Arrrrggggh!

After work this evening I tried for two hours to connect the new router I bought some time ago to my laptop and get onto the internet, but I still had no luck. In the end I called AOL, my Internet Service Provider, and they talked me though various things to try and get it to work, again without any success. They then booked me a call in the morning for someone else to try and help and to test the line.

It's extremely frustrating! We don't use the internet constantly but it's such a mine of information that we miss being able to check the weather instantly or just catch up with what's going on in the world wide web!

Brrrr!

This evening I had a girly night out to a Chinese restaurant in Northampton with Sue and Lynda. I volunteered to drive Sue and we met Lynda at the Oriental Paradise as she lives nearby. It was a freezing cold night with the temperature dropping rapidly as we drove and the forecast was for it to get down to about minus 8 or 9 during the night.

We had a great meal and made pigs of ourselves as they do an "all you can eat" menu! It was great to have a good chat and the food was very good indeed, much better than the Mandarin Buffet!

Driving home, very near to the Cemetery just outside Walgrave, the temperature hit -8, the coldest I've ever seen or been aware of in the UK!

It makes my blood boil!

I went with Keith to Kettering General hospital this afternoon, to see the surgeon about his hip as he has been in agony with it lately. His appointment was at 3.45pm and when we checked in the Receptionist told us they were running 40-50 minutes late. So we joined the other mass of people waiting and resigned ourselves to being there for quite a while.

However, when we were still waiting at 5.30pm I really did begin to see red. I find it unbelievable that we can be treated like this, just because it's the NHS. Keith was the last patient to be seen and we eventually emerged at 5.45pm, two hours after he should have gone in. I'm not saying we should have been seen dead on our appointed time, but a two hour wait is unacceptable. To make matters worse, he was only in with the surgeon for five minutes, to be told he'd be put on the list! Grrrr!

I spent the rest of the evening trying in vain to sort out our internet access, with no luck whatsoever. I'm definitely going to have to get a man in!

Deep and crisp and even!

Well, we awoke to a very cold day with about 3 inches of snow covering everything. Luckily the washing machine decided to behave and no damage has been done, thank goodness! However, the internet is still a problem with access coming and going which is a pain. The children are hoping that Monday will be a “Snow Day” at school but there’s no way of finding out over the internet!

I gave the downstairs of our house a really good clean this morning, including the cutlery drawers in the kitchen which were very bad…Ooops! It felt great afterwards, though, knowing everything was so clean.

In the afternoon Sophie and I walked up to mum’s house as dad needed help with his computer too. I was able to sort him out and just wish I could sort myself out! The walk up was lovely but it was very misty and I have a feeling that more of the white stuff is forecast for tomorrow, which should please the children!

We stayed for a cup of tea and then slowly walked home through the snowy village. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t get any snow this winter and I do love seeing the countryside transformed. It makes me feel like we’re having a proper winter!

It's snowing!

Our internet is playing up at home and we’ve had problems with it all day. I dropped Sophie off at work at 12pm and then spent the afternoon trying to install a new router that I bought ages ago, the last time the old modem played up. I didn’t have any luck so I think I may have to get someone in to help. The old router is back on and access is sporadic to say the least. Talk about frustrating!

At 4pm I went back to get Sophie and met mum and dad who had come in to help spread some salt over the car park. The weather forecast is for heavy snow tonight and as we were putting the salt down the first few flakes started to appear. Again, we were heaving and the car park was full so it was a bit difficult to put the stuff down but we managed to get as much of the car park covered as possible and I just hope that it keeps off the worst of it. Sophie worked until 5pm and then I followed mum and dad home in the snowy gloom, the flakes coming down thick and fast!

In the evening I had the bright idea of washing our deep purple throw as the cats had been sitting on for a few weeks and it needed a wash. I put it in the washing machine on its own (thank goodness) but after dinner when I went to check on it, I was horrified to see that the error light was on and there was a mass of fluff against the window of the door. Keith and I pulled the filter out and it was FULL of purple fibres…

We managed to get the door open and I pulled the throw out, completely sodden and almost in pieces. It had disintegrated inside the machine, almost like someone had shredded it with a razor! We cleaned it all up and then put the machine onto a wash cycle with nothing in it to try and dislodge some of the mass of fluff, but after a few minutes it stopped again.

As the kitchen had been awash with water and fluff we decided to leave it until the morning and just hope that we hadn’t completely broken it! I can’t be without a washing machine!

The snow continued to fall all evening and was still coming down thick and fast when I went to bed after 11pm. It looks like I’m going to get my snow day, just 24 hours earlier than I wanted though!

The calm before the storm.

It’s been another hectic day at work and we were very busy indeed. We are having over 100 children to a Sleepover tonight so we had three trolleys when we went to Booker. It was a good job they were giving out free bacon rolls to sustain us!

When we got back to work we had to muck in and help by clearing tables, serving and manning the Reception desk. We certainly are very popular at the moment and I can only think it’s a combination of some steady advertising and our new cladding which has definitely improved the outside appearance of the building.

I left at 4pm, though, and went with Sophie to have my hair cut, something that was long overdue!

Kids!

Keith came into work with me today as mum and dad were having the day off but when we went to the bank we met them as they were enjoying a cup of coffee.  They were heading off to Milton Keynes to do some shopping and to take Mikey’s PS3 game back.

Later, mum called me and said that the game he’d asked for was completely unsuitable as when the sales assistant had asked how old he was, he’d recommended she didn’t buy it. This made me think about how many of the other games he has which might be unsuitable, despite all his friends having them, and therefore putting the pressure on him to have the same games. Honestly, it’s a minefield being a parent these days! There was none of this when I was younger!

Sophie was working for us again after school so I went to pick her and Mikey up but my son has a very forgetful memory and forgot all about me taking him back to the office. In the end we had to go and find him and he received a bit of a tongue lashing from me! This all comes after I had one of the teachers call me the day before to say that he’d missed cookery three times as he hadn’t brought the ingredients into school. To say I was embarrassed was an under-statement!

Kids!