complicated weekend

So this last weekend was actually a bit rubbish, which was interesting as it contrasted markedly with the weekend before.

The weekend before went so smoothly as to almost be silly.  I had a big old list of chores to do, including cleaning the bedsit and going shopping and everything went so smoothly that I'd done everything by late lunch on Saturday.

This added to the fact that I had the Monday and Tuesday off for the interviews and the weather was rather nice meant it was a rather good weekend.

This last weekend was not so good.

It started going badly on Friday, when I had a particularly bad bout of insomnia, but a lot to do during the day.  In the evening I went shopping, but made a bit of an error, in that I bought something for my tea.

Now that normally wouldn't be a bad thing to do, but I forgot I'd brought in a packed lunch, but we'd been to the pub.  I therefore had two dinners and had to steak my sandwiches in the fridge and have them Saturday, when I have to confess they were more than a little dried out.

The shopping trip also cost a fortune, because for some reason I decided to get lots of the random or infrequent purchases (for example, the clothes washing tab things I use) all at once.  Normally I spread them out more.

Anyway, when I got home I did the usual Friday night bits I do and then started watching the Valencia practice.  Only about half way through there were these 3 weird brown outs of the power.

I've no idea what caused it, but it seemed to cause my PVR to go a bit funny.  At least I think that was the cause - basically my PVR stopped showing the time when it was on standby.  This was a pain, but it also seemed to mean that it wasn't able to switch itself on when it had a programme to record.

Now luckily the majority of what I had to record was overlapped by me having the TV on anyway, but it did mean I lost a radio programme on Sunday (this was how I figured out there was an issue).  Luckily the problem seems to have been solved by me doing a "factory reset", but it that means I've lost all my settings.  The only one I redid was scanning for channels and a few immediate programme record set ups, so I'll have to do the rest tonight.

Early Saturday morning I did my washing, and that was a bit of a disaster.  Basically, they'd shut the water off (well, I say off - it was tiny dribbling trickle), which is kinda an important aspect of a laundrette's facilities.

Now I use one of the big machines for my weekly wash and in some aspects that turned out to be a good thing.  The smaller machines that somebody else used just kept going through their cycle, even though there was next to no water.  The big machines, it seems, are set up that they'll effectively wait until the water reaches a pre-set level before moving to the next phase.  That meant, with the flow rate, that it took well over an hour for what is usually a half-hour programme.

And it only took that long because I drove home several times, filled up a bunch of plastic bottles and poured them into the machine (via the powder slots).  If I hadn't done that, god knows how long it would have taken.

My guess is they'd closed the water down because they were doing some repairs on Friday and then forgotten to put it back on again.  Certainly when I spoke to the management (it had taken so long they were in - usually I've finished by an hour before they turn up) that seemed to be the implication.

What else?

Oh yeah, for my interview on Friday I have to go somewhere in Oxfordshire and it wasn't very clear where I had to go and I got very nervous.  A big part of the nervousness is that I've taken the morning off and the interview is actually starting at 9:00.  I was therefore very nervous as to what time I had to set off and if I'd get back in time.

The google maps route was direct, but looked complicated and the alternate route I personally though I could do was a lot longer and was bound to have heavy traffic.  I therefore decided to do a trial run, but with all the other delays to stuff I set off really quite late and the return journey was in the dark with it lashing down, which was a bit scary, especially as I was then very tired.

Still, I know the google route now, and it's actually not that bad, though I am going to go very early as it goes through some big towns.