I've been saying it lately, being 50 and getting ready to actually do
a real will.  "Well, I *could* get hit by the proverbial bus
tomorrow."

Shhhhh.  Be careful what you say.  The Universe might be listening.

I'm lugging a *very* heavy grocery cart full of 54 cans of cat food, a
bag of cat food, and miscellaneous other items, including some holiday
wine.  It's *heavy*. I am in the legal crosswalk, with the "Walk"
light on, crossing High Street.  Next thing I know, a school bus
driver turns left on red, and comes within three feet of running me
over!  Luckily he slammed on the brakes, because I didn't have time to
get out of the way.

I was shook up, but unharmed, and not shook up enough not to grab the
bus number off the back of the bus and write it down.  That guy better
get a good talking-to at the very least!

And just when you think it's all over, it isn't.

Some power substation blew up in the north end of town.  Didn't affect
us, or so I thought.

Suddenly, right at 9:00 pm., blam!  All our power goes out.  Now, I
regularly do a pet-loss group online on Monday nights, and I have only
missed it twice since March 1999.  Make it three times.  Power stayed
out.

Do you have any idea how boring life is at night in Ohio without
electricity?  Yikes!  So I dipped into the holiday wine, lacking
anything better to do.

I called the power company at least three or four times.  Got an
amazing run-around on each call but the last.  They couldn't tell me
when it would be fixed; they could tell me what the problem was; and
they couldn't even tell me if anyone had been dispatched.  Finally,
the last person had some sense, and told me they were working on it,
and the probem was that they had to take some of us offline because of
the blown-up power station up north.  Gee, thanks a lot!  You might
have say, had the local news announce that power would be out in
certain areas for a certain amount of time, so at least we'd be
prepared.  But, nooooooo, that would be too sensible.

I managed to feed 9 cats in the dark with candles and a flashlight.
The poor kittens were stuck in their carrier all night, since I can't
let them run around if I can't *see* them!

I gave up and went to bed, and the power apparently finally came back
on about 5:30 am.

Thanks, power company!  Thanks, bus driver!  You really made my day.
Not.

Ginger-lyn
gonna curl up on the couch today and play video games or something,
with a few cats on the couch to keep me company.

Home Pages:
 http://www.spiritrealm.com/summer/
 http://www.angelfire.com/folk/glsummer (homepage & cats)
 http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~summer/index.htm (genealogy)
 http://www.movieanimals.bravehost.com/ (The Violence Against
                        Animals in Movies Website)