Frack a doodle doo

This day has officially been one of those days.

I was due to go to Birmingham for a meeting which I was not best pleased about to be honest. Still, needs must and all that, so I set off at my usual unearthly hour and got as far as Meadowhall before the matrix signs started flashing a message about the motorway being closed at Junction 29 by an overturned lorry. I made an executive decision and turned around at the next junction and went home for a cup of coffee.

I kept an eye on the traffic news website and set off again two hours after my original departure time and eventually got to the office at half past eleven. The day was filled with numerous irritating things to sort out, including a mail merge that produced a snapshot file that looked fine on my screen, fine when printed from my laptop but for some reason had a bizarre printing artefact introduced when emailed to somebody else and printed by them. The major fail of the day was the invoice printing routines which were fine for normal invoices and credits, and also for the discounted variants (including crediting back the VAT at the correct rate) but turned out to be completely b0rked when split over more than one page. I worked for two hours solid trying to resolve it, but gave up as the deadline for printing approached and went back to original printing routines which don't look half as nice as the new ones. Not the end of the world, but a disappointment nonetheless,

The journey home was as enjoyable as you might expect Friday night on the M1 to be, but it was a joy to come back to a warm, welcoming and tidy house so I could just dump my laptop bag and put my feet up with a glass of St Peter's organic ale. Bliss. Even my jeans had been thoughtfully warmed by Frank the cat sleeping on them for most of the day ...

In other news, have I ever mentioned how much I like swords? I'd ordered a new Paul Chen practical katana for my Iaido work and it arrived yesterday, keeping up my annual tradition of celebrating St Valentine's day with lethal weaponry. It is absolutely gorgeous, easy to draw, well weighted for cuts and stances and utterly deadly. Yum.