I got some complaints that my posts are getting depressing. Here are a couple of funny pictures to soothe you all.

A brochure from 1984:

THE BLACK CLOUD
As a rule, humans find patterns in almost everything. We tend to lump similar things together, even if we don’t do it consciously. Take, for example, the concept of a “bad day.” A man wakes up, takes a shower, gets dressed, drives to work, works all day, drives home and goes to bed. Now, one day, his shower turns cold at the end and his shoelace breaks as he’s tying his shoes. He might not notice these things, or he might suspect that there’s a “bad day” coming. On the way home from work that day, he dings his fender. Now he’s got three bad things that happened that day. He may very well complain that NOTHING has gone right today.
This happens to me all the time. Some unfortunate things will happen and I will collect them together in my mind and say to myself, “How can I possibly be so unlucky?” Then I remember the words of Penn Jillette: “Luck is probability taken personally,” and I stand back and look at things again. I am relatively healthy. I have a wife who loves me and two beautiful, smart children. My family is healthy. I have a roof over my head. I have a job. I have excellent health insurance. We have two cars, one of which is a minivan. The list goes on. I try to realize that I have many things in my life that millions of other people do not. If the hypothetical man from earlier woke up late, took a shower that scalded him, slipped on the soap and twisted his ankle, spilled hot coffee on his shirt which stained it just in time for his performance review and promotion meeting, which he then lost, totaled his car on the way home and ended up in the hospital with no insurance and then finally returned home to find it had been burglarized and set on fire…well, then maybe you could objectively say he was having a truly “bad day.”
I am having a proverbial “bad day.” But my day has been lasting for months.
Again, I could list all the good things in my life. But the catastrophes seem to be pushing their way to the forefront lately.
Early in the Summer, our ejector pump broke. An ejector pump is a plumbing device that pumps water from below ground level up to the sewer or septic tank. One night, our pump got clogged and burned out, leaving gallons of sewage and washing machine water to flow freely out over our basement. We had to spend several hundred dollars to fix the pump. Then we had to clean up the basement. This involved ripping up the carpet and padding and throwing out a bookcase. We eventually decided to spend the money and replace the entire basement carpet. This involved moving almost everything out of the basement and up into the rest of the house. Our house is cluttered enough without another floor’s worth of crap. But we got the carpet done and slowly replaced everything to its rightful place. The whole wet basement situation brought to our attention that we have some places in the basement that might be growing mold. We got two different people to come in and investigate. One guy offered to cleanse and come down in bio-suits and clean and remove everything and wipe down every surface in the basement. The other guy said I should go to Home Depot and buy some plastic gloves and remove the moldy stuff myself. We put it off while we decided what to do.
Then my wife got into a freak car accident, in which she lost control of her minivan, hit an illegally-parked car, which then hit a utility pole. The car sat, undriveable, in the shop’s parking lot, for about two weeks while the insurance company made its assessments. We assumed the car would be totaled, but the insurance company said no. It took over three weeks to repair the van and ended up costing over $11,000. Meanwhile, we were renting another van, which was costing us money every day. Eventually the van was fixed. Then, out of the blue, we get a bill in the mail from the town where the accident occurred for $10,000 to repair the utility pole. A quick phone called revealed that the insurance covers that completely, but it was still an unpleasant shock.
A few weeks later, my car was hit in a parking lot by another driver who didn’t look as he pulled out of his spot. My driver side door is badly damaged and the fender and back door are also damaged. The guy said he’d bypass insurance and pay for it himself. I took it to my shop and the guy’s shop and they both estimated $3500. But, the guy said he’d pay for it, so I’m bringing it to his mechanic. Luckily I have my father-in-law’s car to borrow and won’t have to rent one.
Then, Saturday evening, I came downstairs after the kids went to bed and saw, to my horror, that the bathroom sink had been left running at full force for the last 2 hours or so, and the basement was now flooded. The bathroom floor was an inch deep in water, and the carpet in a 20 foot by 5 foot area was completely soaked. Apparently one of the kids washed their hands before dinner and forgot to turn off the water. I wet-vac’d for an hour or so while my wife made phone calls. A flood recovery company came the next morning, gave us a $2000 estimate, and proceeded to dehydrate the basement. We have 4 huge machines now, running 24 hours a day, creating heat and sucking moisture. The basement is like a furnace right now. Hot air is being blown under the carpet, creating a bounce-house effect. In addition, the guy was worried about mold, so is blowing hot air into the walls, via holes he drilled in the bathroom and a closet. Upon looking for water damage in the walls, he found some more mold that we weren’t aware of. He commented that the whole closet might need to be taken apart so the back wall can be removed.
Monday morning, we thanked the stars that we were leaving the house for the afternoon to go to a Labor Day BBQ. As we were getting dressed and showered, I kid you not, the TV in the bedroom died. It went black and started making a THUMPdump…THUMPdump sound, like a heartbeat. I mean, the TV is 12 years old, but of all the times to die it picked this week? We have a spare TV in our basement from 1988 that I helped my wife buy before we were even dating. So that seems to be working so far.
So, to summarize, we had to replace an ejector pump, had the basement flooded twice, cleaned the basement of sewage, wrecked both cars, and we are currently looking forward to a mold-removal nightmare, and are using a 20-year old TV.
I don’t believe in fate or karma. I truly believe that this is all simple chance occurrences. But damn, it’s hard not to see this all as one big dark cloud hanging over our heads.