Accomplished nothing today, except a letter to Zagria about Hoff (who died last October); an email I lost before sending, because I copied from a draft, and then copied something else before pasting. So I rewrote the thing, shorter. Still didn’t send.
Then, early evening, weird stuff was happening. The internet was down. Was everything down? The phones (landlines) were out. I copied what I had written and pasted it into a TextEdit. I went into the living room to check the router. The track-lighting bulbs were blinking. Turn on, they dim out slowly. Turn off, they blink. The rheostat thing didn’t seem to make a difference. I turned off all the circuit breakers, turned them on again, one by one. No change. Dimly I remembered round controls, somewhere on the floor, that overrode the wall switch. It took me a while but I found them, far side of the leather sofa. One of them operates the track lighting. Don’t know what the other does. I turned it up and the problem went away. But how did it get turned down? Where did the flickering come from?
Meanwhile, internet, TV, phones were down. And from a Verizon box in the closet by the door, came a constant clicking. Like the ticking of a bomb. I called Verizon a couple of times, failed to make connections with their nasty robot chats. Finally got a person of incomprehensible speech (but who travels under the name of John Kennedy) who wanted to send over a technician next week. I demanded one now. He couldn’t get one now. So, tomorrow, between 1 and 5. I said okay.
Internet is still down. I’m writing through a iPhone hotspot. I went out and bought a pint from Shirley. Today I’ve eaten most of a banana, a full sleeve of Town House crackers and nothing else I can remember. The chili and shepherd’s pie leftovers sit in the fridge still, unconsumed and probably inedible. Last night I ate Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza. I received a pound of French Lentils via Amazon, which I will do something with. John McDonnell on Twitter pictured them in a Sunday night roastie dinner. I asked what were Lentils de Puy, though I think he wrote Put.
Tom Ashley called around 6:30. I told him everything was fucked up. He gave his condolences, perhaps we get together next week.
Mimi Collich sent an email out of the blue yesterday, surprised that Moki had two kids. I gave a snowjob on that. Yes, they’re in Brussels.
It’s a good thing I changed the Verizon cable guy’s date from Friday to next Tuesday, because I can’t really manage rearranging the apartment for Friday, not with the other Verizon guy coming by tomorrow.
Have done nothing on the Vacate or Name Change. I need to redo the first, take it down next week (MONDAY??).
As of the past hour, it is 10pm, the bomb-ticking in the closet hath ceased.
After this, no more v. I awoke, feeling wasted, and decided to feed the pig. I set up the humidifier the other day. I put maybe a quart of water into the top, and then tried to figure out how I’d replace it without spilling water all over the place. The night before I’d taken the bottom and inverted it with the top, then turned it over. This time I just dumped water all over the place, nearly splashed and ruined the M1 in the pink quilted case.
Back in the humidifier’s box there’s a screwtop to the water chamber. Ah, yes, that’s it. Tried it again.
It was around then that I first noticed the track lights dimming on and off.
Postscript, Feb 18. A day or so later I discovered that the twisted-pair wire, the RJ-11 leading to the main 0209 phone, had been chewed through. Our rodent problem. Big Norway rats lately. They chew on paper, they chew on cords apparently.
So possibly the chew-through was new, and short-circuited or brought down the old A21 box in the closet, started the ticking. It’s been so long since that technology was common, the techs didn’t realize the possibility that wires had been chewed or cut.
