Ranting and raving

Ranting because:
Google and Safari weren't talking via my Mac, which is largely why I've been absent.
The Stupid People are everywhere. They give you 10 days to interview 20 people and write 7500 words, and then well beyond the deadline ask you to interview 4 more. And they don't seem to want to pay you for your efforts.
The other Stupid People don't know what they want, and they only tell you once you've given them the apparently wrong thing twice.
There's not nearly enough time in the day. And not nearly enough days in the week.

Raving because:
Google and Safari have made friends again. Although they don't seem to be talking picture language...
May is full of good things like:
- Ian and Tamarin's wedding on Saturday - let's hope they survive Ian's mother...
- Tom is here to visit - he's spending Friday night with us, and then we're off to the game reserve with him and Amber next week
- Tamsin, Adam and Tabitha are coming to visit, and they're moving into our cottage for a week - yay!
My husband seems to be ok with the concept of my ex coming for dinner. This is fab because if they could get over themselves, they'd probably be great mates
My child is just fantabulously wonderfully inspirationally excitingly amazing. Any more superlatives would make me look biased...

Food for everyone

In my procrastinations today I came across this article on worldchanging.com. Go here: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006211.html

What fascinates me is the Sikhs' commitment to fulfilling their spiritual obligations. These are regular people living regular lives, only regular has taken on a more humanitarian meaning for them. What a difference it would make if every one of us even offered one hour a week to something like this.

I have to admit that they were right

After our temper tantrums, throwing of things around the office and hurling general verbal abuse at Dial Direct, we were compelled to admit that they were in their rights not to pay us a cent on our insurance claim. They told us to arm the alarm, and we didn't. They were right. The assessor was wrong for leading us to believe that the matter would be negotiable, after sitting with Brett for four hours counting every bean in our whole house.

They will however pay to repair the dining room wall that was damaged when the burglars broke in, and they will pay to paint one wall (how 80's is one wall in a different colour) once the repairs are done. AFTER a R500 excess. Not going to bother, really. The dining room door is now impenetrable (we hope) behind 3 chains and 5 padlocks, and we'll just hang on until we can replace the whole door, like we should have months ago.

Sigh.

We've become statistics...

Last week Wednesday burglars broke into our home and helped themselves to pretty much all of our technology, some of my jewellery, a safe with a gun, passports, ID books and cash in it, my husband's leather trench coat, some of his fragrances, and, bizarrely, all of his underwear. No-one was here. All in all about R75K worth of goods, which they took away in my father-in-law's car that was parked at our house for the day. The dogs don't seem to have been a deterrent - thank goodness they weren't harmed. We're insured, and have embarked on negotiations with the insurance company, but my father-in-law wasn't.

Freaked out on a few levels - I worked at home until 12h30 that day, which I very seldom do. It was a Wednesday, the only day that our domestic worker isn't here. They knew exactly where to find my camera, in a spot all by itself in a bag that doesn't look like a camera bag. And they knew where to go to find the safe.

All things point towards the domestic worker being involved, in that only technology was stolen, and they seemed to know where to find specific things. The other rooms in the house weren't disturbed. They didn't take food, they only helped themselves to a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Expensive tastes, this lot.

My gut is to fire her, she's screwed up enough on other things. But I don't know for sure - it's just a suspicion, and I would hate an innocent person (who has two small chilren to take care of) to be rendered unemployed on a suspicion.

So Thursday was about buying chains and padlocks for the dining room (which is where they got in) and investigating biggerbetterfastermore security for the rest of the house.

I hate this. I hate that we have to consider barricading ourselves inside our house. I hate that while the police were very efficient, they're unlikely to ever catch these guys. I hate that I'm scared to arrive home by myself now, particularly as the gate is manual, because the burglars broke it to get onto the property.

This isn't about hating South Africa - so many victims of crime descend into that. This is about being angry at having my home violated, my space compromised, and being scared to be in my own home by myself. I just hope now that they've got all of our stuff that they stay away. My thoughts are to not replace everything if insurance pays out - we had too much stuff anyway.

SO ANGRY. But ja, shit happens, you just deal with it and move on - no point in dwelling on the bad stuff. Just so grateful that neither we nor the dogs were hurt.

LVHRD

One of my favourite places to spend time when I'm procrastinating in on PSFK - you can visit it here

Go to the architecture page and check out LVHRDs architecture shootout - only in New York...

Visit LVHRD to check out their other stuff, and the first edition of their ezime.

SA Rocks

One of things I'm possibly quite painful about is being positive about South Africa. Pretty much, if you can't cut it here, and if you keep on bitching about things, then leave. Please.

I know that it's so easy to get sucked up by bad media coverage - and there is, I'll admit, a lot of bad news to cover. But there's also good news, lots of it, so please make a point of looking out for it at these places:

www.sagoodnews.co.za
www.sarocks.co.za

Watch out for other good news...

Back again...

OK, that took a while...
Time flies when you're having fun... I'll work on posting more frequently now that the Dec/Jan madness is over...