A rough week (by alaric)
Bah!
I've had a horrible past week.
Ok, it started on Wednesday. Since there is no Orange mobile coverage where I now live, I've been meaning for some time to get to a Vodafone shop to have my mobile number ported over to them - as they have coverage here. You can't do number ports when ordering online, and when I tried to do it over the phone they said there was some problem so I had to go to a shop.
Anyway, on Wednesday I arrived early in London in order to do this. It turned out (eventually) that the problem was down to the fact that when I was developing applications for the BlackBerry I had one via Vodafone, so I was an existing customer in their database, yet I was trying to set up a new account (after all, the BlackBerry had been a business expense while my mobile is mainly a personal one). Anyway, we finally got that sorted, but then I was over half an hour late for an hour-long appointment due to the delays while the poor guy in the shop played call centre ping-pong between various Vodafone departments. It didn't help that the credit department said it was fine for me to have the new contract, but didn't update the database, so when he went to the number porting department, the attempt to set the contract up died at the last moment, forcing him to go back to the beginning and argue with the credit department, since the person he called there the second time said it wasn't OK.
So I set off for the tail end of my appointment, only to end up stuck on the London Underground. So I missed the wh0le thing.
I was quite annoyed at this point, so rather than heading off straight to my NEXT appointment, I just sat on the Circle line going the wrong way round to let myself unwind a bit.
Then I carried a server home on the trains.
Then I got home, to find out that there was a disagreement between my aunt and the farmer who owns the field her spring water comes from about the digging of holes to try and fix the spring. Myself and a friend had been digging up the pipework to try and find where the problem was, but I ended up spending much of Thursday single-handedly filling them in again in a hurry, since it appears the permission to dig was based on a complex misunderstanding...
Also, I ordered a bunch of hardware for a client project I'm working on, and it's still not arrived. Getting the hardware is now on the project's critical path.
Then Thursday evening we had to leave for London, rather than Friday evening as I'd originally thought, since it turns out the event we were visiting was on Friday evening, not Saturday evening. So the driving lesson on Friday had to be rapidly postponed, and we had to make our way across the country, piled up with luggage and a baby. A six and a half hour journey from door to door. We slept over at Sarah's parent's place, and they looked after Jean for the next two days.
Then Friday was spent travelling and getting ready for the masked ball, which was in Oxford. That was fun, at least.
Saturday, we travelled back to London to meet up with Sarah's friends for her official birthday event, which was also fun. Then we returned to Sarah's parent's house, where we were gladly reunited with Jean and spent the night.
Then on Sunday we had to rush through London and the trains to get home in time for the last bus from the train station to near our home, during which I somehow managed to hurt my back. There's a really achey bit just between my right shoulder blade and my spine; I now can't lift anything with my right arm, and moving around hurts like hell. I'm going to book an appointment with the doctor right after I've stopped moaning.
And when I got back home, I had a letter from the bank saying that my cheque to the driving instructor had bounced - so much for our careful budgeting. This in turn throws our budget for the next month out, and we're still somewhat scraping by; money is starting to flow in again, but there's a big heap of things it immediately needs spending on, like overdue bills and overdrafts.
And this morning, still no hardware arrived. I'm going to phone the supplier up and complain.
Right now, I could really do with a break 🙁 When I get this project finished, I'll try and do as little work as I can... perhaps tidy the house, since I've not had time to help Sarah with it and she has her own back and hip problems, so is mainly occupied with looking after Jean while I work, so the place is a tip. Which demoralises me somewhat. And I really hope my back heals fast, since it now means that NEITHER of us can get things from high shelves or carry heavy stuff.
Mon 30th Jan 2006 11:23 am 
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By Charlee, Mon 30th Jan 2006 @ 5:23 pm
({)