(no subject)

Caroles grandmother has come through her operation and I now have an update (disclaimer: information provided is given to the best of my ability, given the rather brief phone conversation I had with C & I take no responsibility for its accuracy): it appears that the lump was not in the pancreas, but was outside of it & also outside of any major organs, so the doctors have successfully removed it without any overt complications. In addition, there are no indications that its spread aggressively, so if it is a tumour, it seems to be a relatively slow growing one – so, in all, relatively good news – or at least as good as we can expect. Beyond that, we’re still waiting for test results, to see ifs a) a tumour & b) if its spread – but this is going to take some time.

Outside of that, C reports that Lyra went into the bag shaped cat-torturing-device for about an hour yesterday and endured it with relatively good humour, so the indications are also fairly upbeat that the transport, whilst its going to be harrowing & traumatic & will probably involve decades of psychotherapy for all concerned, is probably not going to involve C being denied access to the plane in the first place. So Lyra can make it to Amsterdam.

Lastly, I have gone through hell today to get the month-end work completed; from people changing mapping tables, to new formats of data, to me accidentally deleting not one, but 2 separate & utterly crucial linked Excel-Access files, within the space of 5 minutes of each other (delete one, get told off, go back to desk, repeat mistake), to the computer just deciding that it didn’t want to run one of the overnight queries that take hours to process, its been a merry romp. Fortunately, we’re now in the aftermath stage, where we breakout the dustpans & brushes & review what went wrong & why. The aim is to try to get processes in place so that next month-end, so that it doesn’t go wrong. But then, it never goes wrong the same way twice – each of the monstrous month-end disasters are unique in their own very special way.

Sadly.

S

(no subject)

Well, the computer is now "better than it was" thanks to the judicious application of windows XP disk which I finally uncovered, but thats hardly much of an improvement. The internet is now back up & seems to be vaguely stable, but my installed version of office 97 appears to be toast; I open it up & it crashes on me in under a second (meaning that I cant get at all the PBEM files I've been working on for a while now. Not happy about this). Fortunately, I have located the Office'97 disk and intend to use it in the not too distant future. Hopefully this will solve the problem. Hopefully.

I got to speak with C earlier on - shes preparing to move Lyra tomorrow, but is sadly not too well herself: her posts earlier dont really do her stomach ache justice she was much more graphic when I spoke to her, so *much* more sympathy to her.

Aside from that, I'm very exhauted indeed. Though that would be due to the month-end from hell, including computer errors, Access database problems, idiots deleting linked tables (that would be me), apologising to their boss, getting a bollocking & then the same idiot (me again) deleting another file, in exactly the same way, 2 minutes later (it wasn't going to be good from then on, now was it?), with a full chorus-line of drilling, builders, dust and PHB's wanting to know why their work (which isn't a priority until January fer chrissake) isn't being done *today*, on the day of the October / November month-end close.

S