Because the universe hates me, that’s why

Why can’t things go at least 90% right?

For some reason, we keep taking on home improvement tasks, despite the issues we have every single time.  This time, it’s lighting.  We’ve searched for a long time and finally found something we liked in the special order catalog at our friendly neighborhood home improvement warehouse.  I ordered 4 large lights and 4 small ones.  There were a few issues with the larger ones I installed in our master bathroom, but it worked out.  The small ones actually went pretty smoothly, although my arms were getting tired from holding them up while I wired them.  So what happened this time to leave me kicking and screaming toddler-tantrum-style?  2 of the 4 large lights were broken in the box.

I opened one up to discover the fixture was, as they say in France, busted up real good like.  I considered checking the others, but did not, thinking, “Surely, this unfortunate occurrence is a rarity, the possibility of yet another light being broken is approximately 3720 to 1!”  Apparently, a hypnotoad had eliminated all my memories of the previous 12700 or so days at that time, so you can forgive me for being absolutely insane and not checking the other boxes.  Because guess what?  After I’d returned the first box, after I’d reordered the first broken light, after a couple of days had completely gone by, I opened the last box to find another broken light.

The lesson I’ve learned is that when things seem to be going at least relatively smoothly, when you haven’t spent the last few hours in tears because things JUST WON’T WORK, don’t forget to check all the boxes, and wear protective eyewear, because there’s probably a spitting cobra in there or something.

The nearest of misses

Today, a great tragedy was narrowly averted.  The entire population of this fragile planet walked a dagger’s edge, never realizing just how close we all were to total annihilation.  Doom and despair stalked the land, the glares of those twin scourges being of the sharpest sharpness, cutting through the thoughts and emotions of a hapless populace like something that is extremely sharp, sort of like that dagger mentioned a few moments ago.

Yet in the last moments, when the light had reached its dimmest level, when only a few grains of sand remained clinging to the top of the hourglass, when… eh, you get the point.  Anyway, when all those things were happening to indicate that time was running out, that’s when it happened:  I remembered.

Happy birthday, sis.

Well, what do you know?

Read it and weep, you defenders of ugly.

Like C4 on my nose

I wonder if things will someday blow up in my face.  I wonder if that might be literal, too.

I like technology.  I like computers.  I like playing around with my computer.  I like doing things with my computer that could go horribly, horribly wrong and then wondering if that was the best idea.

I wanted to try out the new version of Windows that’s coming out later this year.  That meant I had to partition my hard drive.  For you layfolk, Mother, that means I had to create a separate little section to install the software.  Windows XP doesn’t do that on its own, so I downloaded a free program that can.  The first didn’t work, so I found another.  This one did.  I love all the warnings that come with these programs, telling you outright that things could go horribly, horribly wrong, so you’d better backup your data before you press the red button.  I backed up my photos and videos, but the rest wasn’t high-priority.

After several tense minutes, the computer rebooted, and voila!  I had the purtiest little partition I’d ever seen just a’waitin’ that copy of the Windows 7 release candidate.  I had already burned the Windows software onto a DVD so I could install it.  After many minutes and a couple of reboots, I beheld the purtiest little Windows version I’d ever seen just a’waitin’ for me to tinker.

So far, it’s pretty nice, but I’m still getting used to it, it’s pretty different from XP and I never got Vista.  Best of all, my computer did not blow up.  Once again, cloaked in ignorance and good intentions, I have somehow managed to avoid permanent damage to my precious computer, and was able to keep things from going horribly, horribly wrong.

This is what happens when you do stuff

You may recall that I had an issue with my new floor, that it was so tight that one little spot bulged up a little.

Now that the weather has gotten a whole lot warmer, the problem is much worse as the floorboards have expanded.  We’ve now got this huge spot where the floor arches off the ground, probably an inch at the peak.  It’s ridiculous.  We have to figure out how we’re going to solve this problem.  We tried moving our furniture but then the flow of the room is disrupted and my chi has issues with the new arrangement.  (I call my eye for interior design my chi.)  (I don’t, actually.)