Note
I have not been training, but I am still alive. It is hard to move out of a big house and into a smallish apartment. I've spent all my free time throwing things out and packing. I am exhausted! Now I'm on the train on the way to Newark, to fly back to the UK for a conference. I am very much looking forward to my return so that I can live a normal, boring life again.
So this morning, I had to get a Zipcar to take Rosie and Clem to a cattery while I'm away. I didn't want to leave them in a brand new place, and I'm sure they'll hate a cattery, but I had very few other options. We donated the car to charity on Wednesday, so it's Zipcars from now on.
I got to the car this morning, opened it with my card, and the alarm went off. I closed it, opened it again, and the alarm went off again. By this time I'm worried I'm waking people up, and I call Zipcar to get them to deactivate the alarm. Only it doesn't work. The guy gets me to try the handle again, even though I can see the warning light on the dashboard is still flashing, and it goes off a third time. He puts me on hold for ten minutes, then his manager appears, goes through the problem at excruciating slow speed, and then tells me to unlock the car and open the door. I tell him the light is still flashing and it's going to alarm. He tells me it won't. You can guess what happens next right? After the fourth alarm and 20 minutes of faff I tell him I want a new car. Only I can't take any of the four cars right next to it, the only one available is 2.7 miles away at the University of New Haven.
So they pay for my Uber, and I get to UNH and make some kind of joke to the Uber guy about something else going wrong, and there is a smiley girl and a warning tape across the car park the Zipcars should be in. And obviously, no Zipcars. Uber guy asks if I just want him to drive me, but he's understandably not keen on cats in his very swanky car. A different nice lady then walks me around the campus for 20 minutes, calling security who moved the cars so the car park could be resurfaced, but didn't tell anyone where they moved them to, and don't seem to remember. I call Zipcar, but they have no active GPS tracing on the car (which seems a weird business decision for a car sharing company). Eventually I hear it honking (you can honk the horn remotely with your phone), and I find the car. It's now an hour after my booking was supposed to start, and I am regretting ever getting rid of our leaky car! What a palava!
I go home and put the cats in their travel bags (which involves prising them out from between the spare mattress the bed and the bed frame, a place they haven't hidden since I first brought them home, and then come out to find someone pranged the Zipcar mirror, but luckily it's just a flip back job.
I really hope I have more luck on the plane tonight! What a palava! As a result I'm now still not fully unpacked in the new place, but it's getting there.
Ugh! Normal life please.