why is www.o2.ie such a piece of shit? it takes so long to log in, one would imagine that they were on dial up rather than broadband.

as for how long it takes to get a response to send a text, jeez, i’d have it typed on my phone more quickly.

performance………. not something they are too worried about. it’s not just free text messages either. i experience unbelievable delays trying to look at account details or whatever.

Last week, SK and I passed the four month threshold of living in our new abode. Monday marks the beginning of the new school year etc etc, so, we are in a mad rush to get all the last bits and pieces of house moving in over and done with by then. Things are suddenly falling into place. Or have fallen. Or something.

It took a lot of effort. Bear in mind that this is a house that required NO renovation. House moving into when it is one hundred square meters is expensive. Financially and time wise. But, we had some visitors at the weekend who said, in all honesty, they couldn’t belive how much we had done in four months.

So here’s a list. To remember the good times. It all requires documenting for posterity more than anything

1) Accepting delivery of the dining table and chairs and a mattress the day after we got our keys. We were sorted (hah ….. how naive!!). We had somewhere to sleep and a table to eat at.
2) Accepting delivery of couch number one
2) Accepting delivery of the bedframe
3) Accepting delivery of wooden flooring and underlay and clips
4) Accepting delivery of tiles
5) Mulling over tiles and what exactly we were going to do now that we were realising that where we wanted to put them wasn’t exactly floored in concrete as we had sort of expected (it’s hard to tell in a show house that is carpeted)
6) Tripping to Woodies to purchase lots of plywood, a work bench, a saw and about three hundred screws
7) Unpacking some boxes Much sawing of plywood, drawing of a grid, drilling of holes, screwing of screws (about two hundred and fifty of the little feckers to stabalise a floor), jumping with joy at completion of cover the floor in plywood task.
9) Coming home to a stairs clad in cut tiles, but not cemented or grouted in place
10) Coming home to a stairs and landing clad in cut, cemented travertine tiles
11) Coming home to a stairs, landing and bathroom clad in cut, cemented, grouted travertine tiles
12) Laughing at the six man floor laying invasion one week day morning. Coming home at about nine to a house full of beautiful solid oak timber floors.
13) Unpacking a sewing machine and deciding to chance my arm at making curtains because we were sick of using tape to hold up our temporary curtain solutions.
14) Purchasing and hanging a curtain pole to hold aforementioned curtains (which were a success)
15) Assembling a bed frame and feeling the true comfort of our new mattress now that it was no longer just a mattress on a floor, it was a real bed in a real frame.
16) Unpacking some boxes
17) Moving a HEAVY tv upstairs
18) Marvelling at SK’s excellent carpentry skills whilst still thinking I was completely right to slag him off about all the tools he bought, after he installed extra shelving in the hotpress.
19) Celebrating the fact that we had cable and as a result could get broadband
20) Celebrating stabalising of aforementioned broadband
21) Finally finding nice fabric to make bed room blinds
22) Deciding to chance my arm at making roman blinds. They are now made and hanging. They were not a disaster.
23) Finishing my home made curtains off with black out lining
24) Finding a nice computer desk
25) Hanging some paintings in the living room and marvelling at the instant “our home” effect they had
26) Grouting some left over bits and pieces
27) Painting my old school desk that I’ve had since I was in first year of secondary school and refuse to part with to match a colour in the colour scheme of the blind fabric
28) Purchasing a TELEPHONE because after EIGHT MONTHS we finally had a goddam phone line. Ringing SK on our new phone line whilst MARVELLING at the superb TECHNOLOGICAL WONDERMENT of it all.
29) Re-upholstering (I use the term loosely) an old chair and bringing it back to life
30) Painting the stair case as a temporary solution and liking it so much that we decided to keep it
31) Finally discovering where to get Junckers mouldings (there was no great mystery to solve, it’s just that I took ages to make some phone calls).
32) Refusing to unpack some boxes for months and then, finally reducing the total to three unpacked. One with winter clothes, the other two with SK’s stuff
33) Gardening Category
- planting lots of little balcony friendly plants and marvelling at their little growth spurts over the summer
- much watering of little balcony plants over the summer
34) Celebrating the fact that despite our stupidity in not having new skirting boards ready to go on when the fitters were here, our skirting boards were now replaced and in place.
35) putting some new light fittings in place
36) putting the new venetian blinds in place. yeah for being able to block out some of the summer sunlight which causes the place to warm up to furnace temperatures.

That is the abridged version. Still to come (and will be done before friday is)

37) Accept delivery of bed number two and three
38) Accept delivery of couch number two
39) Watch our house alarm get installed
40) Celebrate security of house alarm

Which leaves the following to be done:

41) Finish last bit of timber flooring when the mouldings arrive (time plus two weeks)
42) Hang some more paintings
43) Decide on shelving solutions
44) Swap from heavy large tv to flat screen that won’t cause hernia’s when it is being moved
43) Repaint everywhere to restore to pristine white and to get rid of all unpacking/assembling/moving marks

*sigh*

In a category all its own……………

countless trips to suburban DIY stores that break your heart each time you walk into the place because you know how much money you are about to spend

Resolve to: Keep the place clutter and junk free for as long as possible. Starting with dejunking the attic.

Make all this effort only to be facing the prospect of much foreign travel on top of SK’s much foreign travel. Wonder why we made so much effort to get house into good shape when we’re not going to be here so much now………
Tune in next year for the boat renovation/purchase project.