October 10
While this flood resolution was progressing, a lot more happened. Let's start with October 1, the day after my arrival.
First, a couple of weeks before, we had read an article that Britain was removing their current 20 and 50 Pound sterling from circulation. People were required to exchange them for the new currency at the Bank of England - not an option for us any time soon. I needed to find the 20 Pound sterling we apparently had in the safe and exchange them for Canadian dollars at the bank. A few days later, I found them elsewhere in the house. Unfortunately, because they had little value by now, we didn't get the value we had paid them for.
Oh well!
Second, a big one, and the reason I almost wrote you a 2-thumb-2-line blog, I noticed 36 hours late that I had forgotten my tablet in a bin at Halifax Airport Security. The fact that my thin tablet cover and the plastic bin were the same colour helped making this mistake. Airport Lost & Found was closed for the weekend, I started the process on Monday. Did they have it? Yes!!!
The instructions for shipment took 2 days to arrive due to email gremlins eating the correspondence before I could read it. After explaining my need for shipment to the Purolator lady at the Owen Sound depot, and paid for Express service, I finally had a waybill I could courrier to Airport Lost & Found. The gremlin didn't eat that email. They got it and prepared for shipment right away. Purolator though dropped the ball on me.
The Purolator Lady had said I would receive my parcel on Wednesday or Thursday. Great! As the following weekend was Thanksgiving, and I was leaving for a 6-month cruise on Monday morning, I wanted to have my tablet by latest Friday. On Thursday morning, Purolator Tracking website stated that 2 days ago they created the waybill - tell me something I don't know, I was there - no other updates! For a second, panic grabbed me. It took several calls to Purolator, each requiring a 20-30 minute wait, and each time giving all the details about origin, destination, parcel weight, parcel content, my contact information, etc. etc. - don't they have a database that keeps this information?!! It's only after being transfered to Tracing Department, Tracking Department only read the 2-day old update on their website, that I got some action starting late Thursday. Miracle! I got my tablet on Friday afternoon! Ooof, what a relief! Lesson Learned: Ask for Tracing when Tracking is useless.
While I'm handling the flood, my tablet delivery and my pills deliveries, I had some good fun visiting many friends and Justin's family. I had a lot of stories to entertain for a few hours. I went shopping for hardwood floors in case the insurance says we must replace the floor. I also had some blood work and visited my doctors. My results are all good. I'm in great health. I also had a pedicure with my dear friend Debbie at the Cobble Beach Spa. My blood pressure decreased in no time.
The grand-kids are growing so fast! Scarlet's French is improving (almost 5-years old), Troy's now read English as well as French (7 years old). I'm so proud of them. Christal is pregnant of their third child due in February. Justin is content in his new job. We're happy Oma and Opa.
I'll let Frank tell you about his sail adventure from Halifax to Boston with our friend Nigel.
