h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the morning I got into the Guzzling Green Monster, turned the ignition key, only to find the engine management unit light came on. Oh great, more money to fix a fault.

Got into work to find that the previous day's demo of our new stock management system didn't go at all well, and fingers were pointing at me as was the data migration bod. Three hours later and I manage to pin down the problem to a piece of dodgy code - someone else's problem, but the damage was done.

In the afternoon, I tried to load the multisite data into our validation database, only to find that a very competent colleague has inadvertently edited one of my scripts wrongly, and I ended up trashing the database as a result.

The day was topped off quite nicely when we were all called into a meeting at 4.00 pm to tell us our project was being canned due to lack of funds. Could be worse, I suppose, it could be raining.

Oh look, it *is* raining.

A proper Friday the 13th.

I spent the day driving 1½ hours down to my mother to accompany her to an ultrasound scan of her heart at her local hospital, had a pleasant lunch with her in the town, covered a bit for her demented talk and behaviour in a shop, raised her on her feet when she fell on the street, took care of her arms and feet when we returned to her home, cleaned most of the cats smelly stuff from chair and carpet, put the heart recorder back on her, when she had taken it off, because she couldn't remember why it was there.

Still a pleasant day until I returned to a lazy, sulking teenager who hadn't done his (very few) chores and a tired husband, who's been working for three 24 hours shifts in a row (with mentally handicapped children on a holiday) and then coughed my way through the night.

But it didn't rain. Actually the day was not too bad. Unfortunately, though, I have to w*rk today as I didn't get any hours in yesterday.

Heres hoping for a joyful weekend.

(Assorted smileys)

My Friday 13th came a day late.

I got to work on Saturday morning and started opening the bar. At some point in the proceedings I have to go into the walk-in where we keep the kegs and the cases of beer, in order to turn on the beer taps. I was in there for just a few seconds when I started feeling dizzy. "Bugger", I thought, "There's been a leak and this room is full of CO2. I'd better get out of here a bit smartish before I get taken out of here in a body bag". So I walked back out feeling not at all well and propped the door open before taking a few deep breaths then going back in, switching off the cooler and listening. After a few seconds I heard it - a 'ssssssssssss' sound.

When I found it I discovered it was the line that got fixed a few days ago when the keg fell over and split the plastic hose that runs from the keg to the tap. It had come undone again sometime during the night. I turned the tap off so that the flow of gas stoped. Not only did I now have half a keg of sticky cider all over the floor but we'd lost almost all our CO2 - many many cubic feet of it - and we're only about 45 minutes away from opening and needing a supply of CO2 for the sodas and the beer. We don't buy cylinders of CO2 - we've got a big storage tank into which it gets pumped when we get a delivery. It was almost empty.

Luckily we were able to get a delivery within an hour and the line was fixed a few hours later. Cleaning up the mess wasn't a big problem but I don't like to think how much it cost to replace all the gas. I think the company who fixed the line a few days ago might be getting tapped for that bill.

hmm, that explained why I broke down on Friday. I hadn't noticed the date.

Oh, and the fridge-freezer has now gone kaput, the day after I filled it with the week's shopping...all the bloody food now completely useless.

oh poo. And I bet your insurance excess makes it pointless claiming. It did when a similar thing happened to me.

Don't know: haven't checked yet. But you can bet your life it won't be worth much.

I was really looking forward to steak and chips tonight as well. We *always* have steak and chips on Thursday.

Well, we eventually got the new freezer on Friday. It's huge, and is a sort of dark granite colour. In fact, the two of us standing next to it and touching it reminded me of the apemen in '2001: A Space Odyssey'. I half-expect to find a dead leopard in it when I next open it.