March madness struck me last month, so I am glad we turned the page on the calendar. My mother used to say bad things came in threes, and she was right this time. Let’s start with the lightning strike that knocked out several things in my house: the sound sensors on my TVs, the upstairs air-conditioning unit, and a smoke alarm hooked into my security system.
I was sitting at my spare desktop computer when a loud crack of thunder right outside the window made me jump, and my monitor screen flashed off and on. Thank goodness this computer was plugged into a backup battery surge protector.
But the TVs weren’t so lucky, as I discovered later. The soundbar for the family room TV wouldn’t respond to the remote. It wouldn’t even turn on manually. Okay, it was fifteen years old, but this device had worked until now.
To get the sound back on the TV, we had to bypass the soundbar and use the TV remote only. Even the cable remote wouldn’t operate the sound. Same problem in my bedroom. The volume could be controlled manually on the television, but none of the remotes worked like before.
Regarding the air conditioning problem, the a/c techs came the next morning. There’s no power to the unit, they declared. I had to call an electrician. Electrician A. came the next day. There is power, he said. But he also did something that turned the UV light back on inside the a/c. He also said I should replace my outside breaker panel for $7000.
Was there really a temperature differential like he said? I got conflicting opinions from two other electricians that I subsequently called. Electrician B said there was a hot spot and Electrician C said nothing was wrong. Who do I believe? Meanwhile, the a/c guys came back and discovered the thermostat needed replacement. That fixed this problem.
Then, my security tech came and had to change the smoke alarm as the old one had gone dead. Was it related to the breaker panel issue? Who knows?
As if these woes weren’t enough, I drove home from doing errands and opened the garage door. A huge black snake that had been hiding in the shrubbery slithered inside. I freaked out and ran over to my neighbor. She called another neighbor who instructed me to leave the garage door open so the snake could leave. This man came over, poked a stick around and didn’t find anything. The beast must have left. Whew! I am now wary whenever I enter my garage.
Then I noticed an area of my hardwood floor had started to buckle. Uh-oh. It’s not the major problem I’d envisioned, but still… what will go wrong next?
Oh, I forgot to mention that my five-year old computer ran out of storage space, and I had to get a new one. Then my monitor wouldn’t connect so I had to get a new monitor. With all this going on, I couldn’t face installing it myself and hired someone. I am now finally feeling comfortable with this machine.
Have you ever had a series of events like this? It makes me think the cursed hairbrush in my next Marla story is real. Next on my list? Cataract surgery is in my near future.
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Nancy – we had a similar lightning strike, which took out the hot tub, the garage door opener, and the microwave. It was expensive – the hot tub was old and needed to be replaced anyway, the new garage door opener sends me text messages when it opens and closes, and the microwave oven was onsale but it was a well-spent $150 to have it installed! Whew!
I also need cataract surgery. It’s been a year! Hopefully things are looking up for us.
You’ve had a run of not-so-good-luck too. Yes, let’s hope things look up at some point. My eyes are being done in June.