The Label for 'Sad'

I have a funeral to go to tomorrow.

A coworker of mine was diagnosed with cancer of the kidney about three months ago. Initially it looked like it would require surgery and chemo, but the prognosis was good. Sadly, a few weeks later the doctors discovered cancer in his liver, then lungs and eventually the brain. They gave him a year, but after several strokes and seizures he went downhill far faster than anyone expected. He died last Sunday, about a month after his one-year diagnosis.

Earl was not always the nicest guy; I think he sometimes just forgot what tact was. Regardless of his faults, I knew and worked with for more than six year and he will be missed. I swear I keep expecting him to walk out of the coffee shop or drop me a note about the content management system. It's hard to grasp that he was here and all of a sudden he's not.

There's that whisper of mortality in my ear...

Episode III - The Evil Empire

All right- to finish this off, let me start by providing you with a list of known items that were damaged or destroyed. To date. Because I'm still finding things.

1. TV
2. DVR/ cable box
3. stereo
4. microwave
5. computer
6. VCR
7. refrigerator (still runs but can't stay cold anymore)

The Progress Energy Claims guy who has been assigned to me has told me that they will pay only for what the items would have been worth when destroyed. So essentially, what would I get for my two-year-old TV on Craigslist (pre-smoking and sparking). Unfortunately, I still have to pay full price for the items I have to replace. Like the $64.99 (plus tax) I paid to replace my microwave this morning. Grrrrr.

The other things I'm trying to get Progress Energy to cover are the food in the fridge that went bad (they already told me to pretty much give that up) and the $300 I paid Richard, the electrician to come and tell me what was wrong.

Now here's the kicker-- apparently I should NOT have called an electrician. Progress Energy argues that I should have just called them and they would have been able to figure out was wrong and fix it, hence, no electrician costs. As I pointed out to the claims guy, my power was working when this happened. My power never went out, until I turned off the house breaker. None of my neighbors lost power. Why would I think it was a problem with the power company? So heads up people- Call Progress Energy first. They can't go in the house to find the problem, so I think ultimatly they would have told me to call an electrician anyway. I guess you just need their blessing first...

Hopefully this story is basically over and the only addendum will be regarding the speedy and happy cutting of a fair check. If anyone is interested in betting on that I'll give you good odds; I need to pull in a little extra cash this month...

By the way. Great big shout out to some people who helped me through this. Couldn't have survived without you.

• Mom- came into town. BIG help. So wonderful to see her and at such a critical time.
• Roommate- very patient while the house blew up around her (and ultimately destroyed her computer.
• Brother (3)- was here when the mess started and helped clear up the wreckage.
• Boss- so understanding and offered to help several times.

The Hunt for the Red-Hot Neutral

Ok, yeah I didn't post last night. Sheesh. Apparently all you have to do to get people interested is end with a cliffhanger...

When last we saw our heroine she was making her way through her now-darkened, smoked-filled family room. Obviously I needed to call an electrician (this should not actually be considered "obvious"; more on that later) but my first thought was "How can I find an electrician without the interweb?". Fortunately I had a phone book holding open a door somewhere so I used that and, on my eighth call I finally found someone who would come out (they all say "24 Hour Service" but no one was available at 4:30 on a Monday afternoon).

Richard and son (Ryan) showed up on my doorstep 30 minutes later and spent the next hour or so trying to work out the cause of my blow up. There is nothing so frustrating as waiting when there is nothing you can do and you don't know anything. Of course I was distracted by calculating a second mortgage and selling my new car and prostituting myself to pay for my new electrical system.

Eventually they came to the suspicion that the problem was caused by what's called an "open neutral". They tested my neutral (from outdoor box to indoor breaker box) and that was fine so they called our local power monopoly, Progress Energy. Eric, the Progress Energy dude showed up around 7:00pm and he and Richard conversed and agreed that the problem was the neutral line that runs between the transformer and my outdoor box (code name = not-my-fault).

Now once they knew what it was, both Richard and Eric wasted no time in regaling me with stories about the terrors of the open neutral:

"Yep, you're lucky you were home. People all the time come home after an open neutral fire and there's nuthin' left."

- Richard, the electrician

"We're gonna fix this tonight because if we try to bypass it and this breaker goes you might wake up surrounded by flames."

- Eric, the Progress Energy dude

They honestly said that! I went out that very night about bought fire extinguishers and fire ladders for each bedroom but I'm still not sleeping great.

