todayiamadaisy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
todayiamadaisy) wrote2018-01-28 07:46 pm
todayiamadaisy) wrote2018-01-28 07:46 pm
Entry tags:
Christmas Discount, Give Your Love One Something Special This Year book evil
I planned to keep going with posting every second day as in December, but somehow here we are four weeks later. I can't even add "... and I have so much to tell you!", because that would be untrue. But here's a list of the uneventful events that happened in January.
1. Two sisters called Prue and Sue came to measure our front (bedroom) windows. We are getting rid of the sad curtains that have been there for years and are replacing them with plantation shutters in white.
2. The shutters are due to arrive by the end of February, and before then we have to paint the window frames. So that will be happening in the next little while.
3. I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to sort out our NBN connection. The NBN is Australia's National Broadband Network, which it is compulsory to connect to by September (in the City by the Sea; dates vary elsewhere).
4. The girl organising it went through a list of questions: Did we have a security system? A fax machine? A Medic Alert system? No to all of those things. Oh good, she said, because they all need special consideration. Yours will be straightforward. She organised to send us our new modem and set the connection date for last Wednesday. Once connected, I could plug the modem in and we would be living in THE FUTURE.
5. The modem arrived last Monday and I read through through the instructions. It had the same questions as the girl: Security system? Fax machine? Medic Alert? But wait, what's this last one? Do we have a wall phone? Why, yes, we do. As a matter of fact, our old landline was the very one pictured in the instruction book (although that photo is of the desktop version). And that was bad. That was a bad thing.
6. I had to ring a special helpline. I explained the problem to the man. He said, no, all you need to do, once the NBN has been connected, is to unplug the phone and plug it into the modem. I can't do that, I explained, because it's stuck on the wall. He asked if I could take it off the wall. Well, yes, technically, only then it's a phone that doesn't work because it's not plugged in. By this stage, we were both speaking slowly, as if to an idiot.
7. He said once I've unplugged it from the wall, I can plug it into the modem and it will work again. I said no I couldn't, because the cord is only two centimetres long, on account of being made to fit behind the phone on the wall. That's why the instruction manual says to call this number. Oh. He put me on hold while he found out what to do.
8. Ten minutes later, he came back and told me what I had to do: buy a new phone and get an electrician to install a new phone point. To help with that, he put our NBN connection date back a month.
9. So I had to go out and buy a new phone. It's a nice phone. Two phones, actually, because it has two handsets. And I found that I could take the old phone off the wall and plug the new one in that same point, because it could sit on the little shelf under the old phone that we used to keep a notepad on for messages. So I didn't need to call an electrician and we are all ready to be connected to THE FUTURE on 25 February.
10. My driver's licence expired, so I had to go and get a new photo. The lady there was very particular that because my licence doesn't specifically require glasses as a condition, I had to be photographed bare faced. Bare faced! I've worn glasses since I was nine. I can't see anything without them. They're a condition for living, not driving. I haven't had a glasses-free photograph taken for decades. And you're not allowed to see the photo when they take it, so I am on tenterhooks waiting for my new licence in the mail. What will I look like? I've been lucky that all my previous licence photos (including glasses) have been acceptable, but goodness knows what my face looks like naked.
11. This weekend is the long weekend that ends the summer holiday. They were packing up the summer carnival at the beach this morning when I was down there for my walk. (Early, because it is hot. As in, no birds are singing. That hot.)
12. For me, the long weekend has involved an unusual amount of being social, which is exhausting. Thursday, we had dinner with our neighbours, whom we don't see nearly as often now we have a fence between us. I'm particularly sad that little dog Chester can't come to say hello any more, so I made sure to make a big fuss of him.
13. Friday, my mother's best friend, Colleen, and her family and some of their friends came to town in their caravans for the long weekend and had a barbecue. I didn't really enjoy that. I'm not a fan of large gatherings, particularly with people I don't really know. We were going to be there at six, then Colleen said the others said to come at five, and then they didn't actually eat until eight. Honestly, if I go somewhere to do a thing, I want to do the thing, not mill about for three hours first. I'm a delight at parties, I really am.
14. The reason we felt sort of obliged to go to the Friday barbecue was because of Saturday, when all the women in the group were going to high tea in Port Fairy, and Colleen invited us along too. I enjoyed that much more. We started with a glass of champagne (or sparkling apple juice for joykills like me), then received a three-tiered stand for two. The bottom tier had the savouries: one each of a chicken and grape mini-slider, tiny ham and cheese sandwich, an egg and cucumber club sandwich, a teeny tiny sausage roll, and a bite-size salmon quiche (my second favourite thing of the day). The middle tier had the cakes: a bite-size passionfruit curd tart (my favourite thing of the day), a shot glass of honey mousse, a tiny timbale of carrot cake (my third favourite thing), a tiny chocolate mud cake, and a thumbnail-size pink macaron. Top tier: a berry scone with jam and cream, and a pink-striped meringue. It was finished off with an individual pot of tea (I had orange pekoe, as the Russian caravan I originally wanted was out of stock). And then I went home and lay on the sofa to recover.
