The Mood

Description:
Personal storm cloud hovering over head, short temper, twitchy, bags under eyes... kinda like a zombie with Tourettes syndrome, actually.

Causes:

• Rampant PMS
• Insane last-minute freelance job with huge workload and ridiculous deadline
• Having a host of guests for a year-end life group braai who only left at 11.30 last night (not that it wasn't an awesome time - a blast was had by all)
• Having a house that looks like a whole host of guests trooped through it in last night's storm - muddy floors, wrapping paper everywhere, paper plates in the strangest places...
• A certain phone call at 6am this morning from the in-laws to ask if they could arrive this eve and stay for the weekend
• A certain argument with TSC on the above point
• The knowledge that a certain Doodling Journo will surely be blamed for the fact that the response to afore-mentioned phone request was 'no', despite the fact that said Journo's partner is responsible for most of the weekend engagements and has an interview tomorrow, meaning that there will be no time to actually see the in-laws at all
• Having to cancel Friday night's dinner engagement because of afore-mentioned ridiculous deadline
• Stressing about the logistics around a particular Christmas open house this Sat and how everything will ever get done on time
• Not being able to think of a final bullet point to make it an even number

Plan of action:

Any or all of the following:

• Beat head repeatedly on desk until unconscious
• Practise the ancient art of escapism by ignoring problems and reading blogs
• Collapse in a heap of snot and tears
• Put on big girl panties and suck it up
• Vent on blog

Frustration

TSC has managed to lose our one and only set of garage keys. I have been telling him for ages to get spares cut. I guess now that we have to change the whole freaking lock (having broken in to the garage from the back window), at least we will have more than one set.

Also, the web-based system I use to capture data for one of my clients is "experiencing technical problems". Basically, I typed out a whole bunch of info into the millions of separate data fields and then when I tried to save it, it failed and everything is lost.

NOT in a good mood.

People who don't think

Between my hyperactive felines and the bloody peacocks, I didn't get much sleep last night. I don't function well sans sleep, so if none of this makes any sense, sorry. I am also fairly grumpy.

I think I just get frustrated with people who can't seem to think before they do or say something. Case in point, awhile back, my debit card started to give me issues. It was so ancient that the bit where you sign your name had worn off almost completely. So I went into the bank (which I hate doing). Nedbank has decided to simplify life and save us all time by creating a dedicated "collections counter" where people can simply pop in and pick up their cards or get a new one.

Hah! I have never waited for less than 30 minutes in this "fast" queue. On this occasion, it was no different. When I eventually got to the front, I explained my case and the woman behind the counter let me choose a new card. The actual process only took about 10 minutes. And off I went on my way.

The next day, I withdrew cash from the ATM only to discover that the card had been linked to the wrong account! Thankfully it was just linked to my other Nedbank account, not someone else's. But I still had to go back to the bank on Saturday morning (when it's busiest) and go through the whole process again. If the woman had simply checked which account she was about to link the card to, none of this would have happened.

Grrr.

Second case in point, we have a client that pays us to do PR for a specific campaign that's running. Our contact person on that end is seriously lacking in the grey matter. She calls yesterday to ask for a list of all the media placements to date. But she hasn't signed off any media releases. Which means we haven't sent them out. Which means there are no placements as yet.

One of our other clients (we do publicity for him. He's supposedly a South African celebrity, although I had no clue who he was before I met him) phoned the other day to ask my boss if she has his ID number. How do you get past the age of 30 and not take responsibility for things like this yourself? One of the other "celebs" called and asked for his own bank details. It's insane.

We have one client who phoned us after leaving our offices to tell us she was lost and ask us where she was. So we asked the logical question - what landmarks can you see or what road are you on? The answer - "I dunno... I'm at an Engen Petrol Station."

How many Engen filling stations are there in Johannesburg? Lots! And surely it would make more sense to ask someone there where you are instead of phoning us and expecting us to guess?

Apparently not.

Deep breaths, Tamara...

Useless UJ... again!

OMW - so frustrated with UJ. For those of you who don't know UJ, I present to you a brief exerpt from their website:

Becoming UJ

The University of Johannesburg was established on 1 December 2005. It is the result of the incorporation of the Soweto and East Rand campuses of Vista University into the Rand Afrikaans University, which took place on 1 January 2004, and the merger of the Rand Afrikaans University (into which the two Vista campuses had been incorporated) and the Technikon Witwatersrand on 1 January 2005, to create the University of Johannesburg (UJ)...

Confused yet?

Everything is complicated with these people. After FINALLY being told that he had been accepted to study there this year (he found out last week, can you believe it?!), TSC headed off to register at the varisty yesterday, documentation in hand and deposit paid.

He arrived there at 7.35am. Resgistration was set to begin at 8am. At 9.45am he sent me a text msg: "Hey my love. Have been moved to three different queues now. Oh happy day."

An hour later, he called me:

TSC: I'm not in.
Me: What?! How can you not be accepted? They told you that you were - you even have the letter from the HOD giving you his personal acceptance if you passed the entrance exam. Did you fail?
TSC: No. But now he says they're full and other people did better on the test than I did, so I'm not in.
Me: This is bull. They said you were in! Is there nothing you can do?
TSC: No. I just need to figure out how to get the deposit refunded. *sounding absolutely miserable* I've gotta go. I'll see you at home, k?
Me: Ok. I love you, my angel. Wish I could fix this for you.

I spent the next hour trawling the internet for local colleges and varsities taking late admissions. The he called me again:

TSC: I just spoke to the lady I've been dealing with in admissions about the deposit and she says she has my acceptance letter on her desk, so I am in.
Me: Huh? So are you in or not?
TSC: I really don't know - she says I must wait until tomorrow and she'll find out what's going on and give me a call.
Me: But you're supposed to be at orientation tomorrow morning if you're in!
TSC: Apparently there's about 30 of us just in this course that don't know if we're in or not.
Me: Seriously? That's crazy. Are you ok?
TSC: Ja... not much I can do except wait.
Me: This sucks. But whatever happens, it'll be ok. There are other options, you know. We'll figure something out.
TSC: Mmm.

Poor man. He's so stressed about what happens next. Understandably - it affects our future hugely.

I could kill those twits that are messing him around. But I'll just vent here instead. A felony wouldn't do much to fix things, would it?