Feeling Disconnected

The last few days I have been feeling rather disconnected. I'm happy to report, however, that I mean this in the most literal sense of the word and not figuratively, as in, an emotional state of mind.

See, a few days ago, our neighbor who is quite elderly, yet pretty active, was walking in his yard after his lawn service had come for their weekly visit to mow his lawn. As he was walking, he noticed a cable running over one of the roots of his tree - a cable which was exposed down to the wire from repeated abuse by lawnmowers. Assuming this was his cable running to his home and providing him with cable television service, he called the cable company for a repair order. Forget the fact that his service was working just fine. And forget the fact that he must have had a memory lapse from last year when the cable company came out and buried his cable going in the opposite direction and around the back of OUR house and back up on one side to meet his cable connection on his house.

I wish I could draw a picture but suffice it to say that the exposed cable was the old cable running to his house which no longer was connected to anything at all and the cable running behind our house was the cable that actually provided his service. Now, enter a contracted (don't get me started!) technician who was called in to complete the work order for running new cable to replace non-functioning cable and we have a recipe for extreme ignorance and landscapicide.

I'll spare the details of how I came to find out all of this but own up to the bragging rights of what my household got out of this deal: a torn up front yard with bare patches of grassless dirt where it was run over by a trenching digger, a severed cable connected to our house, no cable television service, and no internet. Add to it that it took several phone calls to the cable company and a few temper tantrums on my part for them to realize that I was not going to wait six days (their next available appointment) for them to get out here to fix something THEY messed up.

All because my neighbor had perfect cable service running to his house but noticed an exposed cable. An exposed cable! Oh no, better call 9-1-1! Let's not think this through and keep in mind that the cable service is working fine or even try to recall that a brand spanking new cable was run the year before in a totally different location. No, no, we better get the cable company out here to replace this cable ASAP! A cable that was no longer connected to anything and was as dead as the dirt it was buried in, let's not forget!

You can take my cable tv service from me any day with no problems. I rarely watch tv and the kids won't sit still long enough to watch it. But don't take my internet service unless you're ready to face a bit of wrath!

Alas, I am back! And I'm readin' my "stories." No, not some online version of the overly dramatic soap operas to which old ladies refer, but all my delicious blogs I follow.