Busy - and Lucky

Last week was a bit intimidating when I looked at in on the Sunday afternoon. Lots of things to do, places to be, things to do, places to be. A lot to remember. (I have argued for decades that if something is not on the calendar then it is not happening. Last week's calendar was very full.)

In the end, of course, it wasn't as intimidating as it looked. I was at work on Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday mornings. The weather was cold, wet and windy, so no real impetus to go out, even into the garden. I did go up and visit Hugo on my way home on Thursday and Friday. I haven't seen him for a while and he seemed pleased to see me.

I have been thinking for a while that I really wanted to go to Daiso for a bit of Japanese shopping. There are branches in the Melbourne CBD, but I knew there were also a few suburban ones. So on Friday I checked to see if there were any remotely handy to Reservoir and discovered there was one at Highpoint. You could, almost, perhaps, describe Highpoint as being vaguely on the way home. So I went there.

I  don't very often go to shopping malls. Very occasionally in the CBD, but much more often when I am in Japan. I kept expecting to find Japanese shops, food outlets, signage. It was a bit odd. There is a Daiso, although it is smaller than the ones in the city. I had a wander around, but cautiously so I didn't get lost, or misplace the car.  I had fish and chips for lunch in the food hall and then made my way home, stopping for fuel on the way.

I got to Hugo's house and went to put subscription TV on. Funny. It was down. Mind you, the weather was atrocious and satellite TV often isn't reliable in wet, windy, cloudy weather. But then you don't get the formal screen apologising for the downtime, just a message that says the signal is down.

Just as I was checking Down Detector, I got a breaking news alert to say that systems were down around Australia - oh yes, and internationally as well.

Uh Oh!

I was very lucky that it happened when it did. I had done my shopping, bought my lunch and paid for my fuel before global IT systems collapsed. The worst that happened to me was that pay TV didn't work. My wifi stayed up, my laptop, tablet and phone behaved impeccably, free to air TV worked. Had it not been for the fact that the TV, radio and news sites turned their attention from wall to wall US politics to the worldwide IT outage, I might not have noticed.

Hugo didn't notice, and didn't care:

Happy with a rawhide bone
and the ABC on the TV

I had a very quiet weekend. No markets to go to. I went to the IGA in Mount Clear on Saturday.  Apart from that I didn't go anywhere. It was a weekend for staying at home in the warm, fire lit, cups of tea, biscuits. I perhaps should have taken the opportunity to do some deep cleaning of the house, or decluttering. But I didn't. Or at least, not much. I did do a bit of cooking and tidying and I have made Hugo's food for the coming week. Now I just need to take it up to him!

This week shouldn't be quite as intimidating. The calendar is relatively quiet. So far!

Sunday afternoon, Mount Helen