6/27/14

Monday was a nonevent.  Got up, went to work, goofed off all day, went home, watched TV, and went to bed.  Tuesday was more of the same except that I had a dentist appointment at 1420 h.  I knew going in that it was going to be rough so I decided I was not going back afterward.  I told the folks this at the railroad and they said, “Mmm, ok?”  I went home to shave my teeth again and then went to the dentist.  I was ushered to the chair and she swabbed my gums with topical anesthetic.  The dentist came in and poked me with several shots of Novocain, or whatever they use now, and left.  When he returned he had a look.  Now, several months ago I went in for a filling or something and he had a look at the left rear lower molar.  It was wiggling quite a bit so he said, “Yeah, that one’s no good.  Let’s yank it out.”  He did.  So I’ve had an upper molar chewing against free air for some time now.  This was the one he was going to scrape the hell out of under anesthetic this visit.  He had a look at it and said, “Yeah, that one’s not doing anything.  Let’s yank it out.”  Ok, actually what he said was “It is kind of a waste of time scraping this one since it doesn’t have a biting partner anymore.  We might as well remove it.”  I agreed and he did.  The appointment I was expecting to take at least an hour was done in twenty minutes or so.  I went home and contemplated changing clothes again and going back to work.  This I did not do.  I futzed around on them intergooglewebnetcoms for a while until mom came in to say she was going to the store for milk and stuff.  She insisted that I rest up from the extraction.  I did not argue even though I felt fine.  All of a sudden, the bottom fell out of the sky.  It began to rain friggin’ BUCKETS!  Thunder, lightning, and all sorts of mean nasty stuff were going on in the atmosphere above the house.  I shrugged and kept doing whatever I was doing.  Then I get a notice from the laptop that I was no longer connected to the wireless.  I shut down and went to have a look-see.  First thing I noticed was the tower thingy which had been sitting behind the TV was missing.  “That’s odd,” I thought.  Ok, actually I cursed the lady who comes to dust and clean from time to time figuring she had knocked it off of there.  I found the thing and set it back on the top of the table thing and saw that it had lots of red lights and not as many green as it should… as in some which were supposed to be green were red and others were not on at all, sort of thing.  I began unplugging and re-plugging stuff to try and get it to reset.  Unfortunately it has a battery backup and I didn’t know how to do a hard boot.  Oh, and the unit was really hot.  I called AT&T and tried to deal with the robot gate-keeper.  We went through several tests and it said, “Please allow the unit thirty minutes to reset.  If this does not solve the problem, please call back.”  Mom arrived home while I was working on this and she immediately got to work sweeping the water out of the downstairs laundry room, hall, and pantry which floods every time we have a hard rain.  When I was “done” with AT&T for the moment, I got to work helping her.  I ran the wet-vac to get up the majority of the water and sent her up to her room.  I did not rub in the fact that I have been telling her the foundation of the house is badly in need of repair.  After the half hour of reset time, and then some, had elapsed I called AT&T back.  The robot asked to try a few more things then gave up and transferred me to a person.  Acalapati Nahasapeemapetilon answered and “helped” me through some more tests.  Eventually it was determined that a technician would have to be sent.  We were scheduled for “Between four and eight tomorrow evening.”  I told mom and we settled in to an Amish evening.  Ok, I didn’t quite go Amish.  I watched “Excalibur” on DVD.  Wednesday I left work and called mom to ask if she wanted me to stop for a pizza on the way home.  She did so I did.  We ate and waited for the tech to call.  He did and showed up right about 1730 h.  I showed him around the outside wiring and stuff then we looked at the… lighty-uppy thing what weren’t working.  After several more tests it was determined that it was truly bad.  Apparently a power surge hit it or something.  I don’t know if it was enough to cause it to jump off the table, or if the cat bumped it, or if DC had knocked it off dusting, but he said it didn’t matter.  He was going to replace it anyway… gratis!  Once it was changed, and we reset all the laptops to the new wireless password, and all the TVs were working again, and the phone, and stuff, he left.  I was quite the pleased that I had TV and interwebnets again.  Yesterday mom calls to ask if I would be willing to drive DC (one of the “strays” from the church) across town to where she “lives.”  She sweetened the deal with an offer to have ribs at Off the Bone Barbecue… home of the most awesomest ribs around.  I agreed to that.  When I got home from work, I changed clothes and gunned up for the trip to… well, I was going to be racially insensitive with an ugly descriptor of the neighborhood but I won’t.  We went across town.  We ate at OtB and then took DC to drop her off in front of some church where she was to meet a friend.  And now y’all are caught up.  Oh crap!  I gotta go set up a Town Hell meeting.  Talk to yall again Monday… or Wednesday.  We’ll see.