Weekend catch-up

What a busy weekend it was! Most of it pleasant, though.


The one exception was Friday afternoon. I received a letter from the attorney handling my property transaction on Wed, telling me that I urgently needed to go to the city council to set up rates, electricity and water accounts in my name. So I book Friday afternoon off to do that and TSC and I head to the ugly governmental building in the centre of town (a 30 min drive from us) to go and do the rates and water accounts, seeing we've already done the electricity.


As we arrive, it starts bucketing down with rain. There's no undercover parking in sight, so we make a dash for the entrance and get soaked to the bone. At reception we are told that we are in the wrong building and must go to a building in the next street. Seeing the rain is coming down like cats and dogs, we climb back into the car, drive around the block and park outside the entrance to the correct building. We run inside, now completely wet.


At reception we are told that we are at the wrong entrance. It's the right building, but they won't let us walk through it to get to the department we need to be at, we must run around the outside of the building in the pouring rain and go through the other entrance.


So we do. And we get the correct form, fill it in and stand in line. There are two people at the counters for registration and deposits. There are three people in the queue in front of us. A full hour later, we finally sit down with the man who can help us.


"Why are you here?" he asks, having scanned through our form.
"To register the rates in our name," I say, thinking that he is a useless power-tripping bureaucrat.
"But that happens automatically," he says. "You don't need to be here. You need to be opening your water account."
Seething inwardly, I smile politely and say, "But the attorneys said I needed to be here. Uhh... so where do I open my water account?"
"I don't know why they told you that. You need to go to *address* to open the water account. But it's 15h30, so they'll be closed now."
"Oh, ok. Well... thanks for your help, I guess."


Stupid damn attorney. What a waste of time and petrol!


We then sat in Friday afternoon traffic for an hour and a half to get home. And I have to trek back into town again today to do the water account. And they can't tell me how much the deposit will be. And they don't take debit or credit cards. They only take bank guaranteed cheques or cash. Why must they make everything so difficult? I know, I know... Because they can.


Anyway... Friday night was spent making a last few pieces of jewellery to sell at the Christmas market on Saturday, and I ended up packaging and sorting my wares until 2am. Saturday morning I had to be up early to get to the house and set up my stuff. We didn't have that many people turning up, but I made good money and will now be able to spoil TSC for Christmas. Yay!

Then my folks dropped off some curtains they've donated to us (we're their top charity cause) and after a quick lunch with them, we rushed off to the Bloggirls Christmas event. What fun! It was awesome to meet everyone's partners and kids and to hook up with one or two blog ladies I hadn't met before. We were ridiculously late and it poured with rain, but much fun was had by all and we arrived home to two very hungry kitties at about 10pm.

Sunday after church we spontaneously had a bunch of people around for lunch, which was entertaining amidst all the boxes. I ran around like a headless chicken looking for things like the grater, a vase and my hairdryer to restart the fire when the rain and then hail arrived (this always seems to happen when TSC and I are at a braai). It was lovely to have people in our house for the first time and I can't wait to have a proper house-warming party early next year.


This morning at 2am, TSC left to go to Namibia to renew his blasted driver's licence, and I didn't manage to get back to sleep after that. I would so like to be doing this right now...










But work is beckoning, so I must do some writing. We close at the end of the week for Christmas holidays, so there's lots to be done before then. Have a great week!