Progress Energy finished fixing the neutral and packed it up at around 10:30pm. Fortunately, before they left I did think to ask how I could get the things that had been destroyed replaced. Eric grudgingly told me to call customer service and that the whole process will take at least 2-4 weeks.

Sadly, the story is not done- and no, I'm not just trying to do another cliffhanger. Check back for a full list of destroyed and damaged items and an explanation of why you shouldn't call an electrician first if your TV blows up... and I promise, it is a good one!

Pop, pop, fizz, fizz

You know, when it rains, it pours. I've had so much fun over the past few days and have oh, so many stories to share with you! I'll have to split everything into multiple posts but I know both of you will be on the edge of your seats.

Monday afternoon I came home from work early to do some cleaning (Mom was coming into town that night). I turned on the washer and tried to start the dryer but it wouldn't quite start and then the laundry room light flickered and dimmed. I was just starting to get annoyed and a little teeny tiny bit worried when I heard the yells and a few pops coming from the family room. My roommate and brother were entranced by sparks and smoke coming from my TV. Then the washing machine starting making an un-godly noise so I opened the lid to make it stop spinning. Meanwhile the TV popped a few more times so I unplugged the surge protector (yeah, I had a surge protector) and roommate and brother managed to lug it near an open window away from the wooden tinder box typically referred to as an entertainment unit.

While throwing open windows and trying to work out what happened I heard a terrible noise from upstairs-- loud and very fast clicking. That turned out to be the chain of my fan as it whipped back and forth and hit the fan blades which were going mach-2. The fan was actually smoking and shaking like it was about to fall out of the ceiling. Cool, right? So I went (went = simple verb representing "ran in blind panic") back downstairs and turned off the power to the whole house.

Curious about what happened next?!? You should be! Stay tuned for a new episode featuring Richard, the electrician, Eric, the Progress Energy guy and the always-popular statement: "you're lucky your house didn't burn down"!

Ramblin' Woman

So my roommate has a theory that if you're going to turn 30, and with that of course freak out and be miserable, you might as well have something to look forward to. Her suggestion was a trip so we compiled top ten lists of places we want to go and looked for overlaps. We haven't ultimately decided yet where we'll go but we've narrowed it down to somewhere in Europe potentially any two or more of the following:

• Spain
• France
• Italy
• Ireland
• Scotland
• Czech Republic
• Greece
• Germany

I think we're doing this in a pretty smart way. We have about a year and a half to plan and save. We're both pretty motivated to get this to work with our school/work schedules. I know some French and she knows some Spanish; I'd like to learn some Italian and she wants to learn German so we're working through the language issues.

Now I admit I anticipate some traveling issues- the whole 24-7 together syndrome. But I think we're both aware of those problems and I do live with her so at least I'm familiar with the things most likely to annoy me. Naive? Probably. We'll see...

PS- I don't want to hear it, Cassie! I'm only your second-favorite cousin, huh?

Headline News in Sucksville

So I'm really pretty positive no one is reading this or will ever read this. But the point has been to keep people I don't talk to that often well informed. So here are the latest news stories in Life o' Marit:

• Brother shaved head, not actually a cancer victim
• Intense work frustration leads to job search
• Heat wave ruins joys of fall
  
• Work stress, apathy leads to academic decline
• Cholesterol Test Wednesday; Panic ensues
  
• Frustration and depression summit this week
  
• 'Caveman' worst comedy since invention of wheel

Have a great week ya'll!

The Tale of the Keys

Once upon a time, in fact on the very night before our heroine was to move to a new house, she lost her keys. Now this was significant problem since it had both her keys to her current place and to her new place. Her keys to her current mailbox and the new one. It also had her parent's house keys, her brother storage facility key and her key drive with lots of important files. Oddly enough the thing she missed the most was her Harris Teeter VIC card. (What? They'll issue you a new one but then it doesn't know what kind of coupons to give you.)

Then one day, six months later, she was switching purses because as we all know you can't wear brown shoes with a black purse. The purse had tons of junk in it and she was tossing stuff in the trash but the purse was still heavy. She finally dug inside, into the side zippered pocket and, WHA-LA, her keys!

This story has no moral, just the happy ending. The ending probably isn't so amusing to her brother who drove her around for 2 hours looking for the keys, or for her friends who detoured past restaurants and even patches of grass so she could look for the keys weeks later. I'm just happy knowing my keys weren't out there for some weirdo to pick up. I mean 'her'- her keys. I never lose my keys.