Holiday (not)

And here begins my week off - or at least it should be, but lack of staff, and excess of work load has led to me working a week of night shift, inplace of a week off.

Night shift is actually preferable to working in the day this week, as W has also taken the week off to be with me. So at least I'm getting to see her in the day.

Bingley has gone in for his heap of procedures at the VET, it was very sad seeing him go this morning - it didn't help that he was so happy to be at the vets (nothing nasty has ever happened to his there before). So he was led away wagging his tail. I'm sure it won't be wagging now. - He's ended up having to stay at the vets overnight. He's fine but the vet recommended we don't take him yet, simply to avoid all the excitement he'll have at seeing us. The only good thing from his overnight stay is that I'll get to be with W tomorrow morning when we pick him up (instead of being stuck at work).

This morning was nearly all take up with a guy from ADT security. I'd arranged for him to come over, and look at ramping up our current home security. I knew he was a salesman, but thought I was ready for his power-sell sales pitch. I wasn't! So we find ourselves signed up for some major security upgrade, a hefty wack to our credit-card, and an ongoing committment for at least three years. OK it makes us pretty secure from the home thief, but does nothing for the one's we invite to discuss home security.

In reality we'll never know if it's payed for itself, since if it does, we'll NOT get burgled. I'm not that disappointed with myself for going a bit over the top - we've needed better security since building the place. Our suburb is reasonably safe --- until you get hit.

One thing that isn't very good in Aus is the police policy on alarms:

1. They won't come out to any alarm thats not monitored 24*7.
2. They won't come out to a monitored house if only one 'zone' has gone off. The alarm has to go off, and the burglar has to trip a 2nd detector before the police will do anything.

This 2nd condition basically requires each room to have two independent detectors - a cash cow
for ADT and like.

We've opted for special sensors which can tell the difference between small animals and humans, by monitoring both movement and body temperature/size - pretty neat if it works, a pain in the neck for us if they don't.

Having talked most of the morning about alarms, and sensors, all we really had time for in the afternoon was a quick visit to the local music shop (which we've only just found) to buy some sheet music, and some picks for the guitar - oh and an impulse purchase of a cheap music stand. - I wonder if we'll ever manage to play something, or just keep spending money...

Time for work...