Talking to Robots

We had a rather stormy weekend emotionally Chez Minnie but hopefully things are now sorted.  It was needed because it was something from over 30 years ago and some sort of resolution was needed.

And today I have been trying to trace a missing parcel containing a fringe twister.  It has taken ages to get here and was supposed to be delivered on 16th February.  When I went onto Australia Post's site to see if I could find out what had happened to it I found a notice telling me that I should phone AP's tracking site.

So this morning I phoned and was told that the site had experienced service difficulties  -  translated as "so many people are phoning to find where their missing mail is lurking that our lines are all choked up".

I waited a couple of hours and managed to get through to one of those dreadful "if you want to open an account press 1. etc"  That lead me to the robot who had not been programmed to do anything but collect my tracking number and direct me to the web page, which was already open on my computer screen, or to phone the number which I had dialled to reach her.

This afternoon, after my knitting group I decided to try again and hung on through the menu of options until I reached the "speak to one of our operators" option and finally got some real help.

She took my name and the tracking number, went off to investigate and came back to say that my apartment number was unreadable and the parcel was with the mail to be returned to sender but that it should be possible to rescue it.  Then she asked me what was in my parcel (a fringe twister) and agreed that that was what the parcel contained.  So hopefully I will receive it in a couple of days and then I can begin to repair the fringe on my beautiful Iranian hand block-printed table cloth with a fringe which was eaten by my boy cat when he was a kitten and ate anything cord-like.

It is a big tablecloth and he ate about two thirds of the fringe along with a silk tassel, half an apron string and a couple of nylon cat leads from when I was trying to train the kittens to walk on leads.  He needed abdominal ultrasounds for those but fortunately eventually vomited them up. 

And today's Sudoku:

Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.