Two very important, lifesaving devices at my house have been on the fritz in the last couple days.  And because I love you all I will share the tale!
Yesterday was the hottest day in London since we’ve been here.  It was a sweltering 35 degrees with that nasty, suffocating humidity and not a breeze to be found anywhere. Gross.  Anticipating the heat, my first response in the morning was to turn on the air conditioning.  Unfortunately, there was a noticeable LACK of cold air and the accompanying whirring of the AC unit outside.  Not a happy discovery. At. All.  There wasn’t much I could do at that point and I was going out. So I spent the majority of the day outside of the house and by the time I got home later in the afternoon it was a toasty 28 degrees in the house.  We attempted to call our landlord at home, on his cell, on his wife’s cell.  I was getting set to leave bomb threats on his cell phone and then we finally got in touch with him. He said his father is an electrician or something and was coming into town within the hour and he would come and take a look at it.  That was the best we could do so we just waited. We had some friends over for dinner and tried to ignore the fact that it was almost as hot inside as it was outside.  Ugh.

It finally occurred to us that it might actually be as simple as the breaker having flipped.  So we went to check it. It turns out that the breaker box is actually in the basement suite of the house. Well…some of it is.  It’s complicated, friends.  But the AC is, of course, on the box that’s located in the downstairs suite. So we had to wait for our lovely tenants to get home. Thank GOD they didn’t come home at 3am last night!!!  We were able to fix the problem and the AC purred like a kitten once more.  And then I ran outside and threw myself on it and smothered its whirring metal body with kisses.  (No, I don’t know where my daughter gets her drama-queen genes from!)

Today, with the AC keeping things nice and frosty I sat down at my computer to check some emails.  And the emails, they were not there!  Because the internet was down!  Gah!  So I tried to be patient and hoped that it was just a little bug that would sort itself out in a bit.  But does that EVER happen with internet problems??? NO.  After a couple of hours I called Bell.  The customer service agent had such as strong accent that I could barely understand him. After asking him to repeat himself about a thousand times and half an hour and two kids who were getting antsy I was getting really frustrated. When he put me on hold for the fourth time I had to hang up and hope that my computer geek husband could figure out the problem.  As it turned out, my husband did know exactly what the problem was (something to do with some kind of a switch they were making last night or this morning because we don’t have a phone line with them - a switch which was not supposed to interrupt our service at all!) but had to spend another half an hour trying to convince the agent that this was the actual problem.  It turns out that we are now without internet for two days or so while they try and fix this problem that was not supposed to interrupt our service.  Nice.

I’m sure you’re wondering how it is that I am blogging about this without the internet?  Props go out to someone in our area with a great wireless network!  So here I was this afternoon, with air conditioning AND internet both working.  It was heavenly. Then there was a severe thunderstorm with the thunder and lightening and wind and the branches breaking off and falling on power lines etc. which caused a power outage. And do you know, dear internet, what doesn’t work without power?  Go on! Guess!  Sigh…yes, I know, my life is tragic.  But the power is back on and I am happy once again.  I am developing a theory that starting up a blog is simply giving the universe permission to create “blogworthy” events in your life (see parking lot rage blackout post).  Although I’m sure some of you are wondering how a person can take a power outage and turn it into a four act play.  I’m just gifted.