Bad luck comes in threes, right?

If the old superstition about bad luck coming in threes is true, then I should be good to go! Computer virus last Friday, water leak in the laundry on Saturday and realized on Sunday our satellite wasn't working on the television.

Don fixed the computer last Saturday night, I called Directv on Monday and ended up having to set up an appointment to have a repairman come out on Wednesday, which turned into a very busy day!

I got up early yesterday so I could get the floors swept and the laundry room emptied while Don went to feed the horses and call the plumber. Plumber actually arrived before the TV repairman and got to work sawing two big holes out of my laundry room wall. Pictured above is the bad fitting he found. It has now been replaced, but the entire house was plumbed with this stuff so we're just waiting for the next one to spew. An example of the lovely plumbing work done on our house when we built it:

While the plumber was restyling the laundry room walls and plumbing, the TV repairman got busy restyling the cable to our television. Seems the dogs had been using the cable as a chew toy and the high winds we've had this Fall repositioned the satellite dish. The repairman replaced the cable and ran it above the windows along the back wall by screwing it to the brick wall.

HA! I'd like to see a dog chew on it now...the cable is a good 12 plus feet off the ground! Of course, I think it should have been installed that way in the first place, but we only had two well behaved dogs when we moved into the house almost eight years ago.

After everyone finished their repair jobs and left I was able to get outside and start putting up some of my Christmas lights. Don hopped on the tractor to do some driveway repair work and we stayed out until well past dark. Yesterday you would never have thought we'd already had snow twice this Fall as it was 68 degrees. I was hanging up Christmas lights in short sleeves...and enjoying every minute of it!

Here's hoping you don't get hit with triple trouble this holiday season! I know I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't get a triple whammy again any time soon!

Everyone's asking...where were you ten years ago today?

All over the net people are asking, "Where were you ten years ago today?" and for the majority of us I think the answer would be that we were glued to our televisions watching in horror the events that were to forever change the United States.

I remember well where I was...sound asleep in my bed. The phone rang and my sister told me to turn on the TV because a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. I thought she was joking and rolled over to go back to sleep. Sleep wouldn't come so I woke Don and we got up to turn on the television. What we saw and what we heard was shocking, to say the least.

Don immediately went to take a shower as he was expecting to be called into work right away. Sure enough, his phone rang just minutes later and he was out the door and on his way to the FAA control center were he worked as an air traffic controller.

I spent the rest of the day watching with tears in my eyes. We were so naive to think something like this could never happen in the good old US of A.Our nation lost its innocence that day.

The days that followed are hazy. I put the flag sticker pictured above on our vehicles, red white and blue ribbons (which quickly sold out everywhere) on the antennas and made a pin with the ribbons that Don worn to work every day. That sticker looks terribly worn today, but it will never be removed.

That day is so clear in my memory that it's hard to comprehend ten years, a decade, have passed. So many lives were lost that day and in the years afterwards. All of us, some much deeper than others, were changed that day. My heart goes out to all those families who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001 and to those who have lost family members in the military since that day.

May we all find peace in the days and years to come.