Well, it's been a few really bad days but today was the kicker. I haven't posted anything in a while thought I would share my woes with the rest of you.
Everything is breaking and I'm concerned that the next large item to break will be my car.
Two weeks ago my TV broke (or I mean the TV that my parents lent me which they will probably want back because 4 TV's in a house of two people is just not enough!). We could have gotten a new TV or had this one repaired for $300. We took the repair route and sent the TV out. Andrew brought our teeny tiny TV downstairs and put it on a folding table. This was the first of many eyesores.
Last Friday my Dish Network went out and after troubleshooting over the phone it was determined that my dish was broken. The soonest time a tech could come out (at my expense) was one week away. Trying in desperation to get a sooner appointment I threatened to switch to Comcast and said that they would probably come out tomorrow. They didn't seem to care which only feuled my fire.
I called Comcast all all was ready for the switch. Meanwhile, I had purchased a treadmill off CraigsList to use as I trained for the big race in August. I've been using the one next door but it's been too hot to run in their garage so I decided to get one of my own. After a few runs I realized that there was something very wrong with this treadmill. It will not hold it's speed and probably needs a new motor which will likely cost me more than I paid for the darn thing.
During one of my runs while rocking out to my tunes my precious ipod took a crap on me and stopped working. I thought the battery was dead and tried to charge it but nothing happened. This was Monday night.
So at this point in my story, I have a broken TV, broken satallite dish, a treadmill needing repairs and a broken ipod.
Tuesday the Comcast people show up. I was not home. The high speed internet never connected yet Andrew let the tech go home after he was able to connect it to his own laptop. Andrew also paid him for his services of which he did not provide. I came home and spent at least an hour on the phone with comcast trying to connect to the internet. I finally was able to establish a connection, but feared what would happen when i attempted to set up my wireless network. I couldn't possibly go on another run without my ipod so I took it back to Target and got a replacement. One problem down.
Wednesday morning...Calvin wakes up early. I send him downstairs to watch TV while I get back in bed. As I flip through the channels I'm trying desparately to find the disney channel or nickjr. As I find these channels and click on them a message comes up that I need to subscribe to these channels in order to get them. I find something that works and go back to bed. 30 minutes pass and he's in my room again. I send him back down but now realize that I have made a very bad decision. More money, less channels. What did I do! I wake myself up, call up Dish Network and beg for forgiveness. They reinstate me, but at the cost of two months worth of fees up front and other install fees. Also, I gave up my tech date for the dish and now have to wait one more week for service. Another problem solved, kind of.
Now that I've ditched comcast I decided to get my computer moved back to it's home and reconnected wirelessly. Before doing so I decided to do a few hardware updates by putting in a DVD burner and firewire port. They each clicked in easily and I rebooted my machine. A strike fear flowed through me when the computer failed to move past the Dell start-up screen. I powered down and tried again. Same problem. I picked up the phone and called Dell. Alex, (which couldn't possibly be his real name) tried to help but when he had me start taking apart my computer and pulling out the memory I started to get worried. I turned on my computer and suddenly smelled something burning. I pulled out the power cord and told "Alex" thanks but that I had had enough. He quickly reminded me that my machine was not under warranty. Thanks jerk "Alex."
After much crying over the possibility of losing everything I called a local geek who is currently running diagnostics on my computer. I am really hoping for a happy ending with this one.
Around 4:00 my TV (i mean, my parents tv) returned and is in full working condition. Only problem is I can't watch it b/c the dish is still down. Still, the TV is fixed so that's another problem down.
At 4:30 I showed up late for swimming lessons, failing to provide snacks to the class when it was my turn. I almost ran out of gas on the way home and rolled nicely into a gas station.
After wolfing down burger king (which was my only meal of the day b/c i was so sick to my stomach from the whole computer fire thing) we went home for bathtime. Literally seconds after getting in the tub I hear Calvin say something about Hazel's poop. Why, why, why do kids POOP in the bathtub! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I can't stand it! I resolved that issue and put the kids to bed.
Why is everything around me breaking? Perhaps I've got the opposite of everything I touch turning to gold? It must be that everything I touch turns into crap. I'm trying to stay positive about the loss of my PC, the expensive repairs on my treadmill, and having to entertain my kids the old fashioned way for one more week. It will all work out. It can only go up from here, right?
If you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can see the fire pictures on the wall. The small fire engine on the bottom of the two smaller pictures is the first engine Andrew was assigned to as an Engineer. It has sentimental value!
We're planning to hang a few helmets (once I put up hooks on this shelf) and a turnout coat. I also have some antique fire grenedes that I'm planning to hang up someday on either side of the shelf. I'm sure eventually Calvin will want to ge them down and throw them so I haven't put them up yet.
