The stresses of moving house

It's never easy, moving to a new house, is it? Things never seem to run as smoothly as they could do and you know there's always going to be SOMETHING that goes badly awry.

In this case, the move itself went pretty well, but we've been beset by unforeseen expenses since we got in there. Mainly of the small but annoying sort, such as there not being any hooks on the backs of the doors, or toilet roll holders, or towel rails, or mirrors. So we've had to buy bits and pieces here, there and everywhere.

Of a more spendy nature, we've also had to buy quite a bit of furniture, as my previous place was furnished, and obviously I had to leave all that there. So I've got a small cabinet, a chest of drawers and a desk - all flatpacked. I've put the dresser and cabinet together, just the desk to go. My hands are bloody killing me! Damn RSI.

Mum is still debating about whether to have her bed brought up from storage, or just buy a single bed, which will fit in her room better. She also needs some wardrobes as she's currently just using portable hanging rails. However, she's very picky about furniture and has an unreasonable disdain for flatpacks.

She actually suggested that we pay some bloke to come round and put my flatpacks together. I refused, so that was money saved, LOL.

T-Mobile have let me down with the free laptop offer. When I checked the signal strength with their online tool for this area, it was showing as good coverage. However, I found that in fact I could only get a 2G signal - even up in the attic - which gives less than a dial-up connection. So I've sent that back to T-Mob. It's a major let-down, because now I won't be able to test any products until I'm back online with regular broadband, which isn't going to be until about 10th October. So I'm losing money there. On the flip side, I now won't be paying the monthly charge to T-Mobile, so it's swings and roundabouts really. Also, I'll have quite a lot of offline time so perhaps I'll be able to work on some new products.

I'm very disappointed this week to learn that Son has got himself a 2-day exclusion from school. This means he has forfeited our proposed trip to Cyprus next year. So I'm deciding what to do with the money for that trip as I don't want to go on my own. Current idea is to see if my sister and her husband feel like coming, as I think they would like Cyprus. But I've yet to discuss that with her. Mum definitely won't come as she doesn't like air travel.

Well that's all for now. I am working a double shift today and on Monday, so that's 10.5 hours of overtime this week, and since my colleague has just handed in his notice, I think I'll be earning quite a lot more in the next few weeks... It's just a question of what I'm going to spend it on!!