Moving on

Floss

Is this the guy from the company that fitted the boiler? Personally I would have been demanding a visit as I think it's only a few weeks since it was fitted? My gas fitter comes out the day I call him when I have a problem, and he's a small business.

Cherryfudge

Yes it is, @Floss. We've had the boiler four weeks and the issue looks like a snagging issue rather than a break down. The thing is, our local people charged £1,000 more for the same thing, so we used a company we found online, located further away. They delegate each job to an engineer, ours happens to be from quite a way away. Really, the company should be allocating more local engineers and I expect that should be in the feedback - but distances in this region (North Yorkshire and the North East) are on the long side, so a lot of travel time involved. I think this guy is based 50 miles from us.

I think the communications are breaking down somewhere, but the main office has been good about keeping in touch with us and ringing to check we've had appointments honoured and whether we are happy with what's been done. My gut instinct is this guy isn't organised, or is over committing himself. He's telling us he's not received instructions, but the office guy said he'd sent them in person. In the end, we have heating and whether the company chooses to continue to use this engineer is up to them.

Seasidegal58

What a palaver Cherry!😳. Positives are that you've hot a warm house and hot water now.  I'm like you though, if I'm cold in the home find it really hard to get going with things. 

Cherryfudge

Oh, I love this warm house! In fact, it's so warm now that I've turned the temperature down and stuck my head out of the kitchen door to cool down. The room with the boiler still smells slightly of damp wood, but the downstairs ceiling doesn't seem too bad, the towels I used to stem the flood are washed and - the best thing after being warm - clothes are getting really dry on the radiators!

I was too disorientated by all the changes of plan and unexpected plumbing lesson to focus on anything when I would have been doing the course. In the end I put some music on (which I don't normally do) and sorted out the rest of the Christmas wrapping for recycling. Good to have that job out of the way, and it helped me slow down.

The last of my Christmas presents from DH arrived. He always orders me a particular calendar and it can take a long time to ship from Canada. There's lots of space to write on and a big sheet of stickers to draw attention to things, and I have kept the back copies right back to when I used to record the funny things the children said.

We finished yesterday's curry for tea and DH was brave enough to try mango chutney though it's too sweet for him.

I've not been to the shops today but DH has booked a hotel for an event we're invited to in April, so that's £78 spent.

Cherryfudge

The Internet went off this morning, about 9.30. I spent a couple of hours running all the troubleshooting things I could find, and realised how slow my phone is on data. I managed to get screenshots of instructions from our Internet provider, and one of the stages was unscrewing the front of the BT box where the cable comes into the house. When I opened it up, it clearly didn't have the things it was supposed to have and in fact had a random wire leading into thin air, and three sub-divisions of the main cable just chopped off. Now I'm not techy, but I'm pretty sure that's not how the textbooks would show it. Anyway I stuck it all back together and discovered the landline had now gone off too.

For some reason I rightly suspected my handiwork.

I got advice from A, though it was effectively to ring the provider. Then J got me their number as I could only text, not look things up, due to phone reception being bad. I'd texted DH earlier and he got back to me on his lunchbreak. Turns out it was a widespread problem, so I went and did some housework and shopping.

And somewhere along the line I got a call from an unknown number, which I nearly ignored as I didn't expect it. It's as well I didn't, as it was a job offer following the interview a few days ago! So I'm a happy bunny who will be earning again, though not really a living. It will do me good to have it to help structure life and get more interaction.

DH had a look at the Internet when he got home: the original outage had long since been restored but when I'd lifted the front cover off the wall box, I'd pulled out a tiny thread of a wire which he was able to get back in place and save having to call someone out.

Dinner was a Moroccan-style vegan stew I'd seen in (I think) the A sda magazine. It was quite nice but maybe needs some modification, a focal point of some sort which can be experimented with as ther's plenty left for another day. However, it used a whole cauliflower and I spotted some on half price in 1celand. The chap on the till was horrified that half price was still 90p, but I'm quite pleased that for once in my life I cooked a cauliflower and used it all the day I bought it.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping £4.74
Stationery 50p

redofromstart

Congratulations on the job offer!

in_need_of_direction

Well done you. 

Honeysucklelou2

Congratulations on getting the job 🥳. When do you start?

Am so impressed by your sorting out the plumbing via FaceTime.  Hope the hive fitting is successful on Sunday.

Floss

Congratulations on the new job 😊

Cherryfudge

Thank you everyone, I don't have a start date yet but it's with the same employer so a lot is already in place. They have to take my references - which I think is a pro forma that those people will be familiar with. There is supposed to be initial training but I think I've just done most of it for the other relief post and I don't have to do it again.

I'm hoping two or three weeks, but it does depend on other people's paperwork.

My daughter did the same job when she was in the sixth form, she said she enjoyed it!

And today we have... sunshine! Always an encouraging start to the day. DH was going to take back some storage boxes because the lids didn't fit, but the odd thing is, when we tried them again, every single lid fitted. Yet there was  a gap of a couple of mm which we both saw the other day. Weird, but saves him a job.

I really ought to sort out some financial bits and pieces and tidy around the computer. See you next year, then.