Wednesday, February 06, 2008

On Wisconsin! (...and a bit off-kilter...)

Yes, thank you. I know... I know, I haven't finished the promised conclusion regarding my test screening visit to Kung Fu Panda. I said on Thursday last week, "To be continued tomorrow..."

Tomorrow was Friday, and I got some sort of monkey pox-like thing in my system. When I got home from work, I was coughing every 3.2 milliseconds and unable to even see straight. This in itself would not have been enough to keep me from writing into the weekend, perhaps even concluding the piece on Saturday.

And then our cable cut out on us. And with it, the internet.

We had paid our bill. The next installment wasn't even due for a couple of weeks, but I made doubly sure and paid that as well. Nothing. No signal in any of the three rooms where Time Warner's service held entertainment control within our abode. A call to technical support found a very helpful rep trying to ping and ping and re-ping our modem, DVR and cable box to no avail, though I did have a very pleasant discussion with her about how much better baseball and basketball are than football. (The usual "too bad this is happening around the time of the Super Bowl" statement from her was what brought this topic to the fore. I did not watch the Stupid Bowl -- "stupid" only because the Packers blew their shot -- even on regular television.) No matter what the topic, the end result was that I had no cable signal whatsoever. A service rep would come out on Tuesday afternoon (at the earliest) to set things aright.

So, no internet, and thus, no posting. I received a message on the post asking what I thought of the movie, but not being one to blog from work, I was unable to respond. Finally, Tuesday rolled around, and the internet/cable dilemma was solved. Our connection was marked as another apartment in the box, and our apartment number was nowhere to be found; it seems, therefore, someone else was to be disconnected and the deed was done to us instead. Jen's theory was that since the apartment number which did have our connection is that of the loser stoner people downstairs (we found one of their party's wallets out on the sidewalk the other day, and they were afraid to open their door when we brought it to them; they thanked us later), she thinks that they panicked come Super Bowl time, having spent all of their green on some other form of green, and broke into the box, switching the connections, so that someone else got cut off. Hard to confirm, especially now that there is a new padlock on the box, but intriguing.

But we are now back to normal, except that, five days later, I am still friggin' sick. In fact, my throat is worse than ever, and I have the vague sense that I will be seeking out a doctor's advice once I get to Wisconsin tomorrow. Oh, yes... I forgot to mention, I now have to go to a family reunion/birthday party for my dear grandmother (her 90th), and I am going to hacking and coughing every step of the 12 degrees above zero way. My hope is that the Wisconsin cold will take one peek at my bred-in-Cali virus and smack it down like a bad little puppy. My fear is that I will end up with what my boss recently caught: pneumonia.

So, no conclusion to the Panda thing until I get back, or at least until I find a computer I can bash it out on in Cheezehaid Country. I head out for LAX in about half an hour, and there is just no time to do it justice for now.

[Hack, cough, wheeze, kersplat!] I wish this on no one... except those cable-stealing stoner fiends...

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