The Trouble You Can Get Into Staying Indoors

 

The rabid weather continues.  You can feel it trying to sink its fangs into you even through the window.  Grrrrrr it says.  Waiting for you.  You can't hide indoors forever.  True.  Next time the domestic companions are going to be goldfish.  Meanwhile Peter's next-door neighbours are having their (rear) bedroom painted and are therefore sleeping in the (front) guest room and have put in a Special Request that their neighbour's peculiar wife leave at mmph o'clock in the morning quietly.*  Try scraping the new quarter-inch of ice off your windscreen quietly.  I said irritably to Peter, maybe we'll just walk home tonight.  Peter suggested a blanket over the windscreen.  Windscreen has been suitably enrobed.  I predict that at mmph o'clock this morning the blanket will merely have frozen to the windscreen. . . .

I've spent way too much of today on line ordering semi-last-minute Christmas presents** and several of the sites are saying 'due to extreme weather, you may not get this till February, but that's okay, right?  You wouldn't still be Christmas shopping now.'***  Er.  Well.  I had started the Christmas sprint this weekend;  retailers are busy laying out their supplementary lures and a Large Famous Museum with an Excellent Shop (and of which I Am a Member) had sent me a come-on for 15% off, just this weekend.  I had a good time yesterday evening, skipping through the virtual pages, and rolled up to the check-out with a basket to make their marketing manager proud.

The site wouldn't accept my password.

The site wouldn't accept the new password it had just that minute sent me when I assumed I had taken leave of my senses and done something clever about my password, and then forgotten what it was. 

It still wouldn't accept my old password, which I was pretty sure was the old password.

It wouldn't let me register as a new customer, because it already had me on its database.

It wouldn't let me give it money to buy stuff as a nonregistered visitor, which some sites will let you do.†

And of course the 15% off was over at midnight.

I wrote them a very cranky email.

This morning I received a polite apology from the Large Famous Museum, a new password, and the offer of 20% off for any order I made today.

I ordered.  It appears to have gone through.  I appear to have got the 20% discount.  And it may arrive before February if the weather lets it.

Today I've also been trying to sort out my charity gifts—you know the kind of thing, you get a Christmas card and a certificate that says Hi!  You've just made Zebediah, the Amazonian Horned Frog, very happy with your donation, which will keep him in hamburgers and undersized capybaras for six months!  And then you write somebody else's name in the blank at the top and stick it in the Christmas card and send it along.  A lot of these sites will do the sending for you, but that requires a higher level of organization than I can cope with all at once like that—it's enough that I'm buying the things, I'll figure out who they go to later.  I always buy a few more than I think I'm going to use because Zebediah still gets his capybara steaks and nobody knows you're a shambolic nincompoop but you. 

But the Evil Site Monster is still spotlighting me.  I was adopting a tiger for a tiger-mad friend today from a Large Famous Wild Things Preservation Society which I am no longer a member of because they are such hopeless incompetents on the admin side you have to wonder how good they are on the practicals.  However they have a very attractive tiger package and maybe they've improved. 

Got to the end of the filling out and ticking boxes and agreeing to things.  Presumably you also have noticed the way pretty much every sales site on the planet tells you to print out your receipt page?  What?  No.  There's a lot about life on line that irritates the crap out of me but not having knee-high piles of sales receipts is one of the benefits.  Most of them email you, so I just leave the window open till the email arrives.  If I'm in a hurry, I copy the receipt page into a Word document. 

The email didn't arrive.  And it didn't arrive . . . I went back to look at the receipt page and noticed that it says Download your certificate here!  What?  I'm supposed to get something official-looking in the post.  Something you download doesn't have the cachet.  Dubiously I pressed the 'download' button.  I am chuted to a new page, and am then given a pop-up box telling me I need a bolt-on flimflammer to do their brouhaha justice.  Haven't got, don't want, go away.  Closed the flimflam pop-up, pressed the 'back' button . . . and am dumped into a blank page containing nothing but an aloof-looking tiger and a 'Nice to know you, sucker hahahahahahaha!' banner from the Large Famous Wild Things Preservation Society. 

And the email still hasn't arrived. 

* * *

* Rats.  You mean they don't like my rendition of Una Voce Poco Fa?  I think I approach the exquisite musicality of Florence Foster Jenkins^ rather closely.  But I will tell the hellhounds to pee in a more subdued manner. 

^ Who can be successfully googled for under 'notoriously awful soprano'.  Regular readers of this blog are already acquainted. 

** True last-minute Christmas shopping begins on the 23rd.  The jolly red haze of panic begins at 6 pm on Christmas Eve.  Some of you may remember that I must bear this time of year under the further burden of having a husband who is impossible to buy presents for whose frelling birthday is nine days before Christmas.  I hadn't fully thought this through when I asked him to marry me. 

*** There is no post in January, of course.  The Royal Mail really does perform heroics—not always the correct heroics, but heroics—in the run up to Christmas, and then has a nervous breakdown that lasts till about the middle of February. 

† Dogging your every key-press with breathless descriptions of the wonders to be had as a signed-up comrade.