The Thessaliad Redux

So let's say you're someone who's been selling a bunch of BPAL imps and bottles they wanted to get shot of. And you take an order from someone in another country for one bottle and a bunch of imps. About a month later, you realise that, while the bottle is gone, you still have those imps. The customer in the other country hasn't been in touch with you to say that they got the bottle but that the imps were missing. So you, being a conscientious seller of such things, get in touch with the buyer and ask if they ever got the bottle. They tell you that no, the order never arrived. So there you are with the imps the buyer asked for, but no bottle. Whoops. After reaming out the person you put in charge of sending out the orders, what is your course of action?

a) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and offer a replacement bottle from the ones you haven't sold yet, hoping like hell there's something in there they want.
b) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and tell them that you are going to order a replacement bottle from a local distributor ... unless there's something they prefer from the ones you haven't sold yet.
c) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and tell them that you are going to order a replacement bottle of that scent or any other general catalogue item that the buyer might want to make up for the inconvenience ... unless there's something they prefer from the ones you haven't sold yet.

In this case, I am the buyer. A particularly charming young lady on LJ was the seller. And I got option C. So for the record, miss_twilight is pure awesome (so seriously, if you happen to trip over any of her posts on the BPAL addict forums on LJ? And you like anything you see there? I recommend her highly), and I am getting a bottle of Shoggoth, which I have been looking for forever. Seriously, I thought the only way I was going to get my hands on that scent was to go through the BPAL site, which ... well, there are issues there with British shipping and card purchases and I prefer to avoid it where possible. And I at least still have the imp of the bottle I ordered in the first place (Sea of Glass, my first BPAL courtesy tithenai along with Sudha Segara). I wouldn't have minded both - I mean, I wouldn't have ordered it if I didn't like it; I ordered the bottle of Summer's Last Will and Testament on the strength of the imp, after all - but ... whole. Bottle. Of Shoggoth. I should feel bad for the whole thing where I'm getting something for a little bit less than it's worth, but I can't feel too bad because if I was going to get exactly what I ordered, the buyer would have lost money anyway to replace it and it was not my mistake that lost me the bottle in the first place.

Incidentally, still working on the whole WoD perfume thing. There's just not much to say until my bloody empty imps get here. But they're shipping from, like, South Korea or something so I am not panicking yet. I need more bottles and I desperately need a few more scented oils before I can make half of what I want, though. And if you could see the collection I've already amassed? The fact that I can still say that is scary.

*ahem* I had massive attack of migraine today. This was not fun, as you can well imagine. It's a fair bit better now, in that I can actually see straight and my head doesn't feel like someone's drilling in it. This was not so much the case this morning, when someone in the local area close by my open-because-of-the-muggy window was doing construction work. Sure, it's damn near impossible to deal with a migraine at work, where impromptu meetings happen maybe a foot away from the back of my chair a few times a day and I'm trying to type near-indecipherable, heavily-accented pseudo-English through a nasty tape hiss, but it's better than someone drilling. Still, I dosed myself with the knock-out painkillers (I pray this goes away entirely soon because I cannot afford more knock-out painkillers and average OTC paracetamol does not work) and when I woke up, the construction work had gone away and my head felt better.

Peering out the window this afternoon, though, netted me an interesting sight. In the back garden three doors down sits a blue box. With doors. Over which are written 'Police Public Call Box'. Yes, the neighbours three doors down have a freakin' TARDIS in their back garden. I just wish I knew which flat it was so I could leave a note saying, "Awesome TARDIS, guys".

And, to continue the theme of 'a Warcrack mention with every post' ... why are there level 85 Alliance NPCs in a level 30-40 zone? I went in what I thought was just a tiny touch over my head earlier (fighting level 35-36 bears with my level 33 paladin to get at gold and iron deposits in Western Plaguelands) and was doing really well until I wandered down the road and smacked into what I think was a Draenei and a Human. I just had enough time to mouse over them and read, "........What do you mean, level 85?!?" when ... smush. Dead belf. I have since moved back to Northern Stranglethorn. Amazing how good the mining is in a freakin' jungle ... plus I have all those quests. Mostly killing things. Woo.

So ... yeah, I got dragged into another instance today. And y'know what? It didn't suck. I still kept kind of flailing, or I felt like I was, but it didn't suck.

