Unlucky '13

Awhile back my modem lost its internet signal. I was on the phone with technical support for an hour, turning the thing off and on, resetting it and even going into the modem through my computer, but all to no avail. The little tech support man surmised that my modem had finally bitten the dust and arranged to send me a new one, but the soonest it could arrive was within two business days. I was trying to figure out what I should do since I was in the midst of working on a project that I needed to use the internet for; should I bite the bullet and shell out to buy a modem? Should I look into a personal hotspot? While I was debating all of this, my internet signal suddenly clicked back on and remained steady for the next few days. I was relieved but had decided to still switch out the modem when the new one came since mine was old as dirt anyway. But once the new one arrived, it was just a refurbished version of the exact same old ass model I already had. I didn't know if it was better to switch out one old modem for an equally old one, or just continue to use the typically reliable one I already had. I opted to keep the one I had and returned the "new" one and Old Faithful continued to work for the next few months without any major issues. Until Sunday night. I was about to go to bed when I noticed the internet signal had dropped. I had been using wifi only a few minutes prior to that so I unplugged the modem and waited to see if that fixed it. No dice. I spent another hour on with the slowest tech support person I have ever spoken to in my life before she decided the modem had seen its last signal. She put in an order for a new, actually NEW, modem but said it wouldn't arrive until Wednesday. As she was talking I tried to figure out what to do until then. The answer was to economize, yo. I figured out how to use my phone as a hotspot (Fonz bless technology) for free. It was flippin' easy to set up and had pretty decent speed, the only thing I had to worry about was staying under my data cap (the one drawback of Verizon is that data be 'spensive). I was obsessive about checking my usage every ten minutes but apparently surfing the web doesn't consume as much data as one would think. I was only online for about a half hour the first day and yesterday spent about six hours online and all of that still only used less than a GB of data. Fortunately, my modem arrived a day early and was easy to get up and running so I'm back in the interwebs saddle. But the internet going out was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to bad stuff the last few days. Of course, I should know better than to expect good stuff given how this year has treated me thus far. A timeline below.

~ Interwebs go out

~ I attempt to repair a friend's busted toilet tank but the innerworkings of it are something I have never seen before (and I've done a lot of plumbing). I end up having to take the entire thing apart, put it back together, and make two trips to the hardware store before finally getting it repaired. A job that should've taken maybe an hour ended up taking four.

~ While repairing the toilet I had been wearing gloves so that I wouldn't get my hand that has a significant and infected cut on it all full of grease. But the glove broke and wouldn't you know it did so right at the spot where the cut is. After washing it off and changing the bandage, it still hurt like a mofo which prompted...

~ A trip to the doctor. The antibiotics I've been on for this cut have not been doing much anyway but getting it all full of grease certainly didn't help. I was also dehydrated enough that I had to have IV fluids (and IV antibiotics) and I got a lecture about not getting enough sleep at night, especially with the anemia and blah blah blah.

~ New modem arrives early. Maybe things are lookin' up!

~ Get a text from the mother saying she thinks the starter in her car is going out. This coming less than two months after the radiator was replaced (grand total of close to $700 which she was only able to get because a friend paid for it), and one month after she and my sister had to bus it to get her car in the parking lot of her job because the key had failed to turn earlier in the day when she'd attempted to leave. We thought the starter had gone out then but it was actually some issue with having been using a copy key instead of the original for all these years. However, now it's taking two tries to get the key to turn at all. I Googled this morning and found that some people have this issue for months or even years before having to fix it, which would likely be another $200 that nobody has. Our hope though is that the thing makes it another two weeks until mom gets paid and then, maybe, we can get it fixed. I've cursed this car up and down this year because everything that has been able to go wrong with it has gone wrong but in reality it's a 16-year-old car that has rarely given her issues until recently. I wish there were any way to get her a newer one.

~ Get a phone call that the brother is in the hospital after having taken a line drive to the noggin. His scans are clear and his condition is stable and he should be out of the hospital by tomorrow evening.

~ Finally get back on the interwebs and start downloading content I need for a new project when...

~ The power goes out. The weirdest power outage ever too. It wasn't just suddenly all dark and everything clicked off. It was more like I could see everything slowly dimming and then fading until it all went dark. The power company said they would try to have it back within three hours, but it ended up being restored in about 30 minutes. I stayed up trying to get some work done after it came back on.

This year has been something. I'm no longer surprised by the negative shit that happens. I don't expect it at all, ever the optimist, but I'm not shocked when it does happen. I just can't wait for 2013 to end in the hopes that 2014 will be much better. At least I hope so.