Thursday, July 7, 2011

Juggling could be fun


The day started with a BANG.

It was the kind of bang that even made our 90-pound dog, who was more like a sleeping Grizzly Bear at that point, spring into my lap and ask “what the heck was that?”

Our 9-pound pooch quivered with fear safely perched on the face of my male counterpart.

For a brief moment, it was silent while our minds tried to comprehend exactly what had happened.
It was only July 3 and way too early in the morning for fireworks of that nature.

“Holy crap! Lightning,” the man finally muttered. “It was close.”

Close, was an understatement. The way the light filled the room, coupled with the rafter shaking boom, I thought aliens were invading and had chosen to beam up my house.

Once I made sure my shorts were clean it was time to see what was up.

We hadn’t lost electricity, the house wasn’t on fire and the backyard tree was still standing. Phew.
Just when we thought we had escaped with our lives, I grabbed my computer for a quick check of the weather.

Crap. The Internet was down, maybe we hadn’t gotten off so lucky.

The man decided to handle the situation and did what he does best. Stare down the blinking box, scratch his head and unplug it.

Once the box was rebooted, still no Internet.

Panic ensued as we tested all other electronic devices. The kind of panic that makes you question your existence. That, how will I live without Facebook, YouTube and email kind of panic.

No satellite television either, crap.

That’s when the man began to panic. No ESPN, no football re-runs, no watching Bear Gryllis eat maggots to survive in the Amazon, what was he to do?

I grabbed the phone and made the several, annoyingly automated phone calls to our Internet and satellite providers.

Three days. Three days was the soonest their technicians could arrive. Three days we would be without our links to the outside world. It was after all, a holiday weekend.

With nothing to do but have a conversation with me, or sulk, the man chose the latter.

Sitting in the middle of the living room floor, facing the blank screen on his beloved flat screen TV, he hopelessly clicked the remote, jiggled wires and sulked some more.

Our close encounter with the lightning kind, had officially wiped out our Internet modem, satellite receiver and the man’s precious surround sound receiver.

After a game of thumb war for choice of DVD, that I obviously lost, I contemplated learning a new hobby or maybe even freshening up on my housekeeping skills to pass the time.

Less than a split second later, I realized the choices I had so stupidly laid out for myself and settled on juggling. Juggling could be fun.

1 comment:

Jim Sissel said...

I like, it reflects the fear in all of us. What if all the satellites fell out of the sky. What ever would we do?