Look, I was blundering out and about in Arathi, trying to get this one quest done (at least until I realised it was a liiiiiittle bit above my level. But I did figure out that I can be mobbed by two guys three levels up from me and still survive, which is ... good) and as I was trying to take down these two individuals, the person who invited me to the last instance invited me to another one. I tried to turn them down, I really did - explained that I didn't want to go through the same kind of fiasco I did the last time - but their response to that was to tell me that it was better to learn at lower levels than later. I considered telling them that hey, not if I plan to get through entirely on soloing? But I decided that I was better off explaining the problem, which was that no one ever tells me what the hell we're supposed to be doing in these dungeons. They explained (basically, kill everything until you hit the boss at the end) and with all due trepidation, I agreed. So next thing I know, I'm in the middle of the Scarlet Monastary, trying to hold hate as we hacked our way through I dunno what and there were NPCs with exclamation points that I never had time to click on and ... well ... it didn't entirely suck. At least I mostly held hate and held my own. I died once, but hey, it happens, and the one who invited me was a shammie so I got rezzed and we went on. Most of all? Everyone just kind of shut up and got on with it and there was no running commentary about how much I sucked. Which is good. So ... yeah. Dungeon that did not suck. There was supposed to be a second but people bailed and the most it taught me was how to disband from a party. Which no, I did not know how to do. Now I know. Woo.

I also ditched Blacksmithing. Well, it was freakin' dull. I picked up Jewelcrafting instead, because I've been having fun with that with my Draenei shammie. My mining's been coming along nicely, too - going after ogres in Arathi netted me a fair ol' bit of iron ore. I don't think that's going to be useful in Jewelcrafting but it'll sell at the auction house, I'd imagine. I made the unpleasant discovery that you cannot send bits and pieces between your alts if they're not both with the same faction, though, which blows. I'm going to need faction mules or something.

So ... yeah. To tyrell, I can only say that yes, you were right about the Prot spec, not to mention Seal of Insight - woo, that is one useful little thing to have. And to wingedkami ... thanks for the mining tips and I blame you for the enabling. So there. Ha. *g*

The weekends are way, way too short. I see uncertainty on the rise tomorrow as Schrodinger's Admin comes back from her two weeks' 'sick leave for stress' or whatever the hell. I dunno what's going on, I dunno where I'm going to end up sitting tomorrow and all I know for sure is that I'm going to end up camped in front of my office manager's door until she gets in sometime after quarter past nine so that I can find out the answers to these questions. Woo. *sigh* I'd like my job a lot better if it wasn't for shit like this.

Oooh! But Rebekah Brooks got arrested! *squeak* There is at least some justice in the world. Though there was this one guy in the second-hand bookstore I went to yesterday ranting about how it was all going to just be smoothed over and Murdoch playing a long game and will be allowed to buy the rest of BskyB next year and yadda yadda. It's probably true, but it's got a level of pessimism that even I can't manage. I'm just glad that there seems to be something going in the general direction of "someone's getting what's coming to them" in this whole thing.

Also, while wandering yesterday, I happened to drop into this shop that does incense and candles and a lot of hoodoo stuff ... and fragrance oils. The kinds I thought I could only get online. Didn't have the cash to do anything with it then, but by the end of the month ... booya! *g* It was just happenstance that I wandered in at all; I thought it might be something that might be useful, but I didn't know how useful. Sometimes I have luck. It's a thing.

Right. I suppose there should be vegging with what veg-time I have left before I need to consider stupid things like bed and work in the morning. Bleh. This is why it's easier to talk about things like Warcrack than it is about my actual life.

There are too many things I want and not enough damned money.

So okay. A Dance With Dragons is coming out. I'm ... not entirely sure how much I want this but given that I am all over fan communities, there feels like there's a kind of obligation and it sounds from the spoilers like things have drastically improved. Some of the threads seem to be coming together and I admit I want to be there to see it. Though ... hardcover prices for this guy? I dunno. But I must not blame the books for Martin's ... attitude problem.

And then there's Ghost Story. This one? This one is a must-have. This one is going to have me dashing up to the nearest bookstore, tearing it apart until I find what I want, hugging the book all the way to the cash register and giving over my money in the most cheerful manner possible. I have been waiting too damn long for what happens to poor Harry Dresden.

