finally

If you happened to have been in the vicinity of the Mulgrave office of Australian Air Express, sometime around 6:30 last night, you would have seen a well-dressed, handsome, athletic-looking young man standing at the counter.

If you looked a little to the left, you would have seen me.

I was there having the following, rather rewarding, conversation with one of the clerks there.

Self: I’m hear to collect parcel 123345 (I can’t remember the real number)
Clerk: Oh right, here it is.
Self: Gosh, I’m so happy I could kiss you.
Clerk: Oh no, that’s not necessary.
Self: You don’t understand, this is very important.
Clerk: (looks at parcel) it’s a shirt????

These clerks; they don’t understand. 38.5 hours a week of clerking obviously dulls their finer feelings. They have no conception of how wonderful an experience it is to FINALLY RECEIVE YOUR RACE PACK FOR MELBOURNE MARATHON 2007.

Apologies. I got a bit carried away there.

In my defence, it’s been a rather trying experience, involving at least a dozen increasingly frantic emails to Sydney, the same number of phone calls to various mobile numbers, a series of fairly stern words spoken and a frantic dash across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs after work last night.

So, I have my Team Samsung shirt and visor and, most importantly, my race number (2469 or something, I forget).

Why all the stress? Let’s put it behind us, shall we? Water under the bridge and all that. That threat of starting a rival team (Team Sony?) was just spoken in the heat of the moment.

Now, it’s time to get stressed about the actual run.