We fly home to Seattle from New York in the expectation that Sandra will be called for jury duty or at the very least have to appear as part of the pool from which “12 good men and true” (!!!) will be selected. We’d anticipated that this would be a King County trial and wouldn’t last longer than a few days. An email from the court told a different story. Jury selection would take place over much of October via Zoom calls during which attorneys for the prosecution and defense have the opportunity to interview potential jurors and use their permitted number of objections. The trial would get underway towards the end of October and likely run into early December followed by jury deliberations….😱. Sandra already had jury duty deferred twice…..but all of November we’ll be in Australia planned and booked many months ago. So now what? There are few grounds for a third excusal but “severe hardship” is one of them. Via the relevant form, Sandra explains the predicament including how much she’d be out-of-pocket by forfeiting non-refundable plane tickets. Thirty-six hours later the court administration comes back with the message that Sandra has been excused on the grounds of “severe hardship”. Phew…..

Getting back home we find puddles of water in front of the kitchen fridge. Not clear where the water’s coming from. But we reckon the fridge must be 20 years old so let’s swap it in for a new one. A quick online search to find what we’re looking for, better yet from Seattle-based Costco which we’ve been loyal members of for 30 years. And even more good news, it can be delivered, installed and the old fridge hauled away just three days later. The day before delivery, I get numerous messages telling me to expect the delivery between 1:45 and 3:45 the following afternoon, confirmed again on the morning of delivery day. But soon after 9am I get a phone call and text message telling me that I should expect delivery within the next 30-45 minutes! OK, I said but PLEASE call or text when you’re close by and I will meet you outside the building. Some two hours and several phone calls later, still no delivery.

Then comes the fateful call….the delivery truck had arrived earlier outside our building, couldn’t find anywhere to stop and delivery would have to be rescheduled! End of saga! We (not too) politely tell Costco what they can do with their fridge, cancel the order and we’ll go elsewhere!

Meanwhile on the other side of the world a somewhat similar story is unfolding. Back in January we’d ordered a new sofa for our Sydney apartment. As with goods of this type in Sydney, “gestation” time is pretty long and we shouldn’t expect it before the end of June. As it turns out, the sofa is only ready for delivery in September - nine months after conception! The first attempted delivery even using what can best be described as the installers’ equivalent of forceps ends in failure when they fail to extract the sofa from the service lift and service room across the hallway from our front door.

So of course what we do is to call in the equivalent in the furniture world of a consultant obstetrician to oversee a second attempt at delivery - our very good friend David Boucher. David armed with the photos and dimensions of the sofa and the dimensions of the passenger lift has little doubt that he can oversee a successful delivery. He even has a fall-back, the furniture movers equivalent of a C-section. Hopefully that won’t be needed

Delivery day comes, ironically on the same day as the failed fridge delivery from Costco on the other side of the world. David reports “Successful ingress. Slow and steady. Zero issues.” Ending with “Looks beautiful”…..😊😊

At last, a happy ending and a successful delivery…..