Some days you just can’t win a trick.

Today started well with eight minutes of meditation, something I’ve been doing every day for the last three weeks. My target has been to do this for one month before deciding what’s next.  A small steps kind of approach. I followed this with a brisk clear-the-cobwebs-and-get-things-moving kind of walk before tucking into a bowl of porridge.

All good so far.

It was then off to the hairdresser to get the mane cropped back to its smooth, slicked-back self. My hair is an important part of determining how I feel – I am a Leo after all – so this is a regular and important part of maintaining my positive sense of self. Let’s just say there was a significant amount of said mane on the salon floor and that I left lighter and eminently cooler.

In other words, still looking good.

Feeling virtuously productive, on the way home I dropped into my local jeweller to get the battery replaced in my ‘work’ watch. And here’s where things started to go awry.

Unfortunately the new battery produced…silence.

I should point out here that I have a few other timepieces to keep me on schedule. There’s also a Klaus Kobec Service Centre at a nearby shopping centre so this is not an absolute disaster. But no tick tock from my favourite clock put a definite dent in my Friday.

Back home I was getting on with some chores when I noticed that my smartphone kept buzzing and flashing the ‘start’ screen. After several futile attempts to turn the phone off and perform a hard reset as well as googling to find out what might be the cause of such behaviour, I went to the local phone shop to get some ‘proper’ advice.

Basically the phone is screwed and needs to be sent off for repair. The good news is that it’s still under warranty and I do get a ‘replacement’ phone while HTC are faffing around with it for the next week or so.

Note that I use the term replacement lightly. The tiny pocket pal I brought home takes me back about seven years to the days when I only used a phone for texting and making phone calls. Talk about back to basics! I’ve just read the instruction manual to work out how to do the most essential things – turning it on/off and putting it in silent mode.  It seems that there will be no ‘checking in’ on Facebook or instagramming for the foreseeable future.

*Sigh*

They say timing is everything. (Who is ‘they’ anyway? I’d like to have a word.) I knew my contract was up at the end of May so was already a bit peeved that all of this was going on just to get another two months out of the phone. But wouldn’t you know it – Vodafone’s 75-day early-upgrade means that I could have an upgrade in the next week or so.

In light of my original May horizon, I hadn’t quite gotten around to doing my homework and reading up on all of the options. Also when you move to a new phone, there’s the credit you get by trading in your old phone which offsets some of the cost. So I need to have my phone back – and working again – to do this.

They say patience is a virtue. (Those ‘they’ people again…)

But Vodafone are offering a stonking deal on 24GB of data at the moment.

Hmmmmmm…

It was an act of supreme self-discipline not to leap on this deal and dump the whole phone fix/replacement chicanery. But I did it (those that know me well will know what an achievement this is) and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can negotiate a similar/even better deal when I have my working phone back in my hot little hands.

So it’s fair to say that my day has not quite gone according to plan. Just as well it’s still March and my calendar had some wise words to offer…

Map out your future but do it in pencil – what could be a more perfect mantra for today?

Now where did I put my pencil sharpener?

Or is that broken too.