Sweet sweat

Okay, I'm calm, I'm rested, I've been away for months, I am not going to let a few little hitches get me down. So, instead of my usual rant, I'll just give you a list of the things that have 'needed attention' since my return.

1. My car air conditioner doesn't work. The first available appointment was Friday. I take it in and am told we'll ring you and tell you what we find. All day I wait. No call. I go in just on closing time. " You know we are waiting for parts, don't you," says the customer service guy. "No," say I,"How would I know, you never rang me"...etc. The rest of this interchange led to the conclusion that the mysterious 'parts' (sounds like most of the components of the air conditioner) have been placed on Friday's order, which should be sent off Saturday, or maybe Monday, and would I like to leave the car there or take it away and bring it back? The parts shouldn't be 'too long' as they 'think they are in Australia'. THANK YOU Darwin Mitsubishi but I will take the car home with me if you don't mind rather than leave it sitting in your yard for an open-ended period of time which doesn't look like being anything less than a week while myself using shanks's pony or catching a bus!

2. My microwave has died, necessitating disposal of the old clunker and purchase of a sleek and tiny new white plastic model for the very reasonable price of $68.

3. The door seal on the dishwasher has disintegrated requiring difficult and time consuming replacement.

4. The loungeroom air conditioner's remote control has died. New batteries didn't fix the problem. This means I have to climb on a chair and lift the cover to use the emergency button to turn it on and there's no possible adjustment of temperature or air flow.

5. Only the freezer section of my fridge is working - yet another repair person needed.

6. At work, I spent a week moving about 100 heavy boxes of brochures and promotional material into my new air-conditioned storeroom, sorting and stacking them onto shelves. It seemed kind of warm in there. When I thought to mention to the building supervisor that he might need to get the air conditioning in there looked at I was informed that this is the only storeroom out of three that is not air conditioned and if it was a problem I could move everything back to another storeroom - no fair, I was promised it would be air conditioned and just assumed the promise had been honoured. There's no way I'm lugging all that stuff back again. I told him he'd better organise for it to get air conditioned in a hurry before all the promotional gear grew mould.... grrr!

Ah the joys of tropical living! If I ever leave Darwin again for a protracted period I will not be coming back!

Goodnight.