Blood on the Carpet

Last week was something of a blur. I've been flat out working on the web project which I'd estimated at 60 hours. However various interludes haven't helped the deadline. Good job I didn't actually give one. I had a brief meeting with another web design company, who seemed rather keen to harness my database/integration skills. My membership of the networking group has been approved so I now have fifteen or so people who are supposed to refer me as to all and sundry.

We've had some immense fun with the broadband connection this week. I noticed on Sunday that we seemed to have use 75% of our monthly allowance in just two days. After a bit of a rant at the kids, who denied all knowledge, I attempted to call Telecom to find out what was going on. Their call centre appears to be somewhere in the Philippines, and they were pretty useless, claiming that the router had a virus or that someone had cracked the wireless key. I got them to send us an hourly breakdown of the usage, which revealed that between midnight and 8AM there was a 300MB/hour upload going on. This was rather a good trick considering that all the machines and the router were switched off. A few more phone calls and interminable time on hold, dropped calls and general mucking about, and I finally got to speak to someone with a brain. It transpires that our broadband connection hadn't been moved and we were therefore being blamed for someone else's usage. This is where the fun started. We were plugged into the "wrong" port on the exchange which although they sorted that out, the existing usage statistics were another matter. It seems that there's nothing they can do other than wait until we hit the limit and then remove it. There's no way that this can be done in advance apparently. Having been inspired by their call centre, I asked for a direct dial number - and the guy at the other end gave me his mobile. We'll see what happens when we hit the limit.

Phoebe and Freya took part in a cross-country running event at Blake Park. Freya was 4th out of the 40 or so girls in her age group, and Phoebe 9th out of 30. Both came home waving certificates and it was certainly great fun to watch. The turnout of parents was rather impressive for 10AM. This wasn't the end of the sporting activities this week, however. We acquired a trampoline which the kids had been after for a while. It's now sat in the middle of the front lawn tempting any passing kids into having a bounce. Imogen and Rhiannon were trying it out and got a bit carried away. Imogen managed to bounce into Rhiannon' s head. Rhiannon escaped unharmed, but Imogen wasn't so fortunate, receiving a gash above her eye which needed stitches. The first we heard of it was the loud screaming and the blood trail leading inside.

I headed off to the hospital. We were assessed by the triage nurse very quickly, but then told there was a 2.5 hour wait. The nurse informed us that we could try one of the private doctors who charge a small fee. She called the nearest one up, who claimed a 15 minute waiting time. This seemed like it was worth the $30, so we headed town to the place and got seen instantly and were out, fully stitched in 15 minutes. Had I remembered the community services card, it would have been cheaper. We also discovered that there's one of these places just around the corner from us so we could have avoided a trek to the other side of Tauranga. Sigh.