magicaddict | Whole Month Of Quiet...

...while I managed to fail to bother posting.

helbling says it a great deal better than I do, so I will be relatively brief.

We moved house, into a much bigger, much nicer place. Brand new cooker, central heating, double glazing, second storey...the list is endless. We had more help than we could ever have believed possible, which was both hugely appreciated and stragely lucky, because as soon as we arrived I seemed possessed with the notion of setting my computer and keyboard up rather than actually doing something practical. Somewhat embarrassing, in hindsight, when everyone else was busying away downstairs. Then, Emma unpacked more than half the boxes once everyone had gone. I'm kind of getting towards finishing unpacking mine now.

Moving house is apparently something I do very well in princple, terribly in practice, which is no help whatseoever to anyone. Unfortunately, it isn't the kind of thing you get a great deal of practice in - I'm extremely lucky that Emma seems to have picked it up. Otherwise, I'd still be floundering around, £400 down (see below) and frantically licking the toilet seat in Walcot Prade clean while trying to unpack boxes in Cirencester with my outstretched right foot, and wondering why I wasn't making a particularly good job of either.

So far, however, nothing has gone wrong with the place. Next door on one side has at least a dog, and very likely a cat as well (judging by how unconcerned the cat was at the dog jumping and barking less then two feet from it), and Emma is looking forward immensely to making their acquaintence properly. The only problem we have is that we moved somewhere so we could share driving duties equally. Now, I can get there and back in just under an hour, whereas Emma hasn't managed it in less than eighty minutes. Last night, it was over a hundred. I'm very worried that we've picked the wrong place.
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Our previous letting agents attempted to stiff us out of four fifths of the security deposit by calling me up while I was in Basel on work, saying we had left the place in an awful state, and demanding that I say whether or not we were okay with them taking £400 off our deposit by the end of the day. When we finally went back to the place to reinspect what they said, we coud find no proof whatsoever of what they had claimed.

Emma barked at them, I whimpered in a not particularly threatening manner, and the second they found they were going to actually have to prove their accusations, they caved and gave us it all back. I'm not sure what annoyed me more - the fact they tried it on in the first place, or that they didn't have the integrity to argue the toss when we said no.
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A friend of mine has been undergoing a great deal of shit that they do not deserve. They finally snapped just after Christmas and did something very sensible in the circumstances. Now the circumstances are attempting to change themselves and said friend of mine has changed their mind, with caveats. I dearly hope that they have made the right decision, and that it doesn't all go horribly wrong. They are abundantly aware of my view. Said friend is welcome to contact me in any fashion they desire at any hour of the day or night.
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If you move house with BT broadband, then change your service provider, that's free. If you change your service provider, then move house, that's also free. If you do both of these actions simultaneously, the world ends, death walks the streets, and you get charged £30. This time, Emma went so far as to take the phone off me while I was trying to argue with them and take over, lest I ended up agreeing to be charged even more for the privelige of talking to them. I don't quite understand where I go wrong with these things - I have no difficulty being an attitude-fuelled confrontation machine when I'm playing someone else. It seems that maybe as I'm getting further and further into different characters, I'm losing some of my own.

Perhaps three years in customer service has left me with a lasting desire not to be that arsehole giving the undeserving operative grief. Five minutes with Emma on the phone to them, and they were gibbering in terror, giving her tacit agreement, an address to write to, and an offering of a pound of their flesh if she'd just stop throttling them.

She shouldn't have to be the bitch all the time. That should be a job we share equally. Must do better.
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My car battery died at an inopportune moment - the morning we were supposed to be moving, not two hours after the last post on this journal, to be precise. So I bought a new one and installed it - go me.

The next day, it didn't start again, revealing itself to have not been the battery in the first place, but the alternator, failing to charge it. So I bought an alternator, and failed repeatedly to get it installed by someone better with cars than myself. Go me.

We got to Cirencester and found an excellent garage who said they could do the work, only to take a look at the engine, declare the alternator fine (suggesting I send it back for a refund from the place I got it), and tell me it was the starter motor, a replacement for which they successfully sourced and installed in under eighteen hours. The car now runs better than ever.

Go fucking me.
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Christmas with the families, by and large, went relatively smoothly. There were no arguments at my family home, we introduced them to many and varied new films in retaliation to the crass lack of anything interesting on TV, and we got a lot of nice things, mainly for the kitchen. At Emma's parents, I hit a clay pigeon with my first ever shot from a gun, we got further nice things for the kitchen, and Emma's father continued on his long-standing quest to get me drunk on fine wine. It's amazing how often he succeeds at that.
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Overall, a good season, though with a great deal of things I could have done a great deal better. Among other things, next year is probably going to involve one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made (no, you cynical bastards, not getting married - that's neither a mistake nor coming next year. Watch this space in 2012), hopefully going to constitute the year my life kickied into a considerably higher gear, and will probably still find me unpacking my half of the house crap by the time I get to writing one of these this time in 2011.

Generally speaking, however, I'm neither ill, destitute, persecuted, a victim, addicted, homeless or alone, I have an excellent job I enjoy, and a companion finer than any I could have dreamed of, happy to call herself my fiancée. My problems are small, and workable on.

Let's see what January brings.