Okay, what on Earth did we do? This has been a murderous couple of weeks. I mean, okay, let me preface with nobody has gotten cancer, nobody died, our house didn't burn down... but man, how many minor (and expensive) inconveniences did we deserve? What did we do to deserve them?
You heard about the airport fiasco, and the fridge failure. That was preceded by $2500 in repairs to one of our cars. That car's battery failed today, stranding us in town, and boy oh boy, did AAA do a horrendous job of not helping us at all. Really bad experience with them, considering what you expect from them. We got by with a little help from our friends, though!
Besides the car, we've been investigating getting solar panels for our house. It's a really exciting prospect we've always wanted to do. And best of all, California gives you this awesome rebate, paying back about 30% of what the panels cost (that could be up to $10,000 worth of rebate for us, if we decided to go all out). Oh, but wait, what's this? Oh yes. We live in the teeny tiny zipcode of one of the
TWO utility companies in all of California that won't do the rebate. And let me clarify here: this is a rebate from the STATE OF CALIFORNIA. The power company doesn't have to do a thing but process it. However, they
do have to process it (never let it be said that government is wise or efficient), so we are flat out stuck. We could get solar, but we'd be paying 30% more than anybody else is! And it's not cheap even with the rebate.
Oh, and hey! You know how people use air conditioners to avoid dying to death? Ours wasn't working when we tried it this week for the first time this summer. We got a guy to come out and fix that up pretty quickly though. And if that isn't painful enough, it was followed by bitter vicious irony: once we got it fixed, that very night it
rained. RAINED. And then it's been actually literally really seriously no kidding
cold since then. It's never been cold in summer here, not once. Not ever. Not until this. Also it doesn't rain in the summer here.
Okay, this one is a nitpick. People are now moving into what was a nice forested empty lot just up the hill from us. They plowed all the trees down, and we hear them chattering away up there as they build (at six in the morning...), and it sounds like they are in our yard. And of course, their dog runs up and down the fence going nuts and upsetting our dogs. And doubly of course, once they build and move in, our backyard is a whole lot less private. They'll have a big broad view of the whole thing. No more turning on the sprinklers in my underwear...
And Sol's back has broken for no reason (broken=is sore all the time) for a couple weeks now. On the plus side, my usually horrible back has been perfectly fine!
So that's what happened. Now I am familiar with how karma works. I watch Earl. So what on Earth did we
do!? And now I just dropped my sandwich on the floor. Yeah, I'm whining.