And just to add insult to injury...

....OH's car blew up yesterday morning. I'm hoping that's the end of our run of bad luck.

Roll on tomorrow

Today has most certainly been one of the crappiest for a long time. OK, maybe not in the grand scheme of things but as my personal crappy days go, this one is right up there.

Firstly, we have been having problems with our central heating boiler for a few months. Actually, we've been having problems with it since it was installed 3 years ago but this latest problem has been going on for a few months. The heating bit of it only works when it chooses. It might work fine for weeks then we'll go a few weeks with it not, usually on the coldest nights. Our regular plumber had thrown in the towel so our landlord decided to call in the manufacturer's engineer. Appointment (and I use that term loosely) was made for this morning between 8am and noon. As luck would have it, I'd already booked the day off to finish my Christmas shopping. No problem, I'd just rearrange my day so that I could do all the things I'd planned to do at home in the afternoon in the morning, and go shopping in the afternoon.

The engineer duly called me at 10am and said he'd be there between 11 and 12. OK, I'd hoped for earlier but at least he'd been kind enough to ring. "Between 11 and 12" came and went, along with my sense of humour. 1.30pm he decided to arrive. Spent an hour or so faffing about doing engineery type things to the boiler then declared it working....something wrong with the presure valve (tell me about it). He finally left about 2.45 with everything working ticketyboo.

So off I toddled to do my shopping. No point in going into town at that point on a Friday afternoon so I went to the local retail park. Got most of what I wanted then decided that I really couldn't deal with Tesco at that point so stopped at a convenient Waitrose to get something for dinner.

All goingly swimmingly so far and I still had time to go and get my new glasses from the optician (what have taken two weeks to arrive). Get the glasses fitted and am given full operating instructions as these new glasses are varifocals and I've not had those before. Then we discover that the snazzy magnetic sunglasses that clip onto them don't fit. A little judicious fiddling by the optician gets them almost there and he promises me he will order another pair that should fit properly. Don't wear the glasses to drive jsut yet, he suggests, give yourself time to get used to them at home first. OK. So get home, take them out of the case to clean them and before I can put cloth to glass, I notice a flippin' big chip in one lense. After paying out £400 squids I was not best pleased. So amongst all the other things I have to do tomorrow, I have to take them back.

Having got over that annoyance, I realise that it's a bit bloody cold in the flat. Ahhhh....I turned the heating down before I went out so it didn't get too hot for the Lurchers. Turn the thermostat up expecting the nice sound of the boiler firing up and heat blasting form the radiators. Except that doesn't happen. It's not working again.

I'm not best pleased, landlord isn't best pleased when I told him and I suspect the manufacturers won't be best pleased at the abuse he'll give them tomorrow morning.

And on that note I'm going to bed before anything else goes wrong.

Uh Oh!

We have a Board meeting once a month that I have to attend to take minutes. I spend a day typing them up and then drop them in with the Chairman who goes through them making numerous amendments. As he lives next door, he usually pops them through the letterbox when he's done.

Which is what he did last night.

It never occurred to me to mention that we were going out for a couple of hours and the hounds would be home alone. Neither did it occur to me to put the basket over the letterbox, which I usually do if The Lurchers have to stay at home during the day because Lurcher No. 2 tends to eat the post.......................you can see where this is leading can't you!!?

Yep, got home last night to find the amended minutes turned into confetti all over the hall floor. I've managed to salvage the bits and am in the process of working out what goes where and sticking them all together. It's a good job the Chairman has a sense of humour and I like jigsaws!

Lurcher No.2, of course, thought the whole thing was great fun and was most definitely not helping as I tried to pick the pieces of paper up!

Poorly puppies and washing machines

An eventful weekend on the quiet.

OH took The Lurchers out for a walk on Saturday morning whilst I went out and spent a lot of money. I need new glasses. My current lenses are scratched to bits and seeing out of them is getting more and more difficult. So off I toddled to the optician and ordered said glasses. £400 squids later and I'm sorted. *gulps*. Went to the Farmer's market and stocked up on various delicacies although no black pud for OH. Went to Tescos and bought some bits and pieces and came home.

Came home to find that OH had broken Lurcher No.2. Not unusual given Lurcher No.2's predilection for breaking himself. And as usual, it was his foot he hurt. As he still wasn't putting any weight on it by Monday morning we took a trip to the vet. In for sedation and x-rays which revealed a fractured toe. I know have a 2 year old lurcher on complete rest for the foreseeable future. Not sure who will be crawling thw walls first.

Rewinding slightly, on Sunday we went out and purchased a spanking new washing machine to replace the one that has been pissing water out on a regular basis over the last few months. All excited, OH plumbed it all in and switched it on. Came back an hour later to find it had pissed water all over the floor. In fact, lots more water than the old one was. Cue much swearing and scratching of heads. We think it may be a leaking supply pipe and the washing machine is now in the middle of the laundry floor, going through a cycle so we can figure out where it's leaking from and to see if our suspicions are correct. A little water does go an awfully long way when it's running across the floor.