If it ain't broke....

... it probably will be soon.

I am in a rut. On a streak of bad luck. Cursed. I have the evil twin of King Midas' golden touch.

It all started when my car wouldn't start a couple weeks ago. Went through the whole AAA routine. Turned out I just needed a new battery. Then, 5 days later, I accidentally drove over a beer bottle in the parking lot at school. SCHOOL, mind you. This is no residential campus where drinking in the school chapel is normal. No, it was the student economy lot at UH, and the bottle was about 2 inches from my parked front tire. I never even saw it coming. What ever happened to smoking pot in the parking lot? A stray bit of paper and ash never popped a tire! But this bottle - the horrific sound of the breaking glass made me stop and check it out immediately. Hisssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. AWESOME. Good thing it was 11pm and school is in a sketchy part of town.

I ordered DSL internet service three weeks ago. They said the modem would arrive in the mail on Monday. It arrived on the following Wednesday - 10 days late. And it started up just fine. Some would say a little too fine - it restarted itself every 45 seconds. Customer service: "Oh geez, we're sorry about that. We must have sent you a defective one." Thanks, buddy. I appreciate your sincerity and keen insight. Now, could you please turn back time to last Monday and send me a functional one?!

Speaking of customer service - I tried to buy a plane ticket online. Entered my name, address, credit card number, social security number of my first pet, mother's uncle's maiden name - all the hoopla. Then, when I clicked "purchase," I got a cryptic error message that basically amounted to, "We hate you. Please try again." I did, and I got an even more cryptic message, but this time with a phone number to call. Eureka! The guy on the phone promptly informed me that the price had gone up $30, then quoted me a price that was $40 higher than I had originally seen. I asked about the mysterious $10 difference: "Oh, that's the fee for not booking it online." Um, buddy, I called you because I couldn't book it online. Were you listening? So he gave me the phone number for the fee-removing department, which I think is in a different country from the rip-off-ticket-booking section. I called the second number, and was informed that I now had 3 reservations pending, since apparently both online transactions had gone through despite the error messages. She couldn't explain what had happened, but in the end I got my original ticket at the lower price, sans asinine fee. At least someone around here knows what "the customer is always right" means.

Next travesty: I bought a new vacuum last week. I turned it on - boy, did that thing suck. It cleaned the carpet beautifully. It also screamed like a banshee. Ear-piercing. Another trip to Target, a different model. This one, the front cover popped off and the bag exploded. And I had to assemble it with 3 screws and a plethora of inserting and clipping-on, so getting it back in the box is going to be next to impossible.

Fast forward to this weekend. Beautiful thunderstorm Friday night - the kind they showcase in movies, with pounding rain and booming thunder. It. knocked my power out for about 10 seconds early Saturday morning, sending my alarm into frantic beeping mode (you would have thought the thing had been strangled) and making me almost jump (fall) out of bed. It also managed to surge through my Television and VCR/DVD player, rendering them inoperable. I spent the next hour trying to decipher my renter's insurance policy, which for all practical purposes is written in Aramaic.

I think I am going to walk everywhere from now on, shun the electronic age and switch to postage stamps and paperbacks, and I am definitely retiring from vacuuming. I am sure I will be much happier brooming the floor like they did in the olden days. What's that you say? Oh, yes, sweeping. I will be much happier sweeping the floor.