Break Down

WARNING: No pictures in this post. Sorry Karen.

Sometimes bad luck just happens. Sometimes it happens all at once.

While there could be many, many worse things that could happen to me, the going trend right now is anything electronic is pretty much going to give one last gasping breath and then die.

Breakdown #1: Refrigerator

A couple of weeks ago, Mom called to tell me there was a pool of blood beneath my refrigerator in my Arkansas home. No, there wasn't a murder in my home...well, I guess something did have to die to create all of the blood...ANYWAY, my refrigerator went bye-bye. All of the hamburger meat in the freezer thawed and leaked out on to the floor. Thanks Mom for wiping that up. Pretty sure I owe you for that one.

Fortunately, thanks to Mom's desire to have a new refrigerator, I inherited their old one, which is still a good 30 years newer than the one in my house. My house isn't really that old, I mean it's probably 13-14 years old. However, the appliances in the house must have come over on the Ark.

Breakdown #2: Fuel Pump

Last week was my birthday. Yeah, yeah big deal. The day before my birthday I was presented with a lovely gift: a failing fuel pump on my Tahoe, which I affectionately call the "Green Hoe"). I was driving to work, whistling a tune with the song birds as I drove by, when my car began to lurch when I accelerated. I immediately knew this little lurching wasn't going to be cheap.

Fortunately, I wasn't out in BFE Texas or in the middle of a corn field somewhere when it decided to go out. I was able to drive to the nearest Chevy dealer and $1000 later I got a brand spankin' new fuel pump and fuel filter and some overpriced labor from Shamrock Chevy.

Breakdown #3: iPod

I love my iPod. I take it everywhere. It goes on trips. It plays in my car. It sings to me in my house. Sometimes I even wake up to it. I've had it since my last semester in grad school, so I guess it's about a year and a half old. It holds a brazillion songs, movies, pictures...it's entertainment in a tiny, hand held rectangle.

About a month ago, my beloved iPod decided that it didn't want to emit sound out of its headphones or anything else you could hook it up to. This made me worried. So, I read discussion boards on Apple.com and learned that if you press really hard on one area of the iPod it will play. So, after a painful press and purple thumb, it started up again...but only for a brief moment. I also read that you could put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes and that would make it start again...oh, the irony.

Breakdown #4: Laptop

I bought a Mac laptop four years ago the summer prior to my senior year in college. I've loved Macs ever since. It's been loyal. It's helped me through long nights of homework. I've taken it on the road and loaded pictures on to it hastily as I drove down the road to another story interview. It's been my link to the outside world.

Monday and Tuesday were corn board meeting days for us. We met in the Embassy Suites meeting room here in Lubbock, and for two days I didn't really leave that room. The second day, I brought my laptop to tap in to the wireless Internet provided by the hotel.

I would soon discover that my other beloved Mac product was sick and ailing. The hard drive went out. In the computer world, this is like your pace-maker failing, or a brain aneurysm. I searched frantically for a Mac doctor and found some dude that works out of his house. I took it there yesterday, and I'm sure a few hundred dollars later I will have my Mac back.

Breakdown #5: Cell phone

I was jumping in the Tahoe yesterday morning to go to the corn board meeting, and I had an arm full of objects (including my soon-to-be doomed laptop). As I was shutting the door, I heard a crunch. It was my cell phone being slammed in the car door. It still miraculously worked, but you could only see half of the screen and I had to bend it back straight to put the battery cover back on it.

Luckily, we had some phone insurance on our plan in the office and I got a replacement mailed to me immediately and I got it today, less than 24 hours after I reported the damage. It almost made me a believer in cell phone insurance.

So, there you have it. I seem to be having a problem with electronics. I just hope this doesn't carry over to planes, because I'm getting on one Friday to head home...

I'm just glad I don't have any electronics hooked up to any organs in my body right now.