Exhausting Times

So far, this has been another of those weeks I feel like I've been sleep walking through.  The various disruptions to routine haven't helped, ranging from an almost forgotten dental appointment today, to the bizarre saga of my car's replacement exhaust which blighted the early part of my week.  With regard to the latter, I took the car in to one of those 'fast fit' type places on Friday, to be told that they couldn't get the parts until Saturday, so could they hang on to the car until then?  Which was fine as I didn't need it again until Sunday.  You can guess the outcome - I got a phone call on Saturday afternoon to say that the parts wouldn't be available to Monday.  I repeated that I needed the car on Sunday.  In the end, I had to take it back and drive it on Sunday with its falling apart old exhaust.  I dropped it off again on Monday morning, emphasising that I would need it for work by the afternoon.  Yeas, you've guessed right again, when I went back after lunch, they hadn't even started the job.  I then had to pretty much stand over them while they replaced the exhaust.

Quite apart from leaving me wondering just why it seemed so difficult to get a replacement exhaust for a Ford Focus (the commonest car on the UK's roads) in the first place, let alone fit it, (supposedly it had something to do with it being a diesel, the whole experience ensured that I started the week feeling exhausted, (no pun intended).  I wouldn't mind, but it was a bloody expensive exhaust, too.  Which undoubtedly had something to do with the fact that it was a diesel.  For once, a trip to the dentist proved cheaper than a visit to the garage.  Still, at least the clouds of black smoke the car had been prone to cough up seem to have vanished, thereby vindicating my belief that they were primarily down to an accumulation of soot in the old, failing, exhaust.  But, to get back to the point, this has been another of those spectacularly unproductive weeks where my apparently constant state of exhaustion has left me completely unmotivated and incapable of doing anything.  But to look on the bright side, it is nearly the weekend and it is officially Summer at last.  So there's something to look foeward to.