Excuse me ma'am, do you have a licence to drive that internet?

I really shouldn't be writing this.

It's not nice to laugh at stupid people. And it's *really* not nice to call a customer stupid.

But REALLY.

I've received a couple of very irate emails from an American customer, wanting to know why she had been charged $90 instead of $62 for her order. Of course, the order total actually came to £62. It's all down to the miracle of global commerce.

Now, on Ravelry and in email, I have been accused of being "very sneakkkkyyyyyy" and of practising deception on my poor unsuspecting customers by not spelling out that my BRITISH site uses BRITISH currency. I am not sure exactly how much more spelling out is required. Consider:
- the domain name ends in co.uk - I even put that in my online ads, to make it clearer for forruners who might happen to see the ads
- all prices everywhere, including order totals etc, are clearly marked with a £ symbol
- foreign addresses at checkout trigger the options to choose between "international airmail" and "international surface mail"
- etc, etc, etc...

So I was a little bit gobsmacked. However, there are more clues that this poor woman is - shall we say - a few stitches short of a sock. Consider:
- her Rav name includes a misspelled version of a word meaning insane
- she claims she was cheated out of $40 (90 minus 62? Hm)
- the best part? She is furious that my evil, scheming, deceptive shop did not show that the prices were in "England dollars".

So HA HA HAAAAA. You're stupid. I win.

(Man, my tolerance levels have just gone right down the tube since getting knocked up...)

Some random notes on expo prep.

1. Price guns are fun.

2. Nothing else about expo prep is fun.

3. No, it's not a good idea to have any other commitments immediately before or after a show, even if you think it'll be fine because after all there's the weekend, etc, etc, etc.

4. I appear to be constitutionally incapable of getting ready in time. By "in time" we mean anything not involving (a) significant loss of sleep, (b) leaving home within 2 hours of the time we planned to leave home, or (c) total panic and chaos up to at least half an hour after the show's official opening time.

5. Unexpected Good Thing about having a bebeh: very good excuse not to do this again next year. Or, possibly, ever.

Things that are Wrong with this week

1) Beloved is on night shift. That's just always Wrong. (And messes with my own sleep patterns.)

2) I had to get up at 6.30am yesterday to pack orders. Again, Wrong. I'm not complaining about the orders themselves, obv - they are coming in thick and fast and if they weren't I'd be in trouble - but still... that is a Wrong time of day.

3) On Monday, I undertook my first ever business trip. Now, I've always wanted to have a job that required me to travel. I know that it frequently sucks, involving Wrong times of day and so on, but it also takes you to see cool places for free, right? Well. My first business trip. And it was (a) to Birmingham, (b) paid for by me, and (c) did I mention to *Birmingham*? Actually, not even that. It was to the NEC. Which is basically An Airport (even though I got there by train) and could have been anywhere in the whole world as long as that somewhere is depressing.

I did make a point of travelling into town proper, though, because I'm sad enough to want to see the snakeskin spaceship, as absolutely nobody calls it. (Selfridges, I mean.)

Anyway. Spending £60 of my own money and hours of my own time - with a cold - to go to Birmingham. Wrong.

4. It's past midnight and I'm not in bed yet. Because I haven't quite got around to going to bed. Because then I'll just go to sleep and wake up and have to do far too much work again, just like every other day. Wrong. Of me. Very, very, very stupid. Well.

5. Having completed the entire back and side front of a jacket I'm knitting, I decided I'd got the size completely wrong and must start again. Because I just have sooo much time to knit, it's fun to waste it doing everything Wrong.

6. On telling Beloved the above, he said: "That's why you never get anywhere. You keep on doing everything wrong and starting again." He was on the other end of a phone line so I couldn't hit him. WRONG.

On the other hand. Have a little comic relief.

Technojinx humour

Tonight we launch our very so special, widely anticipated, enormously exciting and potentialistic* Yarn Department.

Tonight our server appears to be down.

Hm.


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* Now is NOT the time to wonder aloud whether I know that's not a real word, mmmkay?

First hurdle. To fall or not to fall?

So of all my manymany Resolutions, the one I'm most excited about is this: Take Sundays Off.

No, really. That's a proper challenge, that is. Of course it goes hand in hand with other, more boring plans involving Proper Time Management and Discipline and all, so that I can take one day off once a week, without The Business going completely and utterly to pot. I also believe that if I know I'm going to have a whole day to myself once a week, it might be easier to knuckle down the rest of the time. And also, I do want to use that time - some of it, anyway - to do things that are Useful but not directly Work. Some of them might, arguably, become a sort of work. But never mind that right now. A whole day for knitting! Every week!

So tomorrow is the first Sunday of the new year. And while I did promise myself that I would not make this "day off" thing conditional on being up to date on my task list - because, well, who am I kidding - I none the less find myself in a bit of a bind.

This Friday, I launch The Yarn.*
On Monday, Beloved finishes photographing The Yarn.
By the time he has finished photographing The Yarn, he needs me to have done the boring technical task we call "Creating The Products". I was supposed to do this today. I'm only about 60% done.

So.

Do I:

a) spend tomorrow morning Creating The Products in a frenzy of productivity, before switching off my pc and knitting the afternoon away?**

b) take tomorrow off as per Resolution (win!), but then spend Monday morning failing to Create The Products with any kind of speed on account of constant interruptions by posties, yarn styling duties etc, so that Beloved is unable to Upload The Pictures according to schedule, thus placing the entire Yarn Launch in peril, and also preventing me from achieving the other very important tasks on Monday's list?

c) Ooh! Oddly, this one only just occurred to me - work into the wee hours tonight so that neither of the above has to happen. Thus breaking another fine Resolution ("get to bed before midnight unless I'm out having proper fun somewhere, or at least getting paid for my time"), but what the hell.

I think we have a winner.

Edit: 2am. Done. I hope. Oh, nope, gotta do that price list... 5-minute job. Then bed. Tomorrow, knittin'. Yay!

_____
* Over at The Shop, obviously. Not my own yarn. Other people's yarn, wot I am selling. Purty.
** For which, read: "spend tomorrow morning faffing around fretfully until I finally settle down to work just before lunchtime, stopping after half an hour for an extended lunch break, then returning to my desk to Create The Products, interrupting myself every 20 minutes or so to check blogs and Ravelry, and eventually finishing Creating The Products shortly before I have to go out to a knitting group in the evening, probably forgetting the price list for the samples I promised to bring?" Not that this is necessarily a representative description of a normal working day. Necessarily.