...
It turned out my ISP went all officious on me and actually disconnected me in meatspace while I was gone. This meant that just picking up a modem on the way back in was out of the question, and I got to wander around in my archives and remember books I've written and movies I've downloaded and generally do things beside poke about on the system of pipes for the latest harrowing hopscotch.
I got all engaged with formatting one of my old pieces to send to my smoking buddy and so the cable guy crept up on me. He was vexed because the orders said, "voluntary disconnect" instead of "reconnect a voluntary disconnect" and so he was out there scratching his head for a while before I set him straight.
Then, of course, this was supposed to be easy peasy long lunch break kine action, but, well, that's what we thought. His little tablet and cumbersome meter-like gizmo started barking at him and nothing was coming through right and lucky for both of us we're jaded old poops who don't get ruffled by this sort of utterly predictable nonsense. We spent hours using up every trick in his book and his van, to include running a hunnert feet of new cable and painting the grass for the guys who would come after to bury it, when the whole problem was at HQ... someone else reading the cryptic note and shaking their head about having to disconnect someone who's already disconnected herself.
That asshole switch. They charge real money for someone to reach over and flip that fucker and they just paid my cable guy for four hours of useless-to-them professionalism. Their karma. It was not, however, useless to me because he had to get under my house and he found where one of my ancient copper pipes had kinked and was peeing pretty damn good under there.
A boon to me!
An existential threat to me to fix, but who's counting?
I put in an emergency call to my own knight in shining armor, the exalted Snail McGyver, who, upon receiving the message, sometime after his phone had recharged, raced to my rescue, was under there with his headlamp and just the right fitting stanching the flow just under ten hours later. Lightning.
The man is a miracle of the masculine creation.
There's nothing he can't do!
Slowly.
The neighbors no longer fear prowlers around here. It's just Snail out there in nines' toolshed again, go back to sleep, dear.
Anyway, I did look up from my sundry projects and accidents and existential threats to make you aware of my continued state of bodily integrity and victory over the Cyber Murphy, but I didn't do my poking, and now I have to go to town to put out some fires that managed to start despite my perfection of putting them on automatic "pilot" before I left.
Things only quasi-happen around here, and I don't even think that's unusual on this planet anymore. I remember distinctly that they happened fully when I was a girl, but I'm trying to remember when they stopped having that nice, crisp feel of finality or forward movement or just plain competence to them... all I recall is that I used to fly into towering rages over it... mortally offended every single time....
Anyway, if I don't put out the fires today, they will be out of control and the men in the white coats will surely show up in the morning if the men in the black helicopters don't beat them here. The fire department will get here when it's burned to the ground, but I will be long gone before that. So best I just go stamp them out or spit on them now and come back and double poke around for any scraps worthy of some abstruse comment or exclamation.
always and any time....
