Rings and Things
2007-04-19, 8:32 p.m.
BF's gone to the pub with Suze. I hope he's, at this very moment, talking her out of having that dopey boyfriend of hers come live with her. But I doubt it. For 33, she'd make a good 15 year old.Ive been on the phone this evening, talking to a very nice lady at the US Postal Service, tracking the progress of my engagement ring from across the pond. With the advances in communications over the last, say, 100 years or so, its miraculous that I can chat to a lady thousands of miles away about a piece of jewellery that I have only seen on a screen in our studio, and which BF paid for with a little piece of plastic.
What's not miraculous is that we ordered said ring on about 26th March and I am told that it was shipped on 16th April and wont be with me til about the 30th. WTF are they doing with it? Rowing across the atlantic? Do the USPS have a specially trained spaniel who is, at this moment, doggy-paddling through the briny with my engagement ring wrapped in a piece of oil cloth tied to his collar?
Maybe, as Smash suggested, they are trying to throw it across. Perhaps they've set up Tom and Tam to catch it at Penzance but they've been on the Magners and are lying in the long grass smoking a reefer and giggling instead of scanning the horizon for incoming trinkets.
Just did a little bit of googling and it appears that sailing (in a proper boat with sails, not a gin palace or a cruise liner)across the atlantic takes about 23 days with the wind in the right direction. That'll be how its getting here then. By yacht. *sigh*
Presumably, it'll be set with a couple of lumps of coal which, due to the extreme lengths of time travelling across the ocean, will have turned into diamonds by the time the fucking thing gets here.
I'd hoped to have it by now as I wanted to do a little show and tell type stuff, so, as I cant do that, I wonder if you would mind contenting yourselves with a pic of the tinfoil ring BF gave me on the night we got engaged.
The one I have chosen to get for 'every day wear' instead of just special occasions, is similar in design but made of shinier, metaly-er, diamondy-er stuff. When it eventually turns up you can compare and contrast.
Strange day at work today. When I was on hol last week, I handed over a project to Slavey. Getting back on Monday there didnt seem any point in taking it back from her as it was all progressing OK and it wouldve taken too long for her to explain where she'd got to so Ive been letting her run with it. It became apparent today that this was severely stressing her out as she's not used to dealing with printers OR our senior management team, with whom she was having to liaise on an hourly basis. The crux of the matter was that the big bosses kept moving the goalposts and then moaning at her when they found themselves unable to score. I didnt want to interfere as it will give her huge kudos with the bosses if she can see it through to the end without my help, but eventually I did step in (when nobody was in earshot) and say "OK sweetie, this is what you do - phone E, tell him we dont need him to produce the blah, phone A and tell him to move the colour printer to our office tomorrow and to schedule the second part of the print run from here - we can watch it while its producing, phone D and tell him to move his paper stocks and we'll reorder for him tomorrow. When you've done all that, phone Toast and tell him you saved the company �1300 BEFORE you tell him how we did it." Then I went away for a bit.
When I got back to the office, she'd done it all, just how I said and was going "Thank you, thank you for helping me." Toast was happy as a sandboy and Slavey still gets to claim the credit. Yay! AND, we had ice lollies.
Slavey works really hard at the routine admin stuff and laughs at me when I forget how to start an account or something that I havent done since I became Head of Dept. I think sometimes she wonders what I do actualy DO. I guess now she knows! I fix stuff.
Jooj has resurrected her interest in finding online friends. Actually, she's been surfing the net for a boyfriend. Im not sure how to explain to her that what she's been doing (creating profiles in which she describes herself as 'attractive blonde with smokey grey eyes') is the same as hanging about in a bar wearing too much lipgloss and not enough clothes...oh, no, hang on, that was ME c1985! That she's been telling people she 'meets' that she is 13 instead of 11 and a half probably isnt going to help either. Admittedly, she is mature, very intelligent and the size of a 15 year old but, holy hell, she's ELEVEN! Anyone got an appropriately aged son/daughter etc who might like an internet pen-pal? If I can find someone that she can actually correspond with, I think she might not be so keen to do the virtual bar-hop thing.
Bloody kids.