I want to give Seanan McGuire's stuff a try too. Not the Newsflesh stuff she writes as Mira Grant; I'm on that already. I mean her fantasy stuff. I'll start with the October Daye books, as I was okay on Holly Black beyond not quite being engaged with her writing style and this sounds like a similar sort of thing. I do know that McGuire is one of those authors who engages you very firmly in the world of the story, instead of focusing on the lead character and the imagery, and that's the sort of thing I look for. Pretty language is all very well, but ... I guess the best way I could put it is that I want my book to be an amusement park, not an art gallery. Anyway, I also want some of her filk but I wish we could buy the downloads rather than order CDs that then need to be shipped and possibly broken and ... egh. Plus Pretty Little Dead Girl is going out of print and that's the one I want the most. So we'll see at the end of the month, but ... waaaaaaant.

Oh, and then there's a bit of DLC coming out for Dragon Age 2. Now, I know what-all I said about the Origins DLC and I never bothered with the Exiled Prince in DA2 because he seems boring and I'm not paying for him now that I missed the pre-order. However, I have seen trailers for this and it actually looks phenomenal. Finally, DLC I don't mind paying money for! This is new!

On the subject of video games ... well, some of you may be aware that I'm a total sucker for OSTs, specifically the instrumental scores. My collection is growing by leaps and bounds these days: Carnivale, Firefly (and Serenity), Dragon Age, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Game of Thrones, Mass Effect 2 (and I haven't even played the game...), Pan's Labyrinth, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Saw, Silent Hill, the Watchmen movie, Advent Children ... and now some of the Warcraft scores. I am, unfortunately, missing a couple. I have Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King, but am missing out on the base game OST and Burning Crusade, and it's that last I really want. Well, I can get it on iTunes, but ... y'know. Not right away.

But I'm being fiscally responsible, damnit.

Anyway, on the subject of Warcrack, Dar'Khan kicked my arse yesterday. I therefore decided to go level up a bit more before taking this guy on. I'm figuring more stuff out at this point, and it's a lot easier to get around than it used to be, what with warhorse and figuring out the flight routes and all. And I even figured out the zeppelin when I desperately needed a break from the undead, so now I'm in Orgrimmar, after figuring out the bank (I can store shit! WOO!) and having made a few purchases from the auction house so that I could level up my cooking a bit more. Wonder how the auctions I put up recently went. I put up some copper and some bronze, and a few more gems. This should, if I get bids, make me some gold. That'd be nice. Though to be fair, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with more gold. Beyond put it into levelling up various crafting bits and bobs, y'know? Then it's back to the Forsaken Front to do more quests for the rotting corpses. *g*

Ah, lazy Sundays, how I love thee.

So I'm watching the remake of the series V and ... yeah, I can see why they cancelled it. I hate that they did it on such a cliffhanger, but while I like the mood of the series better than I did the original in the 80s, there are problems with this show. The number of plot threads they just sort of dropped, or put back together really haphazardly with seemingly no connection to the previous episode, are kind of monumental. Some secondary characters just ... kind of ... vanished. It's not the first show where the writing team didn't seem to be talking to each other at all (I hear rumours about Lost...) but I wish they'd tied it together a little better. Maybe it would have lasted. Then again, possibly not, seeing as it actually seemed to be ... not so much glorifying terrorism but giving a look at the terrorist point of view, which I don't imagine a lot of Americans want to see. Because gods forbid there's any shade of grey in there.

Upshot of the whole News of the World scandal thing is apparently that the NotW is shutting down for good. Under British law, this means that the parent company, run by Mr Rupert Murdoch, is allowed to destroy any and all records pertaining to the News of the World. Convenient, no, when the government is calling for inquiries and all paperwork? I don't know where this is going to go, but Rebekah whatshername is apparently talking about how betrayed she feels. She feels? Aaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha.

Meanwhile, there's been more Warcrack. I have been flitting around Deatholme. Deatholme is scary. Deatholme involves getting mobbed by waves of beasties if one isn't careful. Not that I haven't been surviving (as belf paladin, I've died maybe three times, and that was only because my connection dropped during combat); just that it's tiring and there are three quests I have to do in there. I'm two-thirds of the way through one - and the one that doesn't involve specifically killing anything, at that - but I had to give it up because after so many waves of three or four mobs at a time ... I believe the only comment is "Well, shit". I still need to find one more captive Hordey, then kill off four lieutenants of Big Bad, and then I have to kill off Big Bad himself and pike his head back to some fraidy-yutz hiding in a mountain enclave. This is all apparently to get belfs allegiance to the Horde. Which ... I thought we were ... well, never mind. No one ever claimed this game had to make any sense.

