12 days

Here's Sue , Vicki (with magnifying glass) Mark and Jerry on our long weekend down the shore planning our trip. The table is covered with phrase books and guide books, wine bottles, beer bottles and assorted travel videos and liquor bottles. It was truly a wonderful weekend as I mentioned in the previous post with Monday on the beach. And so, we all return to work, energized with the knowledge that are trip is right around the corner.
My co-worker is on vacation and when I get to work on Tuesday, we are preparing, full bore, for a security audit. The every day stuff that he would handle is already out of control as I help prepare the necessary documentation. I have two late nights at work but all goes very well on Thursday and I leave work happily looking forward to sleeping a little later because I have a doctor appointment at 8:15.
I need to get in to my primary physician because my sinuses are in an uproar and I want to take care of them before we leave for Italy. I also have a hair appointment with Vicki at 6 - check out the roots!!!
Well, Friday morning I'm getting ready to leave for the doctor and I get a call from my boss who is in a panic because our phones are giving a fast busy when you dial the main number... not so good for business. I cancel my doctor appointment and head to work after trying some fixes remotely. Things go from bad to worse as we work with our phone system tech and our phone service carrier. Finally a little before 11 am., we find out that our service was turned down due to lack of payment. When I tell that I was fuming, it would be with steam coming out of the top of my head.
Well a payment is made via credit card and slowly, line by line, the phone service comes back. Well - not all of it - just the inbound lines. If this was all we had to deal with, it would have been an easier day. There were CSRs that had to be moved, security swipes that had to be installed, payroll issues to deal with - you name it, it all reared it's ugly head on Friday. And then - the worst thing happenned, one of our co-workers was in effect laid off, but re-hired at our northern facility.
In any case, it became apparent that I wasn't going to make my hair appointment either. After a call to the Board of the Public Utilities Commission, all of our phone service was restored and I left work at 5:15 - only to come to a stand still because of a traffic accident.
Here's my hair: