Friday!

I woke sometime during the night - again! Fortunately, this time, I was able to go back to sleep, but I still overslept a little. I had just a small coffee and was able to leave at six - only just missing the worst of the traffic!

All staff are back at work and we have orders, so everyone is busy. I caught up with the paperwork, which kept me busy the whole day. Sigh. I must make time to automate that - at the moment, there is no system, so you end up re-typing the same data into multiple spreadsheets, each keeping 'record' of some aspect of the same thing. It's awfully cumbersome and tedious - and the worst part is: most of it would be written down on a 'form' and later captured!

It's not rocket science! Ha Ha Ha! More like rock art ...

Anyway, there will be a brainstorming session on Wednesday afternoon regarding the Part Numbers - the more input, and especially the input from the owner - the better the chance the system has to live long and prosper. The more I know about what my boss has in mind where this business is going in the future - the better I can take those plans into consideration when designing any system!

When I told my boss about it, just so it can simmer in his back brain for a while, he shook me by the hand - that's his equivalent of breaking out into a happy song-and-dance!

After work, I went to the Orchards Spar - not the Ninapark one, as I had planned. I gave it a thorough investigation and concluded not to waste my time shopping there again. Firstly, it's a KwikSpar, so it's expensive. Secondly, I was about to take one of my favourite Juices, when I looked at the sell-by date: 20 Feb! Over 2 weeks past it's sell-by date! They also have nothing special - their fruit and veg section is ... not appetising. Their aisles are too narrow - a customer had to push a floor-trolley laden with 10k bags of dog food around the corner, or nobody could have got past! The cashier was totally disinterested - I felt like slapping her.

I had never given this Spar much consideration in the past, since it was always 'merely close to work' and I've always had better places to shop near home. I'm glad I took the time to look around thoroughly today - and I'm happy to keep it as 'better than nothing, in an emergency'.

However, the reason I didn't go all the way to Ninapark: Traffic! The whole area gets off work at the same time and the traffic was awful! I got home at ten to four! Think about it: last Friday I drove all the way out to Pretoria East and got home at ten past four - today, I spent 15 minutes in a shop around the corner from work!

I'll have to come up with a different plan. I'm thinking of trying Ninapark on Monday after work - and if not, then Tuesday during work, though I don't like asking for time off ... sure, I could just go - everybody else does, but my staff don't.

As I was driving home, it looked like rain. It rained in Rosslyn, but not at home. The sky was overcast, thunder was rumbling and lightning showed up as well - but that didn't mean it would rain. It did, however, deter me from showering - no need to take unnecessary chances!

Instead, I let my mippies out and spent the rest of the afternoon - and quite a lot of the evening - in the garden! Ziva did not really come outside - I'm not sure why. Lady Jane and Mewthos stayed near me at first, but later on Mewthos went for an extended stroll! I have no clue how far he went - I lost sight of him several times!

As for myself, I started pulling out ... grass. Not the lawn, but that wheat-like stuff growing in the large part of my garden. It comes out quite easily in the softer ground and I stuck to that for now. Then I watered the patch I'm hoping to work on tomorrow ... and as I was watering, it started to rain. It rained on and off, though not really hard, the rest of the evening - but I carried on pulling those grass things. I didn't get particularly wet.

At one point, I unsettled a toad which hopped off grumpily. Not a very large one - I would have guessed it to be a frog, except that it seems to live in this dry place. Lady Jane saw it and sniffed it ... then made it quite clear that she had gotten a bad taste in her mouth! Yet she wouldn't learn and tried sniffing the toad again - I had to get quite firm with her!

I carried on clearing swathes of grass until it was too dark to see. I had to call Lady Jane, but she came shooting through the gate along the path and into the flat so fast, I nearly missed it! Getting them inside was no trouble - tomorrow will be a different story, I'm sure! Especially if it doesn't rain tomorrow! It's raining quite hard and steady now.

I gave them a treat, followed by another and then took a quick shower. It's not fun with the glove - and I keep stopping just short of using my bare hand to turn the tap! I asked the landlord and he said he keeps phoning and they keep telling him they're working on it - he says he's getting quite angry with them now! Well, it's not his fault and there really isn't much more one can do.

I don't want to get up late tomorrow, so I had better try this sleep thing again ...