Today started out beautifully, got to have a wee sleep in coz I am flying to Timaru for work and not leaving till 11:00, so I got to work from home for the morning.  The sun was shining the birds were singing and I was quite excited about my little trip to Timaru and Christchurch for the week (I’ve never been to Timaru before).

I turned on my laptop at my normal work time and that was when the first problem occurred – Outlook just didn’t work on my Laptop at home using VPN, it works fine at work just not at home, had to phone the help desk to get it sorted.

Then after about 5 minutes of work the VPN cut out and nothing worked – 5 minutes later it worked again and 5 minutes after that it didn’t work.  This was so frustrating that I nearly threw the laptop out the window and gave up!!!

Anyway – the taxi turned up on time and the drive out to the airport was trouble free.  BUT Wellington airport was suffering from a condition called “Low Cloud” and this was disrupting flights all over the country and my 1:00 pm flight to Wellington didn’t actually get away till 2:00 pm which doesn’t sound too bad, but it meant I couldn’t make my connecting flight to Timaru which departed on time at 2:20.  So once I arrived in Wellington I had to wait till 6:00 pm for the next flight to Timaru.  Unfortunately I didn’t start walking towards the departure gate till the very last minute and then I couldn’t find the gate I was supposed to be at (Gate 19) – consequently my NAME was called over the loud speakers and I had to run!  Thankfully that flight did depart on time but I arrived at 7:20 in Timaru in the rain and it was dark!

That’s when the day got worse!!!

Hertz rental staff were nowhere to be seen – so the kind lady at Avis sorted me out, she knew where the bag of keys for Hertz rental cars is kept – they are quite good friends apparently!  I found the car, started up my GPS which I spent quite a bit of time on Sunday setting up with the addresses I needed for the whole week AND IT MALFUNCTIONED – it would not accept my password.  After many restarts I had to give up, admit defeat and try something else.  So there I was, stuck in an unfamiliar place, the airport had closed (nobody home), it was dark and I had no idea of where I was or which way to go!!!

Thank goodness for my iPhone – I was able to type where I wanted to go and it told me – but this wasn’t actually an easy place to get to from the airport and I found out later it guided me a really weird way but at least I got there.  It was 8:30 pm I was tired a tad stressed and not happy – I had missed Shortland St.

The place I was staying in was really nice – separate bedroom, choice of beds and they were massive, plus a fabulous huge spa bath.  Not sure if I was hungry or not, so headed out in search of my place of work tomorrow and a McDonalds.  After eating I felt a strange sensation in one of my teeth and I think I lost a filling!!!

Back in the room I decided to iron tomorrow’s shirt and the most random thing ever happened.  The pocket somehow strangely got caught between the iron’s hot plate and the plastic the hot plate is attached to.  In all my years of ironing this has never happened.  I could not pull the pocket out of the iron!  So I turned the iron off and tugged and tugged, eventually it did come away a little worse for wear but not bad enough to throw away (the shirt not the iron) – thank goodness coz it’s one of my favourite shirts.

The photo is of the Timaru Courthouse, a beautifully restored building.  Timaru seemed like a really “charming place with lots of beautiful old buildings.  Sadly I only got the chance to photograph one of them before I headed to Christchurch with only my iPhone and a hand drawn map (courtesy of a Timaru local) to guide me.