Ooh, a long weekend! Long weekends are always great fun – unless you have to work of course! :(
As it was, I had to turn down joining up with Dean and Zania who had planned a bit of a camping weekend away at Paternoster for this very reason (just as well because the weather turned out a little too cold for my liking), but luckily for me he eventually postponed the whole event in the end when Terrance was forced to pull out as well thanks to catching a touch of flu, a sickness that I have been so far fairly lucky in avoiding this winter season.
While I was dreading the trip into the office on Friday morning following the spat with my boss with regards to the contents of this very blog, it actually turned out okay-ish, but only because the boss and most of our technicians left early morning to spend the rest of next week on our secondary support site in Stilbaai, at the Bertie Barnard primary school over there. And with Tracy and Nur on half day, it meant that the office was pretty much as dead as a heavy metal concert performed in an old age home.
At least I managed to get a fair bit of work in by the time it was time to call it quits, leaving me to make a quick dash along a fairly busy N2, quickly pop in at Pick ‘n Pay at the mall, and rush into my parking space at home in the expectation of some strangely much needed R & R. Unfortunately for me though, my plan was a little hampered by the fact that for the first time in ages, Chantelle had somehow managed to beat me home and had plans for me to join her in her shopping trip to the mall to pick up a present for Andy’s upcoming bachelorette party on Saturday evening.
Thankfully I managed to delay the trip just a little bit by corralling Chantelle to join me for a quick afternoon nap in bed, but it wasn’t to last too long as we had to hurriedly get up, and get to the shops before they closed on us! As it was, I must admit to regretting agreeing to join her on her little trip, because we somehow managed to spend almost an hour in the same bloody Woolworths store!
By the time we got out of the mall, darkness had already descended as it does so early nowadays, and I made the call to treat Chantelle to some fish and chips for supper (what can I say, this month has been a little financially heavy on me), and off we jetted to our trusty old Ooskus fisheries. After a small heart attack from paying the rather hefty price for the meal (which thankfully was as delicious as the price I had paid for it!), it was back home and a settling down on the couch as we proceeded to spend Friday night on a little ‘us’ time in front of the TV.
Saturday morning and Chantelle was once again off to work while I sat in eager anticipation of my brother arriving for a bit of a visitation for the day. Amazingly enough (less so after he pulled out the GPS system) he found the place all on his own and we quickly set about entertaining ourselves for the day by playing copious amounts of games, knocking the squash ball around, and devouring cheese, jam and polony sandwiches.
On the squash note of things, we actually had quite an enjoyable long session, not actually playing for points for a change, but rather just knocking about and trying to get me a little more into some sort of acceptable ‘shape’. I must admit that while it is quite lekker to knock about with Chantelle now that she’s learning the game, there will always be a little something extra when it comes to moering the ball about with the boys. Unfortunately as the case now always is, we eventually called it quits when once again my damaged knee gave out on me. Bugger, I really am going to have to get this thing operated on to sort out the problem – but only after I check that my stupid medical insurance actually does cover the thing!
For a change, FIFA 08 wasn’t the game that held our attention for the longest. Sure we played a good seven or so tight soccer games and a couple of NBA Jam basketball games to boot, but in the end it was the two newcomers in the form of The Red Star and Warriors Orochi that held our attention span for the longest. So long in fact that Ryan ended up only leaving my place after 22:00 in the evening! I think that could possibly be his longest visit with me in history if memory serves me right! :)
Unfortunately for me though, with Ryan gone and the kitties in play mode again, it was off to bed alone as Chantelle was still missing in action at what could only be a rather raunchy bachelorette’s party I imagined. And while she did eventually arrive home at some point in time during the night, I know that I was a little too sleepy to really take notice…
Sunday morning and we could sleep a little later than normal thanks to Chantelle only started the day off at 11:00, a welcome thing seeing as I knew I had to spend the most of Sunday and Monday working anyway. As it was, this work was keeping us away from my Mom’s place who had invited us over for Father’s Day lunch with them at their place (Claire and Riley had invited themselves again, but this time it was to slow off their brand new kittens that they have also now got).
With Chantelle gone and the kitties banished from the man room, it was time to stretch those fingers and get to work. This coming week UCT is hosting a massive global conference that will see the likes of Al Gore and Thabo Mbeki attending, and for some particular reason the organisers of the event have approached Commerce IT above UCT’s main IT support department (ICTS) to provide the IT support. Unfortunately for us of course, this means a lot of extra work, including myself who now needs to hurriedly rewrite a large section of my SAN system to accommodate these temporary guests.
So I basically worked the day away at my desk until Chantelle finally returned from her stint at work, followed shortly by her parents and Rob who had decided to pop in for a visit. We haven’t had nice visit with the Montgomery’s for a while, so it was quite nice just to sit down, drink coffee and catch up (even if the kitties and Chantelle’s Eagles DVD stole the show for most of the evening).
The Montys eventually had enough of us and left back for Bellville, leaving Chantelle and I to spend the rest of the evening doing something that we don’t usually do – play PlayStation together. Burnout: Takedown was our poison of choice, and pretty soon we were racing race after race, playing until just before midnight in the end! Of course, the evening’s wins pretty much all belonged to me, but I was genuinely taken aback when the newbie gamer that she is, C managed to defeat me on two separate occasions, prompting me to squeal in disbelief! It was thoroughly fun to sit down and get C to play games with me, so now I can only hope to convince her back sometime!
Monday morning and despite the fact that I still had loads of work to do, I slept in a little later than usual for a weekday morning, only rising out of bed after Chantelle had already left for work and then only stumbling through to the lounge so that I could sit and relax, eating a quick breakfast and playing some Warriors Orochi before the real pain for the day set in.
There’s nothing worse than having to do work work on a public holiday, and that is precisely what I did almost the entire day, stopping only once it was time for me to cook supper in preparation for Chantelle’s return from work (and facial peel. Its amazing what these girls call ‘work’ sometimes!).
Supper consisted of my usual speciality, namely chicken, rice and roast potatoes with a little salad on the side, and Chantelle treated us to a nice dessert by braving the gale force wind out there to go and get us some magnum ice creams from the local garage!
My evening was then further made when after a fairly lengthy phone call from Retha, Chantelle emerged from the man room and challenged me to yet another round of Burnout for the evening. As with the previous outing, I managed to defeat her pretty convincingly (obvious considering the amount of practice I’ve had at the game), but still not convincingly enough as she managed to beat the pants off of me in one particular race!
And that was that. A pretty uneventful long weekend in the end, which saw me working more than anything else, but still, I managed to squeeze a little fun out of it wherever I could I guess! Never mind though, I’m sure I’ll make up for the lost R & R time once this big conference is done and dusted!