I've checked out Undercity. Undercity is fucking confusing, thank you. And freaky. And kind of annoying. It's the multi-level thing and the map does not actually tell you which level you're on and then it's all walkways over glowing green goo. And these narrow walkways are invariably clogged by some high-level arsehole who will not get off their fucking epic mount for five minutes and get out of the way so that people can go from point A to point B without going around or through them. Got some reasonable mining in Tirisfal Glades, though. That's a bonus.

It's the weekend coming up, so I'm probably going to end up staying up late and trying to finish some of those Deatholme quests. I'm still convinced that I'm going to die horribly, but fuck it. Everyone says Dar'Khan is nerfed. May as well take advantage of that. And saving those stupid captives and killing the lieutenants might get me another level before I take on Big Bad, so ... hey. (Though can I just say that Exorcism? Fucking rocks.)

So ... Blood Elf Paladin. Level 19. This is the highest-level character I currently have. This may have something to do with the fact that OMG WTF QUESTS!

So after pottering around Eversong Woods for awhile, you end up in the Ghostlands (apparently a new zone thrown in with Cataclysm). Look, the whole place is a mess after the whole Burning Crusade thing, and there's a whole lot of lore I'm sort of learning as I go, but a lot of it involves an inexplicable line of devastation (and zombies) between Deatholme (apparently an instance) and Silvermoon (which is the capital and is at least partly trashed because of this tidy straight line of devastation). They call it the Dead Scar. It's a really tidy line of devastation, bones and zombies. The zombies never leave the Scar. They just ... kind of meander until someone's stupid enough to wander in. I'm sure this is realistic in someone's world.

Anyway, you get to the Ghostlands because of some quest they asked you to do in some dinky village up in Eversong, and there's this city. Township. Wide spot in the road. Whatever. And there are quests by the bucketload. And depending on what order you do the quests in? You just never fucking stop. You wander into catacombs for this one stupid quest and meet up with this ditz of a NPC who needs to you lead her to some outpost (and then picks random fights with everything when we could just wander out, stupid mare). At said outpost ... MOAR QUESTS! I think there are quests I picked up in Tranquillien that I'm too high-level for now, since I wandered in something like eight levels ago and then went and beat on things high above my level because I went about the quest trees bass-ackwards. At least now I'm past the beating-on-renegade-trolls thing. The beating-on-renegade-trolls thing got old. Particularly given the fact that there are some renegade trolls whose combat manoeuvres involve turning your toon into a chicken. You're fighting, and all of a sudden ... poof. Chicken. Polymorph blows.

I'm going to go back to whittling down my quest tree now. Apparently I get a mount next level. That'd be nice. Saves the walking. But still. Dude. Seriously. NO MORE MOBS THAT CAN TURN MY CHARACTER INTO A DAMN CHICKEN. I dread the one where the mob-wizard arsehole makes you shrink to a fifth of your size. FOR TEN MINUTES. That was around when I decided "Fuck it, I'm going to break for dinner". Teeny tiny belf just ... noooo.

Magically meme-licious for just before bed:

Give me three fictional characters, and I'll respond with shag/marry/push off a cliff.

In other news, actually been having fun with another Horde alt, this time Troll. *shrug* I guess I see why so many people prefer playing Horde. The start-up stories seem to be way better. I have no idea why. Though I found that my fondness for the Trolls means that starting up an Orc is a little difficult. Trolls? Not so hot on Hellscream. Orcs? Really cool on Hellscream. Fuck, I have no the hell idea. I honestly don't remember how the other races feel about their Warchief but I do vaguely recall that the Goblins mainly like the Orcs because ... well, hell, the Humans on the Alliance side blew them out of the water and the Orcs were kind of nice to them. Tauren are having their own shit going on, as are the Forsaken and the Belfs. I didn't pay much attention to Alliance politics; there wasn't a whole lot of connection between the races, really. Meh. I should probably start again, actually paying attention to the starting points this time. And maybe get some variation in my classes, 'cos right now it's Shaman, Shaman, Shaman, Hunter, Shaman... I tried Priest but that got old. Fast.

