It's a Dog's Life

Wednesday arrived and there was another estate agent at the door. This one had precious little idea about who we were and thought we were the owners. We declined to have anything to do with him, and rang our rental manager to ask what was going on. She wasn't impressed and said she'd find out.

The rest of the morning was spent doing yet more web oriented stuff in preparation for knocking the socks off my potential customer/acquaintance. However my task was hindered by the need to tidy the house which we had allowed to go to ruin for a few days. My good lady is not the most house proud of women, and I generally don't bother too frequently, but when I do take an interest the place comes up like a new pin. The major impetus for all this domestic drudgery was the impending arrival tomorrow of an estate agent, who was allegedly going to be taking pictures.

Craig went to look at a car but Di, who tagged along to make sure he didn't do anything stupid, refused to let him buy it as it was a heap. I've told him to save up and wait for something decent to come along, but he won't listen to reason. Old second hand cars are reasonably pricey for some odd reason, but the auction is quite cheap. Citing the Mirth Mobile as an example was not popular so I decline to get involved further.

Time for a run - this time into and completely round the mount in one go and a casual jog back home. Definitely getting it back.

Today the agent came and did his business, but while he was here, our rental gent phoned and asked to speak to him. He got a bit of an ear bending, from what we could hear. Our rental agent came round a little later to chat about all the agents that were descending on us, and to put our mind at rest that we had a rock solid contract until the end of March. Apparently the reason for the lack of communication is due to the agents being appointed by the bank, not the landlord. It seems that there is a possibly repossession on the cards and the house may end up going to auction. We wondered whether this might be an opportunity to make a cheap buy. I don't want to live here long term, but it might be a good rental investment.

And so to the meeting with my potential new clients. To cut a long story short, they were quite impressed with the work I'd done. Phew. I went away with some revisions and a couple of other sites to, ahem, base the rest of the work on. They also introduced me to a small graphic design company, who apparently get asked to do web sites and have not the skill. The idea is that I pick up the slack.

After I got home, I wandered up to V&W's spot to find the rest of the family who were babysitting since V&W had gone out. On the way back, Imogen was giving me a hard time about being the meanest father in the world because I wouldn't let them have a dog. I was in the process of explaining why a dog was not a good idea, when a small black poodle thing wound itself around my legs. Having checked for divine influence and also for any likely looking candidates for ownership I could find neither. Clearly it had managed to escape from somewhere, but after a few doors were knocked on in a fruitless search for the owner, we took it home where it consumed a large bowl of water. We printed a few posters and stuck them on the lamp posts. About 10 minutes later, the owner rang to claim his pooch, which let me off the hook.

Craig made an appearance with a very rough looking Honda Civic - 18 years old and $1,900. The guy apparently bit his arm off, even though he had asked for $2,500. He now has his NZ licence, and insurance even with his dodgy record is $300 or thereabouts, and the fools will let him pay monthly for no extra charge.