Blisters and the London Balboa Festival

Since I've been lecturing on Mondays at Queen Mary's, I've been sticking around to dance at the 100 Club, in London. This Monday I danced harder than usual, apparently. First, I was absolutely soaked clear through. It was much worse than usual. And it wasn't the only indicator of unusually vigorous dancing. I actually put blisters on both feet. At that point, I quit dancing for the night. I had several really great dances, which is clearly why I ended up dancing myself into blisters. And it wouldn't be a problem in a normal week. This, however, is not a normal week. Tonight I'm off to London for the London Balboa Festival. It's my favourite dance weekend of the whole year. It sort of started yesterday, with a 'pre' dance. But officially, it starts this evening, with a social dance. Then, tomorrow bright and 'early' (no earlier than 10 am. We are Swing Dancers, after all. And a Swing Dancer is naturally a dirunal creature) we start in with classes. Then, we take a break around half five in the evening, and start back in for another evening of social dancing. At the end of the social dance, there's an 'after' party. That probably won't end till some rediculous time, like 4 in the morning! Then, Sunday bright and even (relatively) earlier (read, same time.... but 4 am is a rough time to get home!) it's back to the school room for more classes. And another break for everyone to get all gussied up, for the formal dance to end the weekend. It's a wonderful weekend. Just not maybe what my blistered feet need! Never mind. I'll survive.

Therefore, anyone looking to hear from me is going to be disapointed until at least Monday. But, as I'm not coming home til after dancing Monday night, there's probably not going to much of a chance for me to do anything until Tuesday. And even then, I'm probably not going to be too coherent until sometime Tuesday afternoon . . . or maybe even Wednesday! Enjoy your weekend!

No Idea What to Blog!

I'm sitting here thinking back over the week, and I honestly can't think of anything to say about the week. I did my usual thing.... QM, no dancing because I'd hurt my ankle on Sunday, Young Women's, Essex teaching, Data Session, PhD supervision, Oooh.... I did go to the Reading YSA Dance (nothing particularly exciting there, though.... just a really late night!!), and Stake Conference yesterday/today. So... good night. Let's hope next week is more exciting!

8 And A Half Weeks....

....'Til Steve can make my computer all better! Oh, I'm so excited. I've been having trouble with it again this week. It keeps over heating, which is really annoying. And I'm not talking about rediculous things like, you've left it on for 14 days straight (or even 14 hours!) I'm talking about, it's been on for 45 minutes, and is already suffering. And several different programs are no longer functioning, either not correctly or not at all.... And I'm generally fed up. GRRRRR!!!!!

How DARE They?!?

This week I had an unpleasant experience this week. I went into London on Wednesday (that was fun) for a dance workshop (though, no dancing... it was all talking about how to improve the musicality of our dancing. Sometimes to get better at dancing, you have to step off the dance floor.) When I got home -- roughly 1.00 in the morning -- I discovered a parking ticket on my car. Oh, I was livid. How dare they accuse me of stealing from their company? Because, that is what they have done. By ticketing my car for not paying the daily charge, they have done the equivalent of accusing me of walking out of a shop without paying for the merchandise! I have never in my life stolen anything, including time in a carpark. And what really made me angry was, when I arrived at the carpark, I parked in a bay that was 2 down from where the attendant was checking payments. In other words, he saw me arrive, and knew I had been there less than 5 minutes. The second thing I did was stop at the payment station. And that was directly in front of the attendant. So again, he knew I was not dodging the fee. Now, on his side, I did not have a payment slip displayed in the windscreen of my car. Why? Because I payed electronically over my phone. This is not a new thing they've just started. It's been around for a couple years now. You can phone in your details and pay the fee off your credit card. Your car reg then gets sent to the database, and the attendant scans your reg, and sees that the fee has been paid. Now, this process takes a couple minutes to complete. However, the ticket the attendant issued was dated 3 minutes after the text was sent to my phone saying that the payment had been completed. That ought to have been sufficent for the transaction to appear in the database. And in anycase, the attendant saw me phone it in! Idiot.

I sent a letter of complaint (allong with the proof that they had unjustly inflicted a £50 penalty fee) requesting that they improve their staff training, appologise to me, and pay me the £50 that they tried to extract from me. (I don't really expect to receive the £50, but it gives me room to bargon with to get the postage I had to pay to send the proof of having been wrongly accused via registard post. £10.50! For the cheap rate!!)