In other news, I gave up and watched A Game of Thrones. I liked some bits. The opening sequence is cool. The soundtrack is awesome. I love playing "I've Seen This Face Before". I do, however, have some problems with it. I like it a lot better when I can divorce it from the book. (And I still don't see the Theon/Jon/Robb OT3, guys; sorry.) I'd rant, but it's too late in the evening and it's work tomorrow. Woo.

So I pulled out Buffy again, as I really couldn't focus on anything more ... erm ... thought-requiring. And yet again, the question hits me.

Season 5, Episode 12: Checkpoint. Towards the end, Buffy makes it clear that she understands in a way that the Council hoped she never would that the Council needs her way more than she needs them. She stands up to them and gets Giles reinstated as her official Watcher. On full salary. Retroactive a couple of years. And at the end of this, there's the question that always comes to me every. Single. Time.

...Why didn't she ask for a salary of her own?

Look, slaying is expensive. There's the weaponry. Wear and tear on clothing and, more often than not, household furnishings (how many times did the Summers house get wrecked by the time that series ended?). And she's expected to pay all that out of her own pocket. Or, y'know, her college fund or whatever. That in and of itself strikes me as decidedly unfair.

Then take into consideration the fact that they expect the slaying to be her primary priority, all the time. Plus they expect her to keep her identity secret at all cost. Yet they expect her to go to school? Have a job? Day job plus nights slaying equals a very tired Slayer, not to mention a rather bruised Slayer, and someone's going to start noticing shit after awhile. Juvenile delinquent only flies so far, and one day (if things hadn't changed drastically at S7, I guess), someone was going to put things together and come up with, not juvenile delinquent, but 'abusive family/partner' or worse. This is not the way to remove suspicion from your Slayer. If you just paid your Slayer, and maybe forged a letter inviting her to attend some elite academy as a boarding pupil and let the studying happen as and when possible given Slayer hours, no more worries about what the people who see her more than in a 'flying rescue' scenario will think about the whole thing.

I'm not entirely sure what this says. It seems like the one taking all the risks gets none of the benefits, and that's supposed to be okay for some reason. I know it's supposed to make for good television, really. I just ... would like to see more logic to it. At least in the form of a bloody paycheque for the freakin' Slayer. But maybe that's just me.

On the subject of things containing undead and werewolves? I tried Worgen again. Finally got to the point where one actually becomes Worgen, and I think from the point of view of starter stories, it's the best of the lot. Certainly the one it's easiest to get invested in, seeing as how you start as human and turn. Kind of neat, actually. Sort of enjoying Rogue. Also ended up in a social guild, though I'm not really sure about it right now. I also tried Dranei Shaman, which is fun. Still a few races and classes to try, but I think I'm getting to grips with what sort of things I like to play. It's a start.

And I've still got this rampaging migraine headache that's had me mostly in bed for the last couple of days. Argh.

Dear Blizzard,

Your thing where all the data can download as people are playing is great and wonderful. Really it is. However, I have one tiny, tiny bone to pick about the whole thing. See, I just got done with a whole metric buttload of questing in and around Thunder Bluff, and got sent to Orgrimmar. The issue?

Well, Orgrimmar doesn't actually seem to be there, right now.

Do you have any idea how disconcerting it is to hop a manticore only to find that half of what you're flying over is empty space dotted with occasional monsters that appear to be floating in mid-air? Never mind the city, once you get there... I mean, shit. I'm standing in empty space that does contain some NPCs but I wasn't sure there how the hell I was supposed to do anything until the damn city had loaded and got so freaked out I logged out. Or rather, tried to.

It wouldn't let me. I had to Vulcan-nerve-pinch the fucker just to get it off the damn 'people floating in a nowhere-land' picture. If it's a choice between standing there staring at my character floating in mid-air, probably getting cat-called by some of the fucktards that proliferate in all MMOs and generally feeling like an idiot, and staring at a loading screen for half an hour until it decides to recognise that Orgrimmar actually exists and I am in it ... I'll vote for the loading screen, kthnx.

So in short ... is there any way that your lovely software could figure out where the character in question was likely to go and then ... y'know, load that next? That'd be awesome, thanks.

Regards,
A very confused Tauren Shaman on Bloodhoof.

That said, I've been having no end of fun with this for the past two hours. I finally figured out fishing! I was kind of blanking on where the 'Professions' tab was. I eventually found it and now I can actually craft. Which is kind of awesome, thanks. Now I just need to save up enough silver to actually get past Journeyman in Skinning. And probably upgrade my gear. On the other hand ... fishing and skinning and cooking and whee! (Yes, I have more fun levelling crafts in these things than I do some of the actual killing bits. I'm very, very weird.)

