It’s been a bad week or two. It seems that just about everything is out to get us.
Our hosting service has had huge problems – we have been missing emails and losing access to the web site, so we bit the bullet and have been moving everything to a new service provider. Four websites and 20 some email accounts. Getting some of the email accounts to connect, especially on Mary-Jo’s PC, seemed to be particularly frustrating.
The downstairs toilet suddenly stopped filling (or, at least, it took 20 minutes to fill!) so we put in a new valve. But the supply line wouldn’t seal, and David thought there was just a trace of water on the floor which we could ignore for a day until we got a new pipe, until he found the puddle in the basement. Meanwhile, something flooded in the upstairs bathroom at 2 am. David thought the dog had been bad, so wiped it up. The next day we found drips coming from the kitchen ceiling. The drips have stopped, but there’s a nice water stain.
Then the cable box in the family room stopped responding to the remote, and the support person said to get a new box from the local store-front. We set it up and waited for it to sync up which was supposed to be 30 minutes. All we could get was ads for videos on demand. Meanwhile, we found the TV in David’s study was acting up. Another phone call and “30-minute” wait and the family room was showing channels again. On the same call they reset David’s TV which would be an hour wait for syncing. Then Mary-Jo found the family room TV wasn’t connecting to the disk storage (for saved shows). David’s TV didn’t reset so another call and more resets. It appears they don’t supply the cable box that we need any more. Five support calls failed to recognize that the box we were given did not support the DVR (recording) option, despite our suggestions that it might not. When it all quietened down, we had upgraded to all new equipment and of course lost all of our saved shows for this season. Now busy learning a whole new system for watching TV!
Next the car had an argument with a post in an underground garage (and lost). Apparently the bit that got scraped needs 40% of the bodywork removed to get repainted. $3,000 and 9 days. And a week later Mary-Jo got stuck outside the local supermarket (where she was waiting for Anna to get off work) as the car wouldn’t start. David had to come and hook up cables to boost her battery, which got her home and to the dealer’s the next day to get a new battery installed. Battery boosting isn’t as easy as it used to be: just finding the battery in the Mini was a problem, they hid it under a plastic cover, up by the windshield, and then it says to make the last connection away from the battery, on part of the engine block – except on the Subaru, the engine block is covered with strange accessories and pipes and things, so David went old-school and just attached it to the other battery terminal. Luckily there was no explosion.
And then David came back from a dog walk and the front door wouldn’t unlock…
