Monday, June 22, 2009

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Wednesday morning - my modem/router seems to be dead. I unplug it for the day and hope for the best when I get back that evening.

Wednesday evening - my modem/router is dead. I call Sympatico and get put through a series of maneuvers that I already attempted with no luck, but I play along anyway. The verdict: they are sending me a new modem/router. I should expect it to arrive "in a few days."

Thursday morning - No hot water! I go downstairs and note that the basement tenant is doing laundry. Can he have used all of the hot water? It could be so...

later Thursday morning - I accidentally smash a plate on the floor. I get the broom. I cycle to work without a shower.

Thursday evening - Still no hot water. I think I can hear the dryer still running in the basement. I call the tenant but his phone is out of service. I knock on his door and get no answer. I enter, fearing that something must be wrong. The floor is flooded with water, most of it heading towards a floor drain. I switch off the dryer, which clearly has been running all day.

still Thursday evening - I call the gas company and get a four-hour service window for the next day. I shut the water off to prevent any more damage.

Friday morning - I call work to say that I am not coming in because of my plumbing issues and add that I cannot work from home owing to a lack of internet connectivity. I volunteer to take a vacation day, leaving me with only 8 more weeks this year. Somehow, I have amassed a large amount of vacation :-)

Friday noonish - Gas person shows up within the last 20 minutes of his four-hour service window. My heater is dead, something I already knew. A replacement tank will arrive in two hours.

Friday afternoon - Hot water tank shows up 3.5 hours later. It's installed in 45 minutes. I spend precious time cleaning up the mess. While it's being installed, I watch my neighbour back out of his driveway and knock over a tank the repair dudes left sitting by the side of the road. The driver looks around quickly and decides to flee.

Friday afternoon - I illegally connect to a very very slow open internet connection and discover that the power to my office at work has been shut down. What would I have been able to do at work had I been there, I wonder?

Monday morning - I roll into work and have no office, so I make inquiries. No one seems to have considered where I should set up a temporary office. I seek out a student computer lab, where I now sit. I am thinking of grabbing a laptop from our tech guys (once they show up) and heading to a green space outside, since it's about 95 degrees in this building anyway because of some sort of building-wide AC issue.

Maybe I should go home and go back to bed?

9 comments:

S.M. Elliott said...

:(

I'd offer some clever little truth here, but as the master of unfortunate events wrote, "The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen." [Book the 7th]

A said...

I hate not having any hot water. That is one way to ruin my day right off the bat.

Super Happy Jen said...

I hate four-hour service windows. They should set up a time, and if they're going to be late they should call and reschedule. Can you imagine if I set up a job interview and promised to come between 9 am and 4? Or if a pizza delivery guy promised to come sometime within the next three hours? It's insane. At least the doctor's office pretends to give you an exact time. (My doctor even apologizes for the wait, to which I reply "duh, it's a doctor's office"). Next time someone gives me a service window, I'm choosing someone else to do my service. Just watch me!

tweetey30 said...

It always happens in three's.. It sucks but it always happens that way. Hope things get better soon.

tshsmom said...

It looks like my bad luck rubbed off on you...I'm sorry.

This is the way all but 2 days of 2009 has gone for us.

k said...

Wow. And Mercury isn't even retrograde.

zydeco fish said...

k: well isn't Mercury in retrograde an optical illusion anyway?

Deodand said...

OK, I'll bite - what happened to your office? Did they break it off the side of the building? Did someone steal it? Did they brick up the door? Did it collapse into a black hole? Did the upper floor fall onto the ceiling of the lower floor? Did squatters move in?

zydeco fish said...

Deodand: no, nothing as wonderful as that. It was simply a power issue. There is no power, so I had to move elsewhere.