Thursday, June 30, 2005

Quite a day

Today has been a day of mixed fortunes. The Husband is back after being away on a short contract for three and a half weeks. Yesterday was his last day working. One of the main differences to having him back today is that suddenly the television remote control has disappeared and as soon as I turn my back the picture on the tv disappears and suddenly the Ceefax football pages appears. Ah well, what it is to be married to a third generation Arsenal supporter.

After looking over the garden he announced that we had some spare patches in the garden’s flower beds that needed “something tall” in them. Our garden looks an absolute picture but nevertheless I am always ready to go shopping for more plants. So we popped along to a garden centre on one of the roads leading out of our town. In the garden centre the plants displayed outside looked fine and healthy – these always give me a lift. What threw me completely, though, was that every annual on display had completely gone over. All were kept, and displayed, in a huge shed like area, with a plastic roof. This had been obviously very useful in protecting the plants up to and including the month of May when there were lots of frosts, many very heavy. However, in the last two or three weeks it has been extremely hot and very humid, the weather only breaking a couple of days ago. Obviously the result of this has been that the majority of the plants have already gone over. I found it very disconcerting and gave me a (wrong) gut feeling that many of out plants haven’t long to go. Totally wrong, of course, because most are going to flower until the first frosts. Anyway, we came home with three pale yellow Verbascums (called Custard Banana) which are going to be 6 foot tall when fully grown.

While the Husband was cooking a risotto for lunch, I started on something that he had asked me to do: to set up his own e-mail address, separate from the one I use. The instructions on my ISP’s website looked easy enough and so I set about doing it. It didn’t work. So started the first telephone conversation with a gentleman from the ISP’s call centre in India. It lasted 40 minutes and ended in him telling me to log off my computer, wait 20 minutes and then log on again, after which all would be well. So after eating lunch (very nice, the Husband’s a good cook) I turned on the computer and tried the new e-mail address. Guess what? I didn’t time the second telephone conversation to the call centre but it must have been well over an hour. I must have re-set up the new e-mail address on my computer at least six times, logged on and off our account on the ISP’s website about three times, climbed all through the bowels of Outlook Express and generally came close to tearing out my hair. Eventually it seems to be sorted out. I’m too fed up with the whole thing to look at it again today.

I may be a glutton for punishment but I am wondering whether to set up another e-mail account just for myself and to keep our main e-mail address for general family things. I’ve set up the Husband’s e-mail address so it looks as follows:

[His first name].[our main e-mail identifier]@[our ISP]

I could do the same for a new e-mail address for me, replacing my name for his. I am entitled to more new e-mail addresses from my ISP. But, do I really want the hassle of changing everything to a new e-mail address and notifying friends, etc? I think I am going to sleep on it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Adele, I hope that your custard banana does well for you! I cannot even relate to a man who wishes to go plant shopping, let alone who will notice that "something tall" should go anywhere! If Hunky Husband and I have, in our lives, shopped together for plants, it must have been when I was in a coma. I have no recollection of such. The only input that I get is that I should not plant a tree or that I should not cut down a tree. HH hates it when I plant a tree ("It will be in the way when I mow." or "It's too close to the house."); but, 20-30 years later cannot bear to part with that same tree ("Why would you want to take that tree out?")--even when it has been destroyed by an ice storm. Oh, well. In this way, may I be a teensy bit jealous of you?
Cop Car

Adele said...

The Husband is quite a stylish person. He enjoys clothes shopping far more than I do and regularly drags me out when he wants to buy clothes or shoes for himself. He also has a good eye for design and style, whether in the house, the garden or the way one dresses.

So if you wish you can be slightly jealous of me about this ~grin~. Although I suspect that your Hunky Husband has his own strengths that I would appreciate also.