Tuesday, December 30, 2008

A Christmas story....

Hello! I'm BAAAAAaaaaacccckkk! Did you miss me?

I know I should be posting more...I have SOOO much crap running through my head. Then I got lost in the hub-bub of the holidays. And then my modem broke. again. It died, again. This is my third modem in a year. Yes...THIRD. Some people keep their modems for years. But not me..mine like to die slow and painful deaths every 4 months or so. Electronics and I are like oil and water...we don't mix. I am a freak I tell you. F-R-E-A-K!

Here is a brief insight into me and electronics....I break them. Seriously. It all started when I was about 10 and I got a watch for my birthday. It was about this time that I started to suspect that I can't wear watches. It's not like I don't have wrists or anything because I can assure you that everything is ok with my wrists. I also can physically put on a watch...but then they die. Or I should say the batteries die. At first we thought that I just happened to get a watch that had low batteries so we bought more batteries, put them in the watches and guess what...within two days, dead. OH NO! How ironic is it that we purchased bad batteries, we said. So we returned the batteries for more batteries and GUESS WHAT? Within two days they were dead..again. WEEEEELLLL..Surely I had received a bad watch with some kind of problem. Only..this continued to happen every time I got a watch. I just figured it was the result of cheap watches and quit trying to wear them.

When I was 19, Greg spent $85 dollars on a Montana Silversmiths Watch I had been eyeing at Golden Royal. It was my Christmas present. Now, I worked at Golden Royal at the time and I had been ogling this watch in the display case for months...I saw it working there everyday. The hands silently ticked away there behind the glass. One day it was gone and I was sooo sad. I was thrilled when I opened it on Christmas day that year...I immediately put the watch on. It was beautiful...saddle leather band with rawhide designs (you'll have to remember I was going through my western phase at this time) and a gorgeous Montana silver face. It really is a beautiful watch, I still have it. BUT guess what..after TWO days, it quit working. Now this was no ordinary watch...you couldn't just buy a battery and put it in. OH NO! You had to go to a jeweler because you need a special tool to open the back of the watch. Which is exactly what we did. Two days later...dead watch. I gave up and packed the watch back into it's limited edition collectors tin and there is sets to this day.

There are a long list electronic things that go wrong for me. DVD players mess up, CD players don't work properly. The first Play Station I bought Greg? I hooked it up..didn't work. He exchanged it and hooked it up? It worked just fine. The first TV we purchased together? (OH we were so proud of that 27 inch...it was way better than the 19 we had been watching) We brought it home and it worked just fine for about a week...then it started messing up. Weird distorted pictures, loss of sound...Greg had to take that back.

Let see....Radios don't tune well when I am around, fuses blow in the cars I drive more frequently than they should...Light bulbs blow when I turn them on. Cordless phones....not even worth my time, they die. We buy one or two a year because they just stop working. Cell phones work as long as I don't carry them on my...if I stick it in my pocket, it will be dead within hours. Same goes for my ipod. I have had two computers just stop working. I fear for this one I am using now because it was NOT CHEAP! Toys that require batteries often do weird things around me. Do we have DVR? Why YES we do! We have three. Do we replace them about once every six months? Why YES we do. I swear I am freak. I seriously have a complex. It's so bad at times that Greg often won't let me touch electronic things...


So, you can imagine my hesitation when I was the one who was supposed to put batteries in Claire's big Christmas gift. Claire was going to get Biscuit..the fur real friends lovin pup for Christmas. It's this big, electronic dog that does some amazing things. It's was all she asked for and we were thrilled to find one on sale for $99.00. (instead of the $189.00 they were priced at originally) However, Greg had to work and I was the one left to get everything ready for Christmas morning. I opened the dog, unscrewed the back to the battery compartment, Inserted the 6 D batteries...that was about $12.00....put it all back together. Switched on the dog..and GUESS WHAT?

Nothing. I check and recheck the batteries. I turn it on and off. I re-read the instructions over and over and still Nothing. I panic and frantically call Greg. I burst into tears and he comes home because he thinks that I obviously didn't do it right and he can get it to work. Did he? NOPE (he he...although I wish he would have, it was nice to prove that I am not an idiot) The stupid dog didn't work, at all..no barking, no whining, no scary unnatural robotic head movements...NOTHING.

Long story short, we ended up putting the dog under the tree anyway and left a note from SANTA explaining the situation. Claire was OK with that. She loved the dog anyway. The next day, I spent the better part of the morning calling stores, driving to stores in hopes of finding that stupid dog. Apparently, every other little girl in the Indy area also had wanted Biscuit the wonder dog for Christmas. There were none to be found. I finally got a manager and was told that it would be highly unlikely for me to find one as nobody was scheduled to get any until next holiday season. In a last ditch effort, I called the maker, Hasbro, and they are sending a call tag for it. When they get our bad dog back, they'll send us a new one. I think I'll let Greg take care of the batteries for the new one.


I hope you all had a joyous Christmas....I hope that you all remembered the reason we Christians stole the holiday traditions from the Pagans...We did it in celebration of the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I hope you gave more than you received...I hope you found peace.

Here's to an electronic free New year!

Peace, hope and love!
Trista

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