I have only one more day on my current project and I am so glad it is almost over but it makes me sad that we did not finish developing the entire solution. I loved the work, I enjoyed working with my client as I appreciate that he is as passionate as I am about data quality. I was given enough trust to make design decisions and manage the delivery without too much interference and I was fully supported by him. He trusted my judgment as an expert. However as I have mentioned on previous blogs, the developer who was allocated to the project has caused endless drama.

I am used to making visible progress every week and working to time constraints and delivering to very high standards but the standards of the developer are not like mine. He made rookie mistakes like copy and paste errors, mapping the rule to the wrong field, and misinterpreting the objective of the rule and building the rule to validate the opposite of what it should, for example it errors where the field is populated rather than null in a basic completeness rule. Yet he does not want help and will not admit his code is wrong even when proven to be so.

This week he reported me to HR for made up nonsense when I told him he had corrupted the data and lost the leading zeros from the numeric fields in our postal code validation data. He huffed and puffed and argued with me and then got especially angry when I finally told him that double clicking on an excel file will drop the leading zeroes from numeric data and that sort of basic knowledge is ‘excel 101’, but it is a well known risk to anyone involved in data. He just cannot take feedback because of his arrogance so he flounced off to whinge to HR.

I am exhausted from the drama. I am also working 10 hour days to get as much completed, handed over, and signed off as I can.

I worked very late last Monday and only got home at 7pm. When leaving there were hardly any other people about as it was so late and because the schools were off that week the usual groups of children kicking a football or shouting or dancing were also missing.

As I walked through the square and towards the road where I park my car the most beautiful sound of bells started ringing from the Town Hall. After 8 months working from this office I had never heard them!

It was quite magical! It seemed a suitable send off from work as it was a public holiday the following day so I had the day off.

Tuesday was Heritage Day in South Africa. On this holiday, South Africans are encouraged to celebrate their culture and the diversity of their beliefs and traditions. Most people seem to call it ‘Braai Day’ and just have a barbecue. As Norm is not a keen braaier and we are not South African, we are never quite sure what to do with ourselves on that holiday.

Prior to 1995 the 24th of September was known as Shaka Day in KwaZulu-Natal. This was in commemoration of the Zulu King, Shaka, on the presumed date of his death in 1828. Shaka played an important role in uniting disparate Zulu clans into a cohesive nation. Each year people gather at King Shaka’s grave to honour him on this day. The Public Holidays Bill presented to the new democratic Parliament of South Africa in 1995 did not have the 24th of September included on the list of proposed public holidays. As a result of this exclusion, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), a South African political party with a large Zulu membership, objected to the bill. Parliament and the ANC reached a compromise and the day was given its present title and seen as a public holiday.

Norm and I had not decided what we were going to do on my day off and when I woke with an intense headache I did not feel up to doing anything. I have a bit of medical knowledge due to Radiographer training and I am a bit of a hypochondriac as are many Virgos and these two things are a dangerous combination. On Monday evening I had a very sore area over my groin and upper leg and it was a bit bruised. As this pain was gone on Tuesday when I woke and my head was incredibly sore I became panicked that I had a blood clot which had moved and I was going to have a stroke any minute. Norm looked at me like I was insane when I told him this. It is very feasible dammit! Now that I survived my non-existent clot I can find it funny.

My Dad had his first heart attack in his thirties and died of a stroke at the age of 49 so I am justified in my paranoia, but luckily that was exactly what it was, paranoia.

As a practical Virgo I was also prepared to consider it could be residual sinus pain after my flu so I decided to try Salex which is a type of saline medication you mix into boiled water and squirt up your nostrils. Like a neti pot.

I also tried Hopi ear candling to try and unblock my ears.

Norm had nipped out that morning to buy us fresh pastry and he brought some with a frothy coffee to me in bed.

I took some aspirins and lay relaxing for hours with lots of Lola Kitty snuggles.

Norm is trying to start getting us back onto high fat, low carb eating but as I have been interspersing my diet with muffins and croissants this is probably not good for me. We want to start losing for our year end trip to the US and for Lily’s and Josh’s wedding. Those sorts of photos last forever so we need to get our arses in gear.

On Wednesday Norm took Panda for his last session of physio and hydrotherapy as Panda is pretty much back to normal. He can make it all the way up the main stairs, however sometimes it takes either a lot of our encouragement or a lot of us resisting his annoying bark. Yesterday none of us could be arsed to get up and stand behind him and clap and cheer him up the stairs and we were too tired to let his yapping bother us so he eventually ran upstairs on his own without any encouragement. He has the ability but he is not very confident.

That night Panda did the full walk around the neighborhood with the other two dogs after having gone for his physio session so he was so exhausted that night. He passed out on the sofa and did not budge all night.

