Thank goodness! The painters have finished – for now, anyway – and have departed, though they’ll be back again after Clarke’s finished my bathroom. He’ll be here sometime this weekend for us to discuss what’s to be done, and when, and how (I presume!) But for now, our house is ours alone, for a change! 🙂 Julian rang Harvey Norman about the delivery of the credenza that matches our glass-topped table-desks, and ended up cancelling the order completely! Why? Well, because it was supposed to have been delivered along with the three glass-topped table-desks, but we were told that there’d been “a slight hold up in their delivery, but that it would be able to be delivered by the end of August”. It’s now September, and we haven’t heard a word from them – no phone call, no apologies, nothing. So when Julian rang them this morning and was told that there was “a slight hold up in their delivery, but that it would be able to be delivered by late to mid November”, he told them, politely, what they could do with their order and that we’d be coming in for a refund of the deposit we’d paid; that we didn’t appreciate not being kept up to date on these delivery “hold ups”, and that the credenza had been ordered in July, promised for the 21st of August, and then for the end of August, and now, not until late to mid November?! No one had bothered to tell us any of this, and if we hadn’t rung today to see what was happening with the credenza that we’d planned half the damn room around, we would probably never have been told at all! Not good enough, Harvey Norman, and no piece of furniture is worth waiting three and a half months for! We are justifiably annoyed, to say the least. So we’ll fall back on “Plan B”, which we formulated this morning after Julian told me about the credenza. We’re going back to Ikea on Friday, after I’ve finished at the hairdresser. I was very impressed with the range and quality of their furniture when we went there to look for bookcases and cupboards, and I had seen, but hadn’t paid much attention to (why would I, when I thought we already had one that was about to be delivered!) some rather nice sideboards/credenzas… so we’ll go back and have another look at them. Julian wants to have a closer look at how the cupboards we bought were constructed, anyway, so off we’ll go to the Ikea at Springvale again. Our mirror should be delivered tomorrow, but I don’t know if Julian has heard back from the delivery people or not… (Julian says “not” – his call went straight through to voice-mail, so we’re stall waiting to hear back from the guy who we think only works on Thursdays!)

Poor little Flipper has been so put out by the strange men who put sheets all over the floor and move all the furniture around that sometime in the wee small hours of the morning Julian was awakened to the “glurk, glurk” sounds of a cat about to throw up. He was able to mop it up, but the carpet now has a “ground-up kibble” coloured patch just inside the door into the Den I think (hope!) it will sponge out, but I’m starting to get that “sinking feeling” you get when you know you’re going to have to do something nastily expensive, like… change the carpets… as there are quite a few “strange marks” dotted around some of the carpeted areas (the previous owners had a little dog – hence the scrape marks on some of the window sills!) *sigh* After all the bathroom renovations have been completed, and any post-renovations painting done, I think we’ll have the carpets steam-cleaned, and see what comes out in the wash steam, before making any decisions!

Last night Julian got onto Vic Roads online and formally changed the address on his driver’s licence. He was going to do mine too, but for some unknown reason it wouldn’t accept my details, so this morning we had to ring up and do it over the phone, which did work. I’m still not sure what was wrong with the details they had in their data base for me, but anyway, ’tis done now! I shall receive a small sticker with my new address that I have to put on the back of my licence. Then I tried to renew our Ambulance subscription, which I thought I’d do online. Looking back on this morning from the distance of half a day, what happened when I did attempt to renew our subscription online was really quite hilarious, though I was absolutely furious at the time (I toned my language down because the painters were here, otherwise it might have been quite… colourful…) I had all the details I needed, including our membership number – but I couldn’t remember my password! So I requested to have my password re-set, and they were supposed to send me an email… which never arrived. In the end, Julian suggested that I use my GMail account, but I didn’t have a GMail account under my real name, did I – oh, I had the tinselfluff one, and the satai one, but none under my real name. Oh well, I’d just create one, wouldn’t I! It wouldn’t let me! I couldn’t believe that just about every possible permutation of my real name was already in use! So I tried adding “Winter” to it – after all, it’ll be added officially in the very near future anyway! Nope, all permutations with that added were already gone, too! In the end (about half an hour later!) I managed to get a name that it would let me have… right! “Enter password” came next, so I did… then “Verify password”… Every time I re-entered my new password and went on to the next part of the form, the form instantly re-wrote my password verification to something completely different, so of course I kept getting “password mismatch” error messages. I was almost screaming by this stage! (well, I was talking rather loudly, anyway! I was livid!) I have no idea how, but eventually I did manage to create that ruddy GMail account, all so that I could re-set my stupid Ambulance Victoria password! Julian finally managed to persuade me to actually ring them, which I did, and by just sitting there and not pressing any numbers on the phone, I eventually got a real live person! And after a lot of kafuffling around, we finally got to the bottom of all the trouble! They, Ambulance Victoria, and they admitted as such, had transcribed my email address incorrectly! “@digitaltapestries.com” had been entered as “@diaitaltapestries.com”! So we managed to get that cleared up and corrected, but wait! There’s more! I’d been going through all this angst in order to renew our Ambulance subscription… only… I didn’t have to renew it! Somehow or other, the last time we renewed the subscription, Julian and I must have both paid it – we’re still covered until 21st June 2017! (Winter shakes her head in wry amusement) Oh, this morning was a real doozy, believe me! And then I spent until mid-afternoon sitting in the living room reading my kindle, because the painters were in here! *sigh*

Weigh-in this morning. Only one more day left of those ghastly pills… however, I did go down another point, from 76.3kg to 76.2kg. Tomorrow, being the last day of those unspeakable pills, I’ll probably go back up again, but we’ll see… As I told you, I’m doing ten minutes on the treadmill, three times a day, but instead of walking at 1.2kmph, I’ve upped it again to 1.4kmph – it doesn’t go up in ones, it goes up in twos – which feels a little more like I’m exercising, but not that much more. I think I could probably push it up one more notch, but I’ll see how I go tomorrow. Of course, going faster means that I’m taking more actual steps, which can’t be doing me any harm, either (even if it is terribly boring!) 😉

Well, tomorrow… hopefully, tomorrow I’ll be able to get a bit of Rifting in, instead of spending the morning sending my blood pressure through the roof, trying to sort out other people’s messes! And if I’m really lucky, I might even get a bit of graphic-ing in as well! Wouldn’t that be nice! 🙂 We have our bedroom back, and the Den looks really good with a nice, clear, blank wall upon which to hang pictures! The Office is looking cosy and business-like, the trampoline seems to be earning its keep, Flipper seems to have truly settled into her new home, the mirror will hopefully be delivered tomorrow, and Clarke will be coming over this weekend to discuss my new bathroom! 🙂 And that, gentle readers, is once again about “it” from me tonight! Do drop back again tomorrow night to see if my weight did go up, as I expect it will, or down, which would be nice, though I’m not holding my breath, or if those horrible pills had a “last hurrah” and made me stay the same! And of course I’ll fill you all in on the rest of the days doings – whether the mirror arrived, if Flipper’s little “th’rup” (read: “throw-up”) stained the carpet or not (hopefully not! I don’t think I could bear the stress of having to have the carpets changed! Maybe we could put a small rug over the patch, if it is permanently stained…) Anyway, as you can see, there’ll be quite a lot of things to fill you all in on, so don’t be shy! 😉 In the meantime, please at least try to bee good, remember the best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today, don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves, but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