...What lives in Orgrimmar, anyway? I'm ... guessing ogres?

Having ergonomic woes. The main problem with hot-desking, as it were, is that everyone has a different way of sorting out their office chairs and none of them seems to suit me much at all. Currently I am borrowing the desk of one of the secretaries in Movement Disorders who's on jury service for the next two weeks, and there is no way of rearranging this stupid chair in a way that doesn't end in screaming back pain for me. The worst of it seems to involve a knot in my left shoulder, but that does tend to knot up on me anyway, and I'm not sure whether this is because consistent bad ergonomics has screwed me up or because I'm just prone to that. Either way, there is pain. I don't like pain. This is the kind of thing that drives me out of the office early. I just wish there were decent chairs. Hell, I just wish I had my own desk. That'd be nice.

The saga of that yutz who's supposed to be doing all the admin stuff to leave me alone with the typing has ended in a very anticlimactic way, by the way. I haven't heard anything from him and the bits and pieces that I send him to do on the admin side only get email replies of 'thanks'. I am taking this to mean that my office manager had her word with him, but I never entirely heard how that went. So long as he's not trying to stick me with admin work that I am not in any position to do, I guess I should be happy.

Yesterday's World of Warcraft experiment was Worgen Warrior. I might try with a different class, but at the moment ... not just no, but hell no. I thought the gnome thing was bad for being thrown into plot: turning up in the middle of a war zone? Seriously? There's this one quest where you have to survive for two minutes while being dog-piled (no pun intended) by rampaging Worgen and ... just ... no. Not with a greatsword with hideous delay, thanks. And thus far, as far as I can tell, character is still just human anyway. How far along do you have to go before you end up werewolf? It might have been a lot more interesting had I started with a different class. As it is ... again, not just no but hell no.

I just hope my internet connection works when I get home. I think the little switch box whatever burned out again because it was hiccuppy for about an hour last night before I went to bed and then this morning it just wouldn't connect at all until I changed the switch box whatever (the thing that you attach to the phone jack to plug the broadband cable and the phone cable into both at once). Then it seemed to be fine. Do these things burn out regularly? If so, I might have to pick up a few extras if I'm going to have to change them once a month or whatever. At least I know where my nearest Maplin's is...

So ... today kind of sucked and then there was less of the suckage. Which is always a bonus because day of entire suck is never fun.

Okay, so the situation is this: my hospital now finds itself not as much in need of a float secretary as it was. However, they have no desire to lose me as an employee - something about how "there is dead weight here but you are so very much not it" - so they found me a department that needs my help. It's predominantly a typing position, which is fine with me; it's what I'm good at, after all. However, there are two admins in that department and they are both ... well ... 'blindingly incompetent and wilfully negligent' seems to be putting it mildly. Office manager turned around to the one of them that was actually in this week and said, "Look; she'll do the typing, you'll do the admin". Which makes sense because the only available desk in the hospital is in a completely different building across the bloody square again. But that was the message - I do the typing, they do every other bit of admin crap, because they're the ones with the access to the doctors.

So today, I'm merrily typing away and it comes up that there's a few patients who did not attend their appointments and need to have new ones booked. There's only three or four of them, so no problem, right? I take the patients' names and hospital numbers and email them to this guy, figuring that he can probably talk to the consultants and get these patients slotted in somewhere. So he emails me back saying, "What, don't you have access to the patient bookings?" My response: "Yes, but ... you're the one with the access to the doctors and they're the ones who can tell you if there needs to be a clinic overbooking. That's a thing I can't do, seeing as I'm the one sitting in a desk in an entirely different building." His response: "You have all the information you need; call patient bookings if it needs overbooking and sort it out." Except ... no, because I don't know which clinic should be overbooked to fit these people, how urgent it is, how soon the consultants want them seen ... and besides, I am the one doing the typing, for fuck's sake! Plus his attitude stinks about the whole thing, like I'm dumping excess work on him when I'm the one actually freeing him up to do the admin stuff he's shirking. Besides, I know for a solid fact that he spends most of his time on any given day reading kickboxing chat forums online. I admit to going online when I'm at work but it's not continuously and I get the work done.