I once again only got home about 7pm. When I got home Norm made us a delicious dinner of roast mushrooms and pork fillet, fondant sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli.

When I left work on Thursday it was so hot walking to where I park my car and when I got in it was 34 degrees Celsius!

As it was after 6pm this was a shocker. Normally in Cape Town it usually starts cooling off late afternoon.

It was just too hot to turn on the oven that night so Norm stopped and got a ready cooked roast chicken and some coleslaw and salad and made chips in the air fryer to go with it. It was perfect for that weather.

Pixie does not seem to understand how hot her hair can make you feel when she climbs all over you for attention. When I was trying to cool off and relax by playing Covet Fashion, Pixie just wanted to play.

On Friday Lily came down for the weekend.

On Saturday Caitlin, Lily and I were going shopping for fabric for the bridesmaids dresses and then we had an appointment at 1pm to go to The Wedding Boutique for Lily to try on wedding dresses.

My favourite designer was Alena Leena who is Cape Town based. I loved almost all of her dresses.

Lily tried on all manner of designs from a princess style to a mermaid style, to the fitted style, many different fabrics from a few made of lace to heavy ones made of beads and all manner of patterns from flowers to art deco.

Lily tried on 6 dresses and we are still having a dilemma choosing one as they all looked so beautiful on her. But she is a gorgeous girl with a perfect body and luckily she fit into all of the tiny sample sizes with only a few being a smidge too tight in the chest. I wonder what they do with bigger girls as they only have a few dresses on site unless they have a storage room to hide the size 16s out of sight?

We narrowed it down to 2 that we all love and one which I do not like but the girls adore. We took videos and photos of each dress and sent them all to the Wedding Whats app group Lily created so as to include my Mom in the planning and design decisions. It was so funny that Mom’s top choice was my top choice and her least favorite was the same one that is my least favorite. The girls both prefer the one Mom and I do not like but if Lily wants that one I will immediately accept it, she has to go with what makes her heart sing. They all look beautiful it is just down to personal design choices.

After we finished shopping we were starving and there was a branch of Fat Cactus just down the road so we stopped off. It was very empty but the service was still shockingly slow.

Caitlin was driving us but Lily and I ordered a strawberry margarita.

It was lovely spending more time with my gorgeous girls.

I ordered the chicken tacos. They were very tasty and I give them 4 Kitten Stars.

Lily wanted a plain cheese quesadilla but the waitress said the cheese quesadilla had onions in it and she should order the Chi Chi Chi quesadillas with chorizo, cheese and chipotle which was the same dish Caitlin had ordered.

Neither of the girls enjoyed this dish. I tasted it and I could see why. It was basically a huge pool of barbecue sauce with a single slice of chorizo in each triangle of quesadilla. It did not taste nice and was like trying to eat soup with chopsticks. The girls each gave it 3 Kitten Stars (and that was being generous.)

I ordered refried beans which were NOT refried beans, it was a sort of chili made from kidney beans without meat. It only arrived when I was half way through my tacos.

Our second round of drinks took forever to arrive and when I saw them sitting on the bar I sent Caitlin to collect them. Our waitress was more interested in chatting up the cute bartender than looking after her 2 or 3 tables. The one thing nice she did was to turn off the footy when we asked her too. The sound of the game was blasting when we went in and as we were the only table we cheekily asked her to turn it down and she not only muted it but she put on some nice blues music too.

All in all, our lunch gets a measly 3 Kitten Stars.

On Friday night Lily and I started watching ‘The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco’. It is a spin off of ‘The Bletchley Circle‘ but as we hadn’t see the original series first we felt a bit uninformed.

On Saturday when we got home we were trying to find something on Netflix that we had not all seen and asked Caitlin had she seen it but she had so we decided to watch a few episodes of the original series as none of us had seen that. It is OK, not ‘wow’ but a decent show. As it is set in the 1950’s it is so hard to view the racism and misogyny that was deemed acceptable. Is this what the Trumplodytes mean when they refer to ‘Make America Great Again’? It is only a positive environment if you are a white man.

When we got home Norm had made a basic mince and tomato base sauce so I added kidney and borlotti (pinto) beans and seasoning and turned it into chili con carne and we had it with chips, salsa and sour cream. Mexican or Tex Mex food twice in one day is fine with me!

Today it is raining again and a bit cooler. At least the rain we have had has kept the garden alive.

My Clivia are thriving and are showing off lush bright orange blooms.

My air plant is blooming too.

Lily drove home this morning and Norm and I have been relaxing and enjoying the cooler weather as have the doggies.

Wish me luck tomorrow with coping with my last day. I have a sales meeting with another client on Tuesday and I have also been put forward to a new client based in Pietermaritzburg so we will see which of them comes forward and contracts us first.

Enjoy your week and until next time, Kisses from the Kitten xxoxoxoxox.