AFTermath

There's lots I could say about what's happened since I got home, but right now I really don't have the energy. I feel ill, and I can feel an early night coming on. So I'll summarise.

On arrival home I found that the cable modem connection was fucked. This lead to several days of calling ntl, and this morning when an engineer turned up to check it out, the problem had fixed itself an hour or so beforehand. However, the engineer still checked out all the equipment, and apparently the exchange in the street needs working on. This will allegedly take place tomorrow. Believe it when it happens, but at least we've gotten to see the next two episodes of Buffy (the first of which we should've seen before we went so that the second (which we've just watched) we could've watched when it aired in the States during the AFT).

Work has been utterly shit. By the end of the first day back (Thursday), it was apparent that most of the work that I had asked to be done in my absence had not in fact been done. I shouldn't have been surprised, but being already caught in the despondency of the post-holiday come-down, I was both surprised and utterly disheartened. By Friday lunchtime, I'd confirmed that none of the work had been done. Add to this the problems with ntl, and, well, I did not have a happy Friday.

I guess the other thing would be the "Untidy House". This was a big problem for me to begin with, because, well, I couldn't tell how untidy the house still was. In some ways this was worse than the realisation that it was untidy in the first place had been. However, over the weekend there was a discussion about the state of the house. It was a discussion that went on until early Sunday morning, and while when it started I was dreading where it might lead, it turned out in the end to be of the good. While the house wasn't necessarily cleared, the air certainly was. There is now an appreciation of how untidy the house is, and an acceptance that houses don't just tidy themselves. As always in difficult situations, time and patience is what's needed. We'll get there in the end.

And to end on another cool note, mostly just for the benefit of two of my readers who'll identify with this most... I've mentioned the soundtrack CD I've done for Hell Breaks Loose a number of times. One of the tracks on there is Avril Lavigne's I'm With You. Now, some of you will have noticed that this track is starting to get airplay. It's going to be the next single off her album. Given the HBL connection, it's not entirely surprising that when I heard it on the way home, I suddenly was able to imagine Amber Benson singing it instead of Avril. And that, my friends, is a fucking cool concept.