Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Gosh, is it that long since I posted? Crumbs. Yes, I'm fine thanks, although Mr Minx gave me a lovely extra slightly early Christmas present of his work lurgy, which I only really shook off at the beginning of this week. Yesterday was absolutely horrendous weather-wise, gales to about 70mph with hail in them - I got caught in one blast when I went to feed the horses in the evening and had to hang onto the fence to stay on my feet, getting my face shot-blasted with hailstones at the same time. Not pleasant. Today's been a bit better, just snow, but the winds are picking up again tonight.

December's income was absolutely horrendous, one of my worst months for a long, long time. Part of this is down to how I'm currently working with Mr RPC - he gets me to keep an eye on his email for him, which means checking it every 10-15 minutes. Usually there's nothing I need to do and it takes about 30 seconds, so I don't bill him for it, but it stops me settling down to anything else. He also likes me to be at my desk during normal working hours so he can get me to do stuff immediately and one of my new year's resolutions is to spend considerably less time at my desk and more sorting out my fields and garden, so the upshot is that we've agreed I'll do more project-type stuff that I can do at times that suit me and he's going to employ a full-time PA based at his office which, to be honest, he's needed for quite a while. Happiness all around and Journalist #3 and NEL are keeping me busy with work already, so hopefully January will be a better month.

Original debt nearly down into three figures

Verbatim

Hi Caz,
HNY
Thanks for the catch up. Has work stopped on the house? I love your house blog and keep checking for updates.
I hope that the new PA doesn't lead to less work for you!

cazmanian_minx

It's come to a bit of a halt, because the heating installers couldn't make it last Monday after all. They're supposed to be here on Monday 16th now, but with the appalling weather we've had since Wednesday, I suspect they might be snowed (hah!) under with boiler callouts. I've got lots of photos on my phone, but need to upload them and do a post - hopefully a job for the weekend New PA will mean different work for me and I was planning to cut back on what I do for him anyway this year, because I have so much to sort out in the fields and garden.

Today's been interesting. I went down the road to feed the sheep this morning and noticed an SSE van and a flapping power line. 'Wonder what caused that?' I thought, as I walked round the corner onto the straight bit of road that leads to the house. 'Oh, there seems to be some debris in Ronald's field, it must have been windier down this end.' Yes, much windier. So much windier that my hay barn roof had been ripped off, bounced off the power line by the house and been catapulted into Ronald's field which luckily didn't have any sheep in it, because it wasn't just the corrugated iron that came off, it was all the struts and rafters as well, and the bounce off the cable was so hard that it snapped not only that one but three others as well, knocking out power to the entire north end of the village.

Oops :o:o:o:o:o:o:o

So I rang Mr Minx's mobile and left a message asking him if he could bring the truck home, as I was probably going to need it, and set to emptying the stalled byre of all the scrap wood stored in it. Mr Minx turned up about 45 minutes later and we spent the next 5 hours (some of it in a blizzard) shifting the wood out, moving 160 bales of hay in and then putting the wood into the roofless hay barn so it didn't get scattered all over the village if/when the wind picked up again.

The icing on the cake is that it's not covered by the insurance - storm and flood damage aren't covered for unoccupied houses, just fire, lightning, earthquake, explosion and aircraft. Still, it could be worse - no-one got hurt and we've saved all the hay, which would have been a nightmare to replace as it's in pretty short supply up here. It won't cost a fortune to put a new corrugated roof on it, but Mr Minx is now muttering along the lines of since the roof's off anyway, he might just take down and rebuild the front wall, which is bowing outwards slightly. We'll see - I'll need somewhere to store the summer hay this year and I'm not sure my Very Big Shed that I'm planning for the other croft will be built by then.

cazmanian_minx

A quick fly-by to report that my non-renovations debt is now under £1,000 :j:j:j:D:D:D:j:j:j I've got another £30 to pay off this month, which will take it to £820, and my usual monthly payments are £540, which only leaves £280...I'm wondering if I work like a demon for the next six weeks whether I can have it paid off by the end of February?

For those that read it, I finally have a new blog post up with lots of pictures

Verbatim

Ooh lovely new blog post off to read directly.
Well done on saving all the hay. I hope power got restored quickly to the village!?

Verbatim

Well I've just had a lovely long catch up as despite frequent checks over Christmas and since I had been unable to see any of the posts after "Sensible heads on"! Not sure why but it was great to have a bumper feast today.

JustAboutThere

Verbatim wrote: »

Well I've just had a lovely long catch up as despite frequent checks over Christmas and since I had been unable to see any of the posts after "Sensible heads on"! Not sure why but it was great to have a bumper feast today.

I've also had a good catch up on the blog - back to "Working holiday". I'd lost many of my saved links when my PC was swapped out, so got out of the habit of clicking on it once I'd checked through MSE.

Looks like the building is coming along a treat.

One day, if I ever do refresher driving lessons, I'd love a holiday up in the Highlands + over to the likes of Lewis where the ancestors on one side of the family came from. Trouble is, that's the sort of thing I remember was on my "wouldn't it be nice" list just as we go into winter

cazmanian_minx

Verbatim wrote: »

Ooh lovely new blog post off to read directly.
Well done on saving all the hay. I hope power got restored quickly to the village!?

Er, they were off from 2am until about 3pm. I've had to do a lot of apologising, but everybody's been very nice about it

Up early and getting some typing done while Mr Minx has a lie-in I think I've done about 9 hours for Mr RPC over the past two days, plus a 70-minute file for NEL and a 30-minute file for the market research people and I'm now clattering through another hour and a half or so for them over the weekend with another hour and a half to come next week plus another file from NEL.

Also had a nice little windfall yesterday morning when five free slot machine spins I'd won hit a big bonus round and I ended up £10.65 better off.

Pippilongstocking

Popping in to say thank you for the cheese and yikes re the cable!

Well done on all that extra work.



Fingers crossed you can get it all paid by Feb

cazmanian_minx

Thanks, Pippi Just done my morning yoga, now back to the typing!

(Since I don't drink I can't do dry January, so I'm doing sugar-free + yoga January instead and haven't missed a day of either yet! Given that yoga normally makes me want to hurl things at the laptop and there's an unopened jar of Nutella in the cupboard along with the remains of a tin of shortbread, I think I'm doing pretty well )