The Po Show

Stormy Weather

Okay, now *that* was a thunderstorm!

I'm talking about last Tuesday night. First there was the normal house-rattling thunder and flashes of lightning and downpour of rain. Heh, that doesn't bother me a bit. Then there was hail, big marble sized hail. Hmmm, never seen that during the summer before. Weird. THEN (thankfully after the kids were sound asleep), the hammer dropped. Relentless, pounding thunder, and worse, non-stop strobe light-like lightning. No flash, then pause, then thunder, then another flash a few moments later. This was flashflashflashflashflashflash, seemingly never-ending. Tremendous winds. Sky-opening-up-and-falling-down-upon-us rain.

We just don't have shit like that in CA.

So that was intense and scary, but it passed. However, the next morning we saw the destruction that the storm had left in its wake: HUGE trees down, power lines hanging everywhere, crushed cars under big tree limbs, traffic lights out everywhere.

Then my own personal nightmare hit sometime around 10AM. Our cable modem went out, taking with it our cable TV (totally liveable), phone service (eh, we have cells), and internet connection (WHAT????? NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!).

I literally cannot survive with an internet connection. I couldn't get into my email to get the addresses of the ebay buyers who had paid me, and whom I had promised I'd ship their packages. I couldn't get in my order that night to Gymboree.com, which was beginning Gymbuck redemption (that might not seem like a big deal, but a lot of my ebay business hinges on ordering potentially hard to find items immediately at the beginning of redemption, when I can use all the millions of Gymbucks I spent thousands of dollars earning, then selling the stuff I bought more or less at cost, just to earn these coupons that give $25 off $50).

Thursday morning the cable still wasn't up. I got all my in store Gymboree shopping done (more than I normally would, since I couldn't shop online) and came home, called the cable company again, and was told someone would come to look at our connection between 1 and 8:00. So I sat at home, unable to get to the library to use their computers so I could get online. And no one showed, till 8:20PM. After an hour of fiddling with stuff up on the poles (so I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO STAY HOME!! GRRRRR!!!!), whoop!, we were back on!!! I hurriedly put up 44 auctions in less than an hour! Hooray!!!! I need to sell this stuff FAST, before I leave for CA next weekend.

Friday morning we were down again. Grrrrrr. I did get to the library since I wasn't about to stay home again. Late in the day, we were back on again, and it's been okay since.

All right, in the grand scheme of things it wasn't a huge crisis. My family was safe, and unlike 1,000s of people in the area, we retained our electricity. That would have truly been a nightmare. But I really was made aware of how incredibly, ridiculously dependent I am on my stupid (no, no, my lovely, wonderful, cannot-live-without, just in case it's listening) internet connection.

I guess there's just no going back to 1990.