So, this past few weeks has been extremely busy with school and other things but I thought that this story was worth recording for myself and others:
The weekend before school started I came back to town from visiting my parents and was getting settled when, as it often does, it began to rain. Well, I thought that everything would be okay because I had surge protectors on all things important enough to need them so I waited out the storm, checking email and playing on the computer and then I started watching television.
Well not long after the transition over to the boob-tube the lightening seemed to get ever closer to my house. (Mind you my house was built God only knows when... and has no central heat or air... you know... THOSE kind of houses) So the lightening strikes, literally in my front yard, the rain is pummeling my poor decrepit little house and the electricity goes off for 30 seconds or so, then comes back on. MY television comes on and the picture appears but no sound comes out of the speakers... two summers ago I lost my laptop to a thunderstorm... my LCD tv surely couldn't have met the same fate!? I put in a DVD, just to see if it might be the cable, and the DVD picture and sound came out just fine. So I decided to call the cable company, I stayed on the line listening to the same awful looped 30 second piano music clip for almost a half hour then finally I got a representative. We worked on the problem from every angle until finally he gave up and scheduled an appointment with the technician for the following day. I check everything else out while I'm on the phone with the awesome hold music and make sure I unplug my computer and other things, juuuust in case. Not too long after the stellar conversation with the cable guy another bolt of lightening comes desperately close to my house and again I am in darkness. I waited for a little while and the power didn't come back on... I realized then that I had nothing that resembled a flash light in my house... so I fumbled for a vanilla scented candle I have in my room and used that as a light source until I remembered that dear old Grandmother had given me a battery powered Coleman lantern.... where it was, I had no idea. It's not often that one needs such things as a Coleman lantern, even in a city like Tallahassee. I finally found it in the upper most corner of a closet that I rarely go to and I prayed that it would light up. No luck... I jostled it around a bit and finally it came to life, casting a dim but helpful light. By this time it was beginning to get hot and I thought it would be intelligent to open a window to let the humid hot air from outside blow through the house.... Sauna City in no time, my friends. I sought out my electricity bill to call the help line and inform the kind computer receptionist of my plight. after about 15 minutes of menus I finally got it to understand I was experiencing an "outage." I texted a few friends to see if they wanted to eat something or just hang out because my power was out, by this time I had roped my friend D.P. into going to Fridays with me, they roll the streets up early here in Tallahassee... especially on sundays and it was 930 or so, so I went to see him for a little while and then we ate until about 1:00 and I came home to find my power back on but my router and modem were fried, cool! Just in time for classes. I made plans to get a new modem the next day and just limp along without a router.
I go to class and I am supposed to have my books already because there is homework due the next day. hooray. I get through class and hit work for a few hours and then walk home to find that there is a giant leak in my front yard. I turn off the emergency valve and call the city, I get to talk to the electronic receptionist for yet another hour until I finally get a real person, who then transfers me to a department that says I need to call my land lord because it isn't the reponsibility of the city. cool. call the landlord, no answer leave a message. head to the book store and find out that I have just enough money in my account to buy the books but I can't access it via debit card, I have to withdraw it from an ATM or I'll get an overdraft fee... even better... I go outside of the bookstore and find that the atm is out of order, they close in 15 mins so I can't go somewhere else to get money and come back. I ask the girl at the counter if she'll hold them for me and she says they will, so I leave and make arrangements for life without water... I get my friend JB to let me shower at his place the next morning and then I went to wal-mart and big lots to buy a few things my room mate decided to use and not replace before fleeing the country for the summer... good guy, bad room mate. I got a new modem and a new surge protector as well as an hdmi cable to see if that'll fix the silent tv. I fix all the electronic equipment issues the hdmi cable resolved the perma-mute tv, and yet another call to the crazy cable company who was "experiencing waits of an hour or more" to ask them to connect my modem to their network and to cancel the appointment the following day.
Got up at 7 the next morning to go shower, go to the bank, buy my books, and make it to class on time, none of which happened like I planned. I showered when I wanted to be at the bookstore and ended up having 15 mins before class to buy the books and park my truck.
I get to the book store and walk at a pretty good clip to the front of the store where my books are supposed to be. There are about 5 people standing behind a counter doing little to nothing and one register that is open. A girl manages to make it to the register right before me and commences to pull out 10 books from her bag, she says to the attendant "I wanna know how much y'all buy these back fur" the young lady at the counter seems unimpressed and lazily scans all the items telling the girl what each one is worth to the store. After scanning all of them and taking a grand total of 12 minutes, the girl on my side of the counter decides she "don't wanna do dis" so she takes the books back. I kindly ask the attendant for my books and she says they are in the book department. I think I almost flipped out then, but breathed a little and began to walk away when I thought... best to check before I walk all the way upstairs to the book dept to wait in another line and be told they don't have them. I nicely ask the girl if there might be a possibility that they are behind the counter in a bag marked for me... she thinks a second and asks my name and then says... "oh, yeah, they're back here..." {....really!?} She asks if I have already paid for the books and I think about saying yes... and then fold and say that I haven't and pay every cent from my bank account to buy them only to run out to my car and think that I can park in a metered spot but wait, I gave all my change to charity when I was at Wal-mart... coool. I drive home and walk to school arriving 5 minutes into class where everyone is taking a quiz. It was an awesome couple of days, but I made it!
