Looking up (Assignment 12 revisited)

A bit of a mixed-up day.

It's been difficult to deal with the bombshell announcement of Treegonk's withdrawal from Blip, and I've thought about it a lot with sadness during the day.

But bliplife goes on despite even the most traumatic setbacks, and suddenly I find myself at the beginning of the final week before my Croatian holiday. The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, as Robbie so wisely put it, and this was definitely the case when it came to my grand plan to knuckle down to work over the weekend and break the back of the multiple jobs which need to be wrapped up by Thursday afternoon at the latest. What a desperately unproductive weekend it turned out to be! I was up and about at 6.30 am today in an effort to make up for it, and put one of he jobs to bed by 10.00. Job no. 2(a) bit the dust by lunchtime, and suddenly it began to look as if I'd get on top of things.

But no, that's not how it worked out. I needed to sort out some bank stuff, both business and personal, and this involved walking first in one direction to one bank and then in the opposite direction to another to sort out withdrawals and lodgements. All well and good, but it ate into the afternoon and it was 4.00 pm by the time I was back home. I'd previously decided that I'd take a test drive in my car this evening to see if I was ready to drive again. This involved going out to Dún Laoghaire to meet Carl who's been keeping my car busy while I've been unable to use it, and I also needed too check in with my optician and have some adjustments made to the frames of my new glasses. I phoned him at 4.15, his receptionist told me to be there by 5.15 to have the necessary done, I had to dash out right away to catch bus and DART and get there in time.

Glasses sorted, I still had a while to kill before Carl finished work, so naturally I went blipping. It was a beautiful evening, and camera and I had a ball. Chief among the blippable was this seafront folly which I presume was originally a functioning drinking fountain. It's a beautiful wrought-iron structure and was just crying out to have the lens pointed at it. When all was said and done, though, looking up into the filigreed domed roof produced the best result of all.

Blip sorted, I headed for our rendezvous point. The test drive went well, and I gave Carl the bad news officially: it's time to hand back the car after the six and a half weeks it's been without me. Food followed (a pleasant meal in the Valparaiso restaurant in Monkstown), I dropped Carl off and drove back home. After this blip upload it's time for a cup of coffee and then a few early-morning hours catching up on the work I should have been doing during the past eight hours.