It didn't help that there was a situation that started yesterday that presisposed me to being pissed off with this guy. See, I got saddled with typing up a couple of discharge summaries. The consultant changes registrars on a far-too-regular basis to keep up with, and they're all crap at putting their full names anywhere on the tapes, in the notes, anywhere that would help me edit the signatory on the letter template. So since it was coming up to the end of the day and I had no idea who this registrar was who had dictated these discharge summaries, I emailed the admin guy and said, "Okay; I've typed these up but I don't know the name of the registrar, since he only put an abbreviation of his first name on the envelope in which he stashed the tape. Since you're the one in the same building as the doctors, could you make some inquiries as to who actually dictated these discharge summaries and edit the signatory line accordingly, please?" Then I went home for the day.

So this morning, I got an email from the consultant bitching me out for not changing the signatory on the discharge summaries. It seems that the admin guy, either at a loss himself or (more likely) not being bothered to make anything like an inquiry about it, just sent the hospital numbers of the patients on to the consultant with no comment about the email I'd sent and the fact that I knew full well that the signatory line was wrong and needed to get someone who could ask the fucking doctors to sort it out. So I got into shit from the consultant because he couldn't so much as ask a fucking question. And then this bullshit about the patient bookings. The boy is lazy as unholy fuck. And don't even get me started about his on-again, off-again colleague in that department. The entire place is chaos because those two can't be bothered to keep things even remotely orderly, and then they expect me to sort it out when I'm not even in the fucking building.

So, since I had no intention of doing their jobs for them as well as their own and had some serious issues with this guy's attitude, I spoke to my office manager, who calls me 'a godsend' on a weekly basis. I explained the situation as calmly as I was able and told her point-blank that I was not in any way satisfied with this guy's performance or ... well, any of it. She's terrified of losing me so she's going to sort it out as soon as humanly possible. So ... score. Still, it made for a stressful day.

Which might be why I decided to burn off some energy by doing that furniture-moving I was talking about earlier today. Yes, I said it was going to be a thing I did over the weekend but I just wanted to make something more efficient and orderly and tidy today, I guess. So I pushed the bed right up against the wall on one side and shifted my desk around and reorganised my books and tidied up the laundry pile (I need a hamper so badly you have no idea) and cleaned out the fridge and now there is so much more floor space and it's wonderful. I might get a rug or something. The carpet in here is kind of blah and a little atrocious. 'Neutral decorating scheme' my arse. One thing I did have to ask myself, in the course of reorganising my books, how many Stephen King books I actually have. They just kept appearing, like they're breeding or something. It also occurs that a couple of those books were 'borrowed' from my mother (she was the original King fan in the family and then started telling me off for reading 'trash' when I was a kid/teenager until I pointed out that the book in my hands came from her bookshelf, so I got some of hers so she could have room for whatever the hell swords-n-sorcery fantasy stuff she's reading these days) and are actually older than I am. I own paperbacks that have been on this earth longer than I have. That's ... just a really weird concept, somehow.

My net connection's been a lot better today (I switched the little filter box thing and that seems to have improved matters, though there have been a couple of interrupts this evening), so I went on to play a little bit of Warcraft. First, I rerolled my gnome (gnooooooooome!) - this one's called SisterQ after my Chicago Cultist of Ecstasy - I figure that's what said Cultist would be playing, though way, waaaaaaay higher level. After about five levels of that, I realised that I'd forgotten that the first thing I rolled up just out of curiosity but never really played was a Human Hunter. So I thought I'd switch that on a bit, see what a non-magic-using class was like. It never ceases to surprise me when I find out I enjoy the hell out of a melee class. Normally I'm all about the magic-users, but ... well, in FFXI it was Dragoon, Dragon Age: Origins it was Rogue (still can't work up enthusiasm for it in DA2, though...) and now, in WoW ... Hunter all the way, baby. There's just something about being able to run around with a blunderbuss and have your pet do all your tanking for you. It beats the shit out of Beastmaster in FFXI, where you have to charm passing mobs as your pets and they eventually they turn on you and you have to kill them, sometimes in the middle of fighting another damn mob (and worse yet, you don't even get XP for the kill when it's your former pet). I will eventually stick with a character long enough to get out of single-digit levels, but for now I'm having fun just noodling around with it.

So, tired but triumphant with a side order of having-fun. I suppose it's not the worst way I could end the week.