End of hell week

What a day! Up at 6 to get the train to Exeter, the client arrived an hour early so we didn't have any time to practice our presentation, and instead of staying 3 hours as planned, they stayed 6.  (From a sales perspective we must have done a good job, but coming the end of this week the last thing I wanted to do was talk to 10 strangers...)

I had security duty in Maidenhead tonight (of all nights), so I had to be there at 7:50. The trains from Exeter were hourly, and the last one I could take and get there in time was 5:03. Leaving nothing to chance, I called ahead and booked a taxi for 4:30, even though the train station was only 10 minutes away.

The taxi showed up at 4:54! The only reason I made it was the train was 1 minute late!  Unbelievable.

I got to Reading at 7 and had to leg it back to my house to get my car to leave by 7:20--the synagogue is 25 minutes away--only to find I had a flat tire!!

Assuming it was a slow leak (I hadn't driven the car in a week), I went to the nearby gas station and, after I paid 50p, discovered their air compressor didn't work! 

So I crawled--at 20mph--to the next gas station,*6 miles* away! That's when I discovered the first air compressor wasn't broken, I just didn't know how to use it. (The second pump was exactly the same but included directions, and after you paid you had to press a button to actually start pumping.)

In the middle of all this, I got a call from the girl I was infatuated with (and still am). When she told me she wasn't interested in dating, I suggested we be friends. Now she was calling to tell me she wasn't interested in being friends, either! Could this day get any worse? :-(

I did make it the synagogue--about 20 minutes late--but it wasn't a slow leak, and an hour later the tire was flat again. I couldn't be bothered to change it--I just pumped it up again and drove home. Tomorrow I'll take it to the shop and see how much damage I did...

But hell week is over! Well, almost--tomorrow, after I take care of the car, I'm going into London to meet a woman for coffee (first date), see some friends, and see the musical 'Ragtime.' It is at the 'open air theatre' so of course booking in advance in England is quite risky, but I really lucked out--it is supposed to be a fabulous weekend!