You know "one of those days" ?
Last night at 11pm it started to rain and our power did a really funky thing I've never seen before, sort of a flashy, strobe effect. So I went around turning off everything. Soon my wife says "I heard a pop and now my lamp isn't working". So looked at our fuse box. Our fuse box is an old ceramic style box, and I had never changed a fuse like that.
After looking for a bit I realized I needed a wire, probably special wire. Even though the paperclip is an incredibly useful invention, I decided that electricity wasn't something to be toyed with. So I thought through who I could call that would be awake at 11pm. Aha!! Soon I had new fuse wire.. POP.. POP blew them both.
So it's midnight now, our fridge is off, we have no fuse wire, our security lights outside are off, running water is off and I've got to find a way to keep food from spoiling overnight.
We go to sleep. I figured anything I would do at midnight would not be wise, and the food usually can keep for that long.
Kendal was a bit concerned since we are having dinner guests tonight at at 8am, people were showing up to do work that required power. Not to mention, no running water since we require a water pump.
So at 7am I do it again. "who do I know that is awake at 7am...aha" and soon I put in more fuse wire.. POP.
So I call the electricians in, and they say "can't find a problem." well that is after they say "you have a short". but they misread the short because of the heating element in our water tank on the roof.
Our Haus Meri arrived and was told she couldn't do laundry because the water was out and the machine was off. A few minutes later I find her in the kitchen with the fridge and freezer doors wide open.
"Yu makim wanem wok?" (what are you doing?) I asked
"Mi klinim friza" (I'm cleaning the freezer).
I had to explain that we needed the fridge closed as the power was off and the food needed to stay cold as long as possible. I admired her motivation, and it turns out it wasn't an issue as the power came back on in about 10 minutes.
Long story short, we have 2 possibilities, guess which one I'm hoping:
1. the fuse wire I was using was too low amperage and the fuse was popping.
2. there is a short in our cable to the house, that is only affected when it rains.
The electricians told me if it happens again, when it rains, to let them know. Then they walked around the house banging the roof with a stick hoping to see sparks.
I'm honestly hoping for #1. If it was a fuse that blew, it did it's job during that odd electrical issue.
And me, being naive in the way of ancient electrical technology, used whatever my neighbors who were awake at the hour had to give.
So now I know this. There are 2 gauges we use here. 10amp and 15 amp. 10amp is for the lighting. I may have been using 10amp. Someone gave me some really old rusty wire, that may have been 8amp.
It was all solved I think... because the electricians used their own fuse wire and not that which I had borrowed.
But wait... there's more.
I began to have an allergy attack because my allergy pills went missing and I wasn't taking them. I got into work only 1 hour late (that's not bad) although I'm not showered or anything, hey, I'm a missionary! I can handle the grime (-;
As I walk in I find that our servers are overheating because the airconditioning unit froze over this morning... and I wasn't here to handle the crisis... so my manager had to.
It was a comedy of errors for certain.
And then finally... all is calmed down and I got to check email and outlook 2003, crashes with an error.
Now, normally when outlook crashes, I shrug, but today it was nothing less than a really mean slap in the face...
Microsoft's way of saying "life can get worse man."
But if I'm honest, no matter how bad all of this seems, there is a big part of me that gets a kick out of the adventure of trying to solve it all.
We all have one of those days. And the thing I'm fond of saying is "it's okay, today can be full of problems because that means tomorrow is full of solutions."
I find this is true, life has ups n downs, but I also find it very comforting to know that the solution is within reach, I only have to wait.
The other day we were splicing fibre optic cable, and each mistake costs us a new connector which is $22. After making 3 mistakes we thought "wow, this is going horribly wrong, let's take a break and come back tomorrow"
Sure enough the next day, we got it all spliced and working. Sometimes you simply have those days where something isn't quite working out.
I personally think the trick is, to recognize that with enough time and patience it'll be resolved, and to remain calm even if your temper wants to flare. Otherwise you turn a bad day into a horrible day because of your reaction.
Chuck Swindoll once said "the only thing we can control, is our attitude." Boy isn't THAT the truth.
