330 minutes until Kick Off

For some unknown reason at about noon on Super Bowl Sunday, our home’s wifi decided to kick the bucket.  No luck rebooting the router.  Nothing.  It was dead.

I began researching options for replacing our router.  Then a few lights in the house stopped working.  Suddenly, the sinking feeling hit that it was much more than the router at play.

Venturing down into the storage room, I looked at the breaker box.  Nothing seemed wrong.  I flipped the switch for the lights in question.  No response.  My frustration level started to rise.  I blamed some primal hard wiring in my brain for the irrational anger building inside me (although I’m sure distant relatives sitting around the campfire worried about hungry bears attacking did not seem too concerned about their wifi connection).

Suddenly, all of my children had questions for me.  Favors to ask of me.  Desired attention in every way possible.  Hey kids, listen up.  Daddy is nearing a meltdown.  Run to your safe places.

Staring at the electric panel, my mind was out of options.  I looked at the main switch.  The Holy Grail of Total Reboot.  I took a deep breath.  I flipped the switch off and then back on.  Nothing.  Nothing, but blinking clocks in every room of the house.  Well Sparky, that was brilliant.

My beautiful wife came home to find me muttering to myself and one step away from curling up into a ball.  Then in a moment of great clarity only achievable when you are the lone sane person in a room, she said, “Why don’t you call the electric company to see if there is some sort of rolling outage in the area?”  Hum, not a bad idea.  Certainly better than my idea of grabbing a wrench and pounding the electric panel.

Kids, you have a very smart mother.  We have a new hope.

270 minutes until Kick Off

[To be continued…]