Tonight’s actually been fairly productive.

With Herself away I’ve been able to catch up on some rubbish TV and get cracking on the website work I planned to do this weekend.

So all in all a quiet night, but a productive one.

This weekend was supposed to be a quiet one. Herself was supposed to be really busy throughout, and staying elsewhere for two nights. She was going to be out on Friday at the theatre, on a course over the weekend, and then down to Basingstoke for a work-related course on Monday. Which meant a nice quiet weekend for me – allbeit looking after the animals etc. – and getting some outstanding work done.

At the last minute though, the weekend course got cancelled “because there weren’t enough people signed up for it”. No bad thing really, it gives Herself  the wekeend back, but still quite a pain in the arse – especially considering that it had been paid for, along with buying specific materials for the course. We’ll get the money back for the course, that’s not an issue. It’s just all deeply annoying.

So the weekend changed a bit, and today I also ended up driving over to Fakenham to pick up the stuff we’d left there. (at the request of the course organisers)

Still, I’ll do some of the necessary work tomorrow while Herself’s off down to Basingstoke for Monday. Better than nowt.

In a couple of weekends we’ll be going to the O2 to see Peter Gabriel in concert. (Again)  So I booked the car-parking a week or so ago.

To be fair, booking the parking spot is pretty easy, and they even give you the name of the gig, so you can check you’re booking for the right day.

Only it turns out that Peter Gabriel’s now doing two nights at the O2, right after each other. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

So yeah, I need to find out whether I can refund the one on the wrong fucking day.

What a twat.

Few things say “Good Morning” like putting your foot into a still-warm pool of dog vomit in the dark.

Mind you, I suppose it can only improve from here.  It’d fucking better improve from here, anyway. If it gets any worse I’m going to give up completely.

I’ve found myself being repeatedly annoyed by the stories recently about people in Toyota cars suffering from “Unplanned Acceleration”, where the card supposedly won’t slow down. All of the drivers keep on saying that they were using the brakes but not slowing down, and I’ve always wondered why those drivers don’t just turn off the engine, or put the car in neutral.

I still don’t get why they can’t put the car in neutral and coast to a stop, but I do understand more about why they can’t turn off the engine or pull the key out.  Put simply, it appears there isn’t a key. The cars involved all appear to have these keyless start buttons.

I’d never really thought of keyed ignitions as a safety feature, but it sure seems like it might become one…

[Updated, 13th March : This YouTube video shows how to fix the problem of 'Unplanned Acceleration' in epic style. Love it.]

The car finally passed the MOT yesterday.

It needed a new brake caliper on the back which wasn’t expected, but that’s how these things work out sometimes. ( I was going to say “Them’s the breaks”, but decided I couldn’t be arsed with the pun)  I was quoted £280 to get the replacement caliper supplied and fitted, plus the £[whatever] for an MOT test.

The final bill somehow worked out to be £260 – including the MOT test and re-test (as it failed first time round due to the brake caliper) and also a check/fix on why my rear-washer wouldn’t work. (the bodyshop had fucked up and not reconnected the pipe somewhere along the line)  I’m not quite sure how that works out, but I’m not going to complain…