15. And that was January.
1. Two sisters called Prue and Sue came to measure our front (bedroom) windows. We are getting rid of the sad curtains that have been there for years and are replacing them with plantation shutters in white.
2. The shutters are due to arrive by the end of February, and before then we have to paint the window frames. So that will be happening in the next little while.
3. I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to sort out our NBN connection. The NBN is Australia's National Broadband Network, which it is compulsory to connect to by September (in the City by the Sea; dates vary elsewhere).
4. The girl organising it went through a list of questions: Did we have a security system? A fax machine? A Medic Alert system? No to all of those things. Oh good, she said, because they all need special consideration. Yours will be straightforward. She organised to send us our new modem and set the connection date for last Wednesday. Once connected, I could plug the modem in and we would be living in THE FUTURE.
5. The modem arrived last Monday and I read through through the instructions. It had the same questions as the girl: Security system? Fax machine? Medic Alert? But wait, what's this last one? Do we have a wall phone? Why, yes, we do. As a matter of fact, our old landline was the very one pictured in the instruction book (although that photo is of the desktop version). And that was bad. That was a bad thing.
6. I had to ring a special helpline. I explained the problem to the man. He said, no, all you need to do, once the NBN has been connected, is to unplug the phone and plug it into the modem. I can't do that, I explained, because it's stuck on the wall. He asked if I could take it off the wall. Well, yes, technically, only then it's a phone that doesn't work because it's not plugged in. By this stage, we were both speaking slowly, as if to an idiot.
7. He said once I've unplugged it from the wall, I can plug it into the modem and it will work again. I said no I couldn't, because the cord is only two centimetres long, on account of being made to fit behind the phone on the wall. That's why the instruction manual says to call this number. Oh. He put me on hold while he found out what to do.
8. Ten minutes later, he came back and told me what I had to do: buy a new phone and get an electrician to install a new phone point. To help with that, he put our NBN connection date back a month.
9. So I had to go out and buy a new phone. It's a nice phone. Two phones, actually, because it has two handsets. And I found that I could take the old phone off the wall and plug the new one in that same point, because it could sit on the little shelf under the old phone that we used to keep a notepad on for messages. So I didn't need to call an electrician and we are all ready to be connected to THE FUTURE on 25 February.
10. My driver's licence expired, so I had to go and get a new photo. The lady there was very particular that because my licence doesn't specifically require glasses as a condition, I had to be photographed bare faced. Bare faced! I've worn glasses since I was nine. I can't see anything without them. They're a condition for living, not driving. I haven't had a glasses-free photograph taken for decades. And you're not allowed to see the photo when they take it, so I am on tenterhooks waiting for my new licence in the mail. What will I look like? I've been lucky that all my previous licence photos (including glasses) have been acceptable, but goodness knows what my face looks like naked.
11. This weekend is the long weekend that ends the summer holiday. They were packing up the summer carnival at the beach this morning when I was down there for my walk. (Early, because it is hot. As in, no birds are singing. That hot.)
12. For me, the long weekend has involved an unusual amount of being social, which is exhausting. Thursday, we had dinner with our neighbours, whom we don't see nearly as often now we have a fence between us. I'm particularly sad that little dog Chester can't come to say hello any more, so I made sure to make a big fuss of him.
13. Friday, my mother's best friend, Colleen, and her family and some of their friends came to town in their caravans for the long weekend and had a barbecue. I didn't really enjoy that. I'm not a fan of large gatherings, particularly with people I don't really know. We were going to be there at six, then Colleen said the others said to come at five, and then they didn't actually eat until eight. Honestly, if I go somewhere to do a thing, I want to do the thing, not mill about for three hours first. I'm a delight at parties, I really am.
14. The reason we felt sort of obliged to go to the Friday barbecue was because of Saturday, when all the women in the group were going to high tea in Port Fairy, and Colleen invited us along too. I enjoyed that much more. We started with a glass of champagne (or sparkling apple juice for joykills like me), then received a three-tiered stand for two. The bottom tier had the savouries: one each of a chicken and grape mini-slider, tiny ham and cheese sandwich, an egg and cucumber club sandwich, a teeny tiny sausage roll, and a bite-size salmon quiche (my second favourite thing of the day). The middle tier had the cakes: a bite-size passionfruit curd tart (my favourite thing of the day), a shot glass of honey mousse, a tiny timbale of carrot cake (my third favourite thing), a tiny chocolate mud cake, and a thumbnail-size pink macaron. Top tier: a berry scone with jam and cream, and a pink-striped meringue. It was finished off with an individual pot of tea (I had orange pekoe, as the Russian caravan I originally wanted was out of stock). And then I went home and lay on the sofa to recover.
15. And that was January.