Hurdles

Very tired tonight but here is a list of today's hurdles to slow everything down and cause frustration.

Work today was at a quarry about 60 miles away. One point nine miles from the site entrance there was a sign to say road ahead was shut; and it was about a hundred yeards after the next bend. There was no obvious signing and I had to phone the site office to get directions to detour through some narrow rural back roads. This added about 10 miles.

Despite working at this site many times over the last ten years a change of staff dictated that we had to sit through a lengthy induction and our first measurement in anger wasn't taken until early afternoon.

There was considerable noise, dust and site traffic about and this all conspired to reduce survey pace. It rained heavy too. I hate days where you are knocking your pan in to achieve only moderate results because of things out of your control.

The drive home was via the same lengthy diversion.

All the vulnerable kit was soaking and had to come in from the car to get dried. Batteries on charge. Day's data downloaded.

Check emails; broadband not working.

Checked the obvious then less obvious things then finally had to phone broadband provider; on hold about thirty minutes to get a human voice. The guy was nice and helpful but initially steered me to check things I had already done. Finally concluded there was indeed a fault locally with BT but advised me that current messing about with router may have upset it. Indeed, when it came back on and I had to do a couple of things to make it connect again.

Delay in starting this morning will likely push site work on to Monday I explained to superviser. He said "We're shut Monday; May holiday"

Now faced with crazy situation of trying to start something else on Monday without having concluded what was started this week.

Oh aye, and I drove past a cracking early morning view over Loch Tarf and I didn't stop to get the blip because I wanted an early start such was the task in front of us.

Deep Breaths, count to ten.