Not a good way to start the day

There are some sounds that the instant you hear them you know either something bad has happened or is about to happen, because you know that hearing that sound is never good. You tense up and wait for the other shoe to drop to see just how bad the thing is thats just happened.

So it was this morning as I was leaving Geeksville, a lorry came the other way and I suddenly heard a low crack. I wondered briefly what it could be as I was changing gears at the time and had sudden visions of the car giving up the ghost by letting the clutch fall out but then I realised that it was a glass sounding crack and that probably only meant one thing.

At the next set of traffic lights a quick scan of the windscreen found what I was expecting but hoping I wouldn't find, a nice big chip at the bottom of the windscreen almost smack back in the middle. It was in a infuriating place a well, a mm lower and what ever it was would have been deflected off the wiper blades.

So I continued onto work, trying vainly to remember the number of the windscreen people and failing but somehow remembering all the horror stories from the adverts of how peoples windscreens cracked because they had a chip and didn't get it repaired and it cracked because they accelerated/braked/used their heaters/ went over a bump. Now you need to do at least three of those four to drive so I was slightly nervous whilst driving, but felt better as according to all the adverts they could come out to work and fix it at a time suitable for me.

Well as it turns out all those adverts are pretty much lies! After getting through to the insurance company I found that the earlist they could come would be Monday, I then asked if they could come to the house and do it and the earlist time they had was tomorrow, she explained that they had to book the appointments in advance which is why he couldn't do it the same day. I managed to bite my tongue and not make some saracastic comment apologising for not planning to get my windscreen chipped in advance!

Oh and the 'at a time convienant to me' is a appointment window which is a mere four hours long!

She also kept asking if what I thought caused the damage. Was it a stone? A bit of gravel? A piece of metal? a piece of the truck? a piece of rubbish? She seemed to be working her way through a script which to be honest she probably was but do they seriously expect people to know precisly what hit them? I had a momentary urge to be sarcastic as the list continued and tell her that it was actually caused by a orbital barrage from a alien spacecraft.

I resisted as I had a feeling that this woman probably didn't have a sense of humour.

And all this happened before 9am and the 'official' start of my day!

Still asides from this it turned out to be a quite nice day, particuly as people seemed to have that 'Friday feeling' especially with some of the conversations that started. There was one that started over a misunderstanding between the words sic and sick and their meanings. Plus there were lots of jokes to do with eighties celebrities for some reason. But that may have been prompted by the latest trailer for the new eddie murphy movie which gives away pretty much nothing about the plot and looks more like he's just lost his mind.

anyway, it's the weekend now and the start of my weeks holiday. Which means only two weeks now until conference and a mere six days to my birthday.

Later folks!