Sod Murphy and his bl**dy Law!! ;)

After being so incredibly positive yesterday to Mum, saying we were going to have a marathon packing effort today because it was my last early shift and we could stay up later packing as I could sleep in, my plans were of course foiled.  I should’ve known Murphy and his sodding Law would come and interfere with our perfect plans!!

The last couple of days my car has been playing up … yet again … I do have to admit that I even used the dreaded “F” word in front of Mum tonight in my sheer frustration with it – but she was feeling magnanimous and didn’t offer to wash my mouth out with soap for a change LOL.  Anyway, those of you who’ve been reading my drivel for a while now may remember I had some ‘electrical’ problems before Christmas, when I had to buy a new battery, continued to have problems, and had a ‘supposed’ auto electrician look at my car, who couldn’t find anything wrong.  Since then I’ve been leaving my car alarm off overnight, so just the disabler was operating, and my battery has been OK since then and remaining charged up.  Well, a couple of days ago it started playing up again by making ‘chirping’ noises from the alarm when switching the ignition off …

Today it finally fell into a heap when I got home, and the central locking died, with a really sad noise emitting from the alarm.  Seeing as my car is pretty critical this week, I had no choice but to call up a mobile auto electrician who came out to look at it within the hour (bless him!) … it turns out I was right the entire time, and the problem was that the alarm was ‘taking over’ my electrical system – so we agreed to just disable the entire thing.  Of course, today Melbourne decided to break the huge drought we’ve been having, and we got stuck in such a deluge of rain that my trousers with literally squelching wet – because of the laneway access still closed, we couldn’t put the car under shelter to be fixed … in the end we opted to drive down to St Kilda to the Coles carpark, which is undercover, and the mechanic spent an hour ripping disassembling the wiring of my car alarm – he also fixed another wiring problem with the dashboard light not operating as well.  Anyway, $200 later (didn’t really need that this week, but c’est la vie – at least there are no other big bills yet to come this payday), and my car is behaving perfectly for a change.  I’m not even going to guess how long it will stay that way, but for now I’m going to enjoy that bit of bliss 😉

I do have to say, though, that if you haven’t heard it before, I soooooooo HATE my car!!  Even Mum suggested while I’m off housesitting that I should save up and get a new one … which is something I’ve been considering myself over the last couple of days!

Anyway, the day wasn’t entirely all bad … we got evacuated from our work building today while we had the Police, fire trucks and an ambulance in active attendance – it turned out to be an air conditioning motor burning out and polluting the entire building with fumes, so we had 1 1/2 hours off work … and because it was so cold out there today (we’ve had gale force winds across parts of Victoria) they even let us head off to the shops for a coffee to warm up … we pushed the boundaries and sat and had a cooked breakfast (it was 9am by this time, and time for my lunchtime anyway, so it was perfect for me!).

After we’d eaten, I managed to quickly duck across the road to clear the PO Box before heading back to work, and I had a wonderful parcel of goodies waiting for me (actually there were a couple that arrived today, but I still have two thank you emails to send yet, so I’ll post those tomorrow and keep you in suspense LOL).

I have to share with you today a most wonderful bag that KarenV stitched for me – isn’t this the most gorgeous fabric ever?!!  I just ADORE it!!  As soon as I opened the envelope, it put a huge grin on my face 😀  I told Mum I’m going to take it with me housesitting to add some cheer to my day every day – it’s just lovely.  Thanks so much Karen for a gorgeous gift – it’s absolutely perfect for me! 😀

To finish today’s post/drivel I’ll end with what will be my final progress piccie of Bordeaux for a wee while – I’ve managed to put a few grapes into it, and as you can I’ve finally decided to just stitch the grapes in each ‘gap’ rather than the date.  I think, instead, I may add a very small backstitched initials and year in the bottom left and right corners of the sampler at the end.  The next time I get access to posting piccies it’s likely this will be finished (at least I hope so!) 🙂

And now it’s time to hit the hay for the night.  There’ll be precious little packing happening tomorrow thanks to my shifts, and only two nights left … but I’m trying not to think about it 😉  In the meantime I’m going to enjoy a good night’s sleep, as I’ve had two real shockers the last two nights, and enjoy the last few days of our week 🙂  It will be nice to cuddle under the duvet tonight, as our lounge room is back to being like the Arctic Circle (I have my work clothes on still, complete with dressing gown over the top, it’s so cold!).  Mum and I are counting down the sleeps to the official handing back of the keys … poor Mum was quite scared in the flat today, as the wind was quite strong and making the walls creak and groan more than normal … I have to say, too, the cracks are definitely worse in here now as well, if that was possible!  Oh well, only 6 more sleeps … 😉