End of a long relationship

After almost fifty years with the same phone provider, my house now makes its contact with the outside world through a different crowd. I'm not the best at changing long-terms situations like this, but I've been mulling over this switch for quite a while and finally took the plunge a few weeks ago.

I expected the process to be stressful, but it's actually been free sailing all the way. The new crowd undertook to deal with the previous lot about carrying over my number and severing my dealings with them. What I'd read in internet forums had prepared me for a long-drawn-out process of red tape and bureaucracy, but it's actually been completely trouble-free. Rather than have to pay my last bill and then give eircom 30 days' notice of wanting to cancel, it's all been done for me. This 'final bill' arrived in today's post. I've now paid that, and end up paying just a tiny bit more for broadband and phone than I paid before for broadband alone at a speed a quarter of what I now (nominally) enjoy.

In other news, today was the deadline for getting finished artwork to the printer for the quarterly magazine. I'd done some preparatory work yesterday so I was all set up and ready to finalise the layout for the final two-page spread as the last info came in today. The client signed off at 5:00 pm and I had everything to the printer by 5:15. And now I can lie back and relax. Most excellent.