testing and shopping and driving, oh my

So, as I mentioned earlier, I went in to do my registration thing at the agency this afternoon... I left a little earlier than I thought I needed to, since I wanted to go and pick up my new glasses and see if I could pick up a copy of Pirates of Penzance on DVD for Ma (since it's her favourite thing in the whole wide world, and I'm sure she has to be close to wearing a hole in the VHS copy I bought her a few years ago). So I figured I could do those couple of jobs, go do my testing, and be on my way home by 3:30pm...

*ba-dum*

Sorry, but no...

I left my place just after 1:30pm, drove into town, thinking I would grab a carpark at Myer, then I could go through Myer to the ABC Shop, then down to OPSM, then on to the agency. When I got to the traffic lights before the carpark I realised that instead of saying "Open", the sign was on "Full"... so, muttering to myself, I turned the corner instead and decided to go to the carpark at Target... got there eventually, no thanks to the 108,000 idiots on the very short drive between the carparks, drove up the ramp, and the car in front of me was just sitting there... turns out the carpark was so full, the ticket machine was only letting a new person in when somebody left. Luckily there were two cars lined up to leave, so I got in pretty easily. Then I went around and around and around and around and around (thinking all the while about Jevyeddy's post about people and parking while I was doing it, as well as muttering about it only being Christmas and all of them needing to bugger off back to the suburbs where they belonged)... and eventually stalking a couple back to their car so I could park.

Then I had to leg it up the Mall, and up a side street to the agency, only getting there just after 2:00pm.

And then there was all the paperwork to fill out, all of which I've filled out in various forms and permutations about 100 times before... then off to do the testing... I really hate the computerised Word and Excel training programs... they only ever let you have two goes at anything, and then they just mark it wrong and move on. Give me an extra couple of tries and I could get it right every time... stoopid programs. You have 30 minutes to complete each test, I finished the Excel in 14 minutes and the Word in 9 minutes... and I knew that I'd pulled pretty good scores on both... turns out Excel was 95% and Word was 90%... so I wasn't far wrong.

Next was the vaguely depressing typing test... not because of my score, but because of the text they have you copy while you're doing it... something about people's jobs not being secure, and moving around a lot... nice... just what I didn't need to hear.

Anyway, turns out my typing speed is around 54 words per minute (that's copying from something, I'm sure "freestyle typing" like this, I'm actually a lot quicker) with only 1% of errors.

I so rock... *grin*

Then I had to sit and click through this really, really, really dull presentation on OHS&W, which is all stuff I've seen, read, heard, known about forever...

And then I was left to sit in a fairly uncomfortable chair in a teeny tiny little room with one apple green wall to wait for my consultant wench...

While I was sitting there waiting all the lights on the floor flickered off, then flickered back on again a few seconds later... followed a couple of seconds later by a rumble of thunder. I didn't discover until I got home that it wasn't just that building, it must have been the whole city grid, because my PC had rebooted itself and the microwave clock was blinking at me... all my other devices have more brain than the microwave, so they remember what time it is for a little while when the power goes out.

Anyway... eventually my consultant girly got to me, apologised profusely for being late and we got down to business. She was possibly one of the coolest agency girlies I'd dealt with in a long time, if not ever... turns out she is only 6 days younger than me... very cool. Plus I promised to hold her hand if the lights went out again. When we started the interview thing, she pulled out my test score sheet and said "Normally I talk about the test scores later... but you know how good you are, right?" To which I replied, "Pretty much, yeah."

We had a great little chat, she seems really, really nice, and from both my test scores and the chat we had it sounds like she will be able to find me something, if only something temporary for the time being, but work is mostly work.

Once we were all done having our little chat, we shook hands, and I don't know if it's just because she's in that kind of job where you would have to press the flesh with people, or what, but she had a very firm handshake... a lot of women AND a lot of gayboys don't know how to give good hand (shakes... get your mind out of the gutter)... its sometimes like shaking a dead fish... never good. But she had a nice firm handshake, and since I had to train myself to give a firm shake, I appreciate it in others.

Anyway, I came out of the building to find it was raining kittens and puppies, and there was me without my umbrella... So I headed down the street, ducking and dodging to avoid the rain where necessary, off to OPSM to get my glasses...

Yaaaay... Versace glasses... and they made some little adjustments and fitted them to my face for me... who knew, one of my ears is higher than the other, so they had to tweak one of the arms to compensate. My glasses, being Versace (I did mention that, right, that my new eyeglasses, they're Versace? *grin*), come not only in a Versace box with the Medusa head on it, but in a leather case with the head embossed in it (which is possibly going to last about 12 seconds before I really scuff it up, the woman at OPSM scratched one of them as she was getting them ready for me, and I just put a little scratch in it's replacement when I got it out of the box), as well as a Versace lens cleaning cloth AND a little envelope, containing a certificate of authenticity, to prove they are really Versace... *rolls eyes*

After that I went up to the ABC shop to see the interchangeable gay boys that work in there, but no luck on the Pirates DVD... they sent me to Myer... where I got appalling service... before they sent me to either EzyDVD or JBHifi... remembering what Jevyeddy had said about JB recently in one of his comments, I decided to go there...

Now, I love alternaboys and alternagirls as much as the next guy... but I'm sorry... neither of the slightly docile girls I was served by even seemed to have heard of Pirates of Penzance... *sigh*... I suppose if you're looking for Musical Theatre, go straight to the fagolas... and there was a cute one helping somebody else... all big hair and red sneakers and little tight body... *ahem*

In the end I went back to EzyDVD (through the pouring rain and around all the really stupid people trying to stay out of it) and ended up buying a couple of DVDs for myself, which will go away for Christmas, and ordering Pirates for Ma.

Then all the way down the other end of the Mall to get the car, swinging through Target to buy some socks (which I actually needed) so I could get a cheaper carpark...

By this time it was 5:00pm... and raining... and ten days before Christmas... visualise all that for a moment... then think about what the traffic was like... urgh! Every stupid moron was trying to leave town the same way as me. I nearly had a little red piece of crap run right into the side of my car because the driver decided to merge into my lane without indicating, or even looking... I leant on the horn for about 30 seconds to show my displeasure... I ended up stopping at the supermarket on the way home because I was cranky and couldn't be bothered cooking, so I bought one of those oven pizza thingies (the nice McCain woodfire style ones... they're square)... and Vanilla Coke... and chocolate...

Well, I said I was cranky...

Luckily I had new Nate on Oprah to watch when I got home (and there may be an Oprah inspired post coming, so be warned), so that helped cheer me up. Well, that, and pizza and chocolate...

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