A comical day... you either laugh or cry!

This morning, I hurried home to prepare for my 10am meeting with a client. Shortly before my meeting, my aunt called me, responding to a message I sent her last night on Facebook. I said, "Did you call me??" She called me this morning, yes, I called you, but spoke to John. We'll be out this afternoon to look at the old truck. Uhh, what? We? What? John had spoken with Aunt Ginny's husband, Bud while we were camping about wanting to possibly just sell it, and we've been discussing it since then. Bud's brother was looking for a diesel truck, and was interested in seeing ours. The "we" part was to be my Aunt Virginia (aka Aunt Ginny) her husband Bud, his brother (I don't remember his name!) and his wife, Sue (her's was easy to remember!). Okay, so plan on company this afternoon, around 3pm. Okay. Gotta go, meeting at 10am!

I joined my meeting session, saw that my client was connected, so dialed into the conference number. "Hello" I said. Nothing. "Helloooo" I said again.. still, nothing. Hung up, dialed in again... again the message said I was the second caller. "Hellooo, Hellooooo", I said again. I started thinking, either my phone is screwed up again (Comcast, not my actual phone) or there's a problem with their phone line. Hmm. I shared my whiteboard screen, and began writing a note "Either you are not in the conference room, or there is a problem with the phone line. Please dial the number again." About this time, I heard my client pop into the call with laughter, "Suzanne, can you hear me now?" I said, "I hear you, Nancy! How are you?" She laughed, and said she had the phone on mute. A few minutes passed, while we waited for the rest of her staff, and she explained, just as yesterday, they were having issues with the projector that projects the laptop to the "big screen". Their IT guy was off today, and no one could figure it out. They played with it a bit, and I offered my suggestions that should make the projector work with the laptop, according to my limited knowledge of such things. Finally, they said, "we'll move to another room, and call you back!" Okay, we waited for that. Half way through our meeting, once we got started, they said my phone was acting up, and I was cutting in and out. Grr, that Comcast! I'm seriously considering switching my service to At&T. I was dialing into the conference call on my cell phone, and my laptop went to a blue screen of death! Ugh! No, anything but that! Not Now! Not again! No! I powered down my computer, and while it was rebooting, and I was connecting to my call, by the way, my client could hear me on the speaker phone of my office line off and on... Finally, computer came up, but now the cell phone was being pulled from my hands...why? Sheesh! The moose under the desk! Jenny knows exactly what I'm talking about! If she's reading this, she's probably chuckling! Callie, my dear sweet 90 pound moose of a dog, insists on cramming her big ol' self underneath my desk, and this morning, managed to lay down on the cord to my cell phone, which I had to have plugged in to maintain power on a conference call that may extend an hour or more! Computer still rebooting, I'm arguing with the beast under the desk to get out of there, and my clients are bursting with laughter over this entire thing.

All I can say about the whole thing is that I am so glad they found it humorous, as I acknowledge it is bordering on unprofessional! They're sitting in an office environment, and I'm trying to conduct this training session while arguing with a DOG that won't move off of my phone cord! Whatever!

Finally finished up my meeting shortly after 12:30, then IM'd my IT guy, and told him my computer had shut itself off three times today! He had me running several diagnostics on my computer, that took well over an hour, so while my computer did all this, I hurriedly ran the vacuum in the living room, and picked up the mess out there. I didn't want people I'd never met before (remember, Bud's brother and wife) coming to the house and seeing a mess. I walked into the kids' bathroom, which is also the "guest bathroom". A mess! Had to clean that quick too! Came back to the computer.. still running diagnostics. Mark suggested after 2 hours of diagnostics with no problems showing up, that I turn off a system setting to automatically shut down, if the second monitor "wigs out". I'm hoping that is the solution. If not, I'll be chatting it up again with Mark on Monday!

The good news is, Bud's brother liked the truck, and they bought it from us. This is the same truck that has been sitting in the backyard since John tried driving it out to the campground at New Year's and had to return home with it. Oh, I forgot to mention, not only did John not tell me they were coming today, but he didn't check to see if it would start. I checked it around 1:30, it did not. I had to hook the battery up to the charger to make sure it would make an effort to "turn over". Bud used to own a school bus company, and he and his boys ran the shop to maintain the buses, and the boys build and maintain stock cars and race them, so the truck is in good hands! He got a good deal.. a 1991 Dodge 250 Turbo Diesel with only 56000 original miles! I gained a good part of my backyard again!

Daniel is spending the weekend with Grandma, so it will be just us tomorrow with Hanna. John mentioned taking her training wheels off of her bike again, and she's looking forward to that. I'd like to take her to see if we can find some white sandals for Easter, and I absolutely have to stock up on everything on my list for our camping trip to Mistletoe in Georgia next weekend!