The road less travelled...

It has been an unbelievably hectic (not busy!) seven days and I'm so glad it's over! The following badish things have happened:

• The fridge died (well, this happened on Thursday last week) so we had to go and buy a new one, but it wasn't delivered until 4.30pm Friday night. It started to teem with rain as it was brought up the driveway, at which point it was also discovered that it was too big to fit through the doorway. Front door and doors of fridge are removed. Dad leaves for the football (St. Kilda in the preliminaries). Fridge is manhandled into the house, around piles of meant-to-be-frozen-but-were-actually-half-thawed foods. Oh, and a wall had to come down to get the fridge in (they don't lift fridges over counters, as they did to get the original one in). Fridge gets filled. Dad comes home. St. Kilda has lost. Cue general bad-moodiness.


• The dog goes down to the paper with Dad on Friday morning and comes back shivering and very cuddly because she's hurt her paw. Plays 'martyr dog' for the rest of the day, looking mournful.


• Internet suddenly stops working at 8am on Friday morning (or you would have heard ALL about this before then, trust me!) so I spend four hours on the phone to Telstra (it really CAN'T be worse when it's privatised!) and a call to Invizage computer repairers until they finally admit that there is a data problem in Victoria and it's not my fault. I'd spent four hours telling them exactly that.


• Dad's tax program hasn't been working for a while, but he finally has a fit about it on Friday and it has to be fixed. The company that makes his software outsources its call-centres to India or somewhere and, with his bad hearing, he can't understand a word they say. Hence, I have to be the middle person (there's also the fact that he knows NOTHING about computers). Needless to say, the fridge had not helped matters.


• It's Dad's 60th birthday last Tuesday. This is NOT a bad thing, but I had to buy him presents on Monday, as well as order a cake to take up to the Rotary meeting we were going to on Tuesday, which had a football theme (remember I said St. Kilda lost...). He and I went out for dinner (to the Hilton, if you don't mind) on Monday night.


• I forgot about an appointment with my podiatrist on Friday because of the fridge (this was to make up for one I'd forgotten about on Monday of last week) and so I had to grovel and pay for an appointment I never had (they are a small business, so it was the least I could do).


• I had to get forms filled out so the Commonwealth Games people can check my police record before I work at the rugby, and for that they needed a 100 point check, so I had to get photocopies of my passport and licence signed by the appropriate people.


• My second cousin invited me and my Dad out for lunch yesterday (again, not a bad thing, but time I really didn't have).


• I was desperately trying to get the most recent chapter of my thesis written for Wednesday. I have just finished it and handed it in. It's Friday.


• I've been getting between 6 and 7 hours of sleep per night. I need eight. Brain not really functioning as a result.

To fix these problems, I have:

• Cleared out the fridge things and stacked the new fridge, as well as helping the (rather good-looking) delivery boys put the front door back on the house.


• Cuddled and generally snookied the dog. Oh, I did give her a bath on Wednesday. We were not friends for the rest of the day. She sulked and did 'matyr dog' again.


• We didn't have to pay Invizage for their help because I already knew what the problem was and told them so. An excellent policy.


• After almost the entire week on the phone (it feels like) I have finally made the Tax Office so sick of me that they have fixed the problem. Dad can no longer moan about losing clients. Thank God.


• Dad enjoyed his birthday and we still have remnants of cake left. I may indulge. Perhaps with ice cream. Ice cream is good.


• I have made a new appointment with the podiatrist for Monday. *must NOT forget*


• I have packed up the forms and they are to be posted this afternoon.


• I did have a lovely time at lunch yesterday with my OOAO second-cousin Mary-Lou. We discussed impossible ideas for future CS stories. UFOs, anyone?

This weekend, I am going to do.

• Nothing.

Okay, not strictly true. I could never do nothing. However, I have put all my thesis things aside until Monday morning. Instead, for the next two-and-a-half days, I shall:

• Finish chapter one of Mullers and, with luck, get deep into chapter two.


• Make chicken and vegetable soup.


• Change the sheets on my bed.


• Work on my Pretender/Survivor cross-over.


• Visit my grandmother. (I really don't want to do this one. It's something I 'should' do, not something I want to do.)


• Sleeeeeeep!

Sound good? I think so!