caz. Off to look at your House Hoarder blog.

cazmanian_minx

Verbatim wrote: »

Great progress Caz. Off to look at your House Hoarder blog.

Not much on there at the moment, I'm afraid, as nothing's happening. Need to email my solicitor next week and find out if we have a fighting chance of getting the keys before Christmas or whether I should channel Mr Minx's DIY itch into working on our house for the two weeks he has off over Christmas and New Year! He's been at home for the last two days sorting out the woodburner - did I mention our woodburner woes?

***scrolls back***

No, I don't think I did. Right. About two weeks ago, Mr Minx's hyper-sensitive former-submariner nose detected a slight burning smell in the living room. We hunted high and low, couldn't find anything in there or the kitchen, shrugged and sat back down, until about an hour later when I noticed a suspicious orange glow coming from where the woodburner flue went up through the top of the fireplace into the chimney. :eek::eek: Some hurried prodding with a poker later, we discovered that when it was installed, they'd cut the hole in the fireproof cement board for the flue a little bit too big and had filled in the gap with chipboard... :eek::eek::eek: Amazing it hadn't actually caught fire earlier, to be honest!! So we took that out the following day when it had all cooled down and the next night nearly got smoked out of the living room. Turns out that only a 1m flue had been fitted instead of a 7m one.

Mr Minx flipped slightly at this point and the following day he rang every heating engineer between here and Inverness that did woodburning stoves to see if anyone could come and check it. First appointment anyone could give us was January, so he decided he'd sort it out himself and ordered a complete flue kit, which arrived on Tuesday in a mahoooooosive box.

Many phone calls and promises of chocolate brownies later, we managed to get the stove unhooked from the chimney yesterday morning (and that was a whole other story, because once we looked up it we found that the gap between the 1m flue and the cement chimney liner had been padded with glass wool, which had heated up, fused to the flue and warped it - Mr Minx had to take it out a piece at a time with an angle grinder), the chimney swept today and, as long as the wind doesn't get up too much, Pete the Roofer will be here in the morning to go up top and drop the new liner down the chimney for us.

In the meantime, the house has cooled massively from not having the woodburner lit - our bedroom was down to 11.4C yesterday evening, despite the heating being on, so hopefully we'll have it all connected back up and working tomorrow evening. It's not been cheap to fix, but I'm just thankful that we haven't (a) burnt the house down or (b) been gassed by melting glass wool! Thank goodness we replaced the double glazing, as otherwise we'd be completely freezing.

I am still utterly swamped with work. At the moment I have just over 3 hours of educational project files to type, with two or three more to come on Monday, plus a 78-minute file for Journalist #3 due back by Tuesday morning at the latest. I've signed up for three business team files for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and NEL is going to have a look at what she has available and send me a couple of hours for next week as well. That's before I even start thinking about Mr RPC, whose accounts still need doing.

Things should calm down a little bit once the educational project finishes, and Mr RPC's office closes for Christmas on the 18th, though he works right through the festive period so I shall continue getting work from him.

No news on the baler and hay turner, the guy hasn't made it back home for me to go and have a look at them yet. He's promised to ring when he's next in the county, but I'm not holding my breath

Knit_Witch

Holy shemoley!!! err who fitted the woodburer and can yu sue the a$$ off them for the fact they could have killed you!

Verbatim

Ooer that could have been really nasty. Thank goodness for Mr M's submariner nose! Following on from Knit Witch's point I'm wondering if the woodburner was there when you bought the house? But it's curious that the problem only manifested itself now.
V