The Weekend That Was Great, Then Stunk, Then Was Great Again

We had a long weekend here in England and it started out with a bang.  On Saturday, my friend NFAH came to visit me here at the Bungalow.  Well I went and picked her up from her home base about 30 min away and then we came back to my neck of the woods for a great day.  We went shopping, ate pizza, played with the girls and the animals, then sat up until the wee hours of the morning drinking a couple of beers and talking like 14 year old school girls.  It was an amazing day and I had a ton of fun hanging out with a fellow expat from America.  I also now have a new IRL friend instead of someone who lives inside my computer.  So hard to explain bloggy friends to others who "don't get it" sometimes.

On Sunday morning I took NFAH back to her house and then came home to prepare for the arrival of The Man.  He has been gone for the past two weeks.  There was some sort of military type thing going on in Romania and he was gone to take part in it.  NOW you guys know why I have been so discombobulated.  A two week TDY (temp duty) is a lot harder for me than a long deployment because I don't get a chance to settle into a rhythm. Sometimes I do a lot better when he is gone for months because I have time to establish a routine and get the girls on the same page as me.  When he is only gone for a short period of time, my house falls into controlled semi organized chaos.  

The Man arrived back at the base around 11pm and I gathered the girls out of their slumber to go pick him up.  When we got back to the house things immediately started going wrong.  First, I got a mini disc stuck in my Mac, then the cat finally escaped out of the house around 1am.  We looked for him for about an hour fruitlessly.  Finally we headed to bed, me sick to my stomach with worry and The Man pissed off at himself for accidentally letting the cat out of the Bungalow.  

The next morning I went and searched for Sam again, no cat.  We then ran around and did the errands that needed to be done.  Caroline had the day off of school because yesterday was a Bank Holiday here in the UK.  A Bank Holiday, from what I can gather is just a day off from work for the Brits.  No particular reason for it.  It just means all supermarkets and shops will be closed and everyone will sit around the house and watch telly or go to a park with the kids.  Or at least that is my impression.  That evening my Internet also started acting wonky.  I was not a happy camper; no cat, Macbook with a CD stuck inside, and spotty Internet.

I finally got an Internet connection for a minute and looked up the Macbook problem.  A lot of people are also boneheads just like me because there was a wealth of info about how to get the CD out.  I ended up using a business card and double sided tape (thank you 3M) to fish the CD out of the Mac. 

Later Monday night I was sitting in the kitchen and told my husband, "Every time I go outside I expect Sam to just come wandering home."  We went outside and literally 30 seconds later, Sam came walking out of the back garden.  Dumb luck!  That was the weirdest thing that has EVER happened to me.  This cat, who's last outing into the big wide world lasted 2 weeks came home after just under 24 hours.  My stomach finally out of knots we came inside and I got online and my Internet connection was back.  I finally ended up the long weekend on an uptick.  I am sure more things will go wrong this week however, sod's law*.

* Sod's Law is the English equivalent of Murphy's Law.