Boiling Point

This week has been lousy. Absolutely lousy.

First was the heat wave. I know that we have still been blessed amidst the scorching heat, considering we can still turn on our AC to fight it off, when others would have to patiently wait for their electricity to come back. But half of the time I've been out, running errands here and there, and so I'm getting my equal share of the torment somehow.

Second was the van. Once again, we had to deal with the van overheating. And we just had it fixed a few weeks ago! So here we were, driving home from the port, with Ricio trying to drive as fast as he can on the freeway, only to find out that our exit was blocked, and the other end of the freeway had a bumper to bumper traffic. Short of saying we had to take the shoulder lane, make oh so many stops, just to prevent the temperature gauge from hitting "H".

Well, it did hit the "H" when we were just five blocks away from home.

Third was the AC at the grocery. He couldn't take the heat either, so we get to the grocery only to find the chocolates melting. I felt like a paramedic, trying to transfer each chocolate bar to the business center (where the AC was working fine) to revive them. Some casualties, some had "third degree burns" or should I say deformed, and some still held on for dear life.

Fourth was the grocery software. Or should I say the server that is now busted, so I can't access the system. With the price list of more than 500 SKUs encoded in that system, and with about 2,000 crewmen buying at that store, doing everything manual is not an option.

Fifth, and this was the clincher - we lost our internet connection. No internet, no business center. That was it, the icing on the cake. It has been a rough four weeks having to deal with customers who are so pissed our phone lines are dead, it's even worse that we can't conduct our regular business transactions with them because we have lost our last and only connection to the world.

And there are a few more things that have ticked me off, but maybe I'm too tired and pissed to even write it down.

At this point I am already screaming my head off.

I know, things will get better.

The van is fixed, for now at least. And the heat wave is over - still hot, but a lot more bearable. I never thought I'd welcome this kind of heat - now that I have witnessed what a scary heat wave would be, this regular summer has now put a smile on my face.

The system is still busted and the internet connection is down. But it is said to be up and running by Tuesday, so we're keeping our fingers crossed. So we decided to just close the grocery and business center for this weekend, since the earnings we'll make won't even be enough to pay for our staff. So this would be our first normal weekend without work, ever since we got here. It's Ricio's first Saturday without work (although I'm so sure he'd still get work-related calls), and he's so looking forward to it.

So how do I end this oh so lousy week? I treated Ricio for his 1 week supply of beer (30 cans baby!) and bought us a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and vermouth for our martinis.

Hopefully this would be the right time for me to get off some steam.

Cheers.