Twisting in the Wind

I feel like I've been twisting in the wind.

Not literally, though there's a pretty stiff wind blowing through the area today, bringing clouds, rain, and declining temperatures since this morning. I'm speaking more figuratively.

This whole presidential election is part of it. At this point I just want the damn thing to be over. Not knowing whether Bush is going to get his near-50% "mandate" to expand the war, overhaul the Supreme Court, and continue redistributing wealth upward; or if Kerry is going to pull it off and send GWB down in history as just a meaner version of his unremarkable father... is nerve-wracking. Not even knowing when there will be a definitive answer (I don't expect one on Election Night) makes it even harder.

But then my watch broke yesterday. I've worn a watch since I was old enough to tell time (my first one had the minutes etched along the perimeter, to help decipher what "the big hand" was telling me). So I've become accustomed to being able to find out the time with just a gesture. But for the past day (and until I buy a replacement), I have to find a clock.

Ordinarily, I'd turn to one of my network-connected, time-synched computers for that, but yesterday afternoon, I lost that as well. I first got the alert at work, an automated phone call telling me that my server was not responding to requests from the internet. I rushed home fearing that the leaking roof had shorted out my server, or that the main hard drive had crashed, or that my firewall (built using an ancient 486 motherboard) had died, or that my house was burning to the ground, or that the police had received a tip that I was kiddie-porn-publishing, pirate-video-swapping, president-hating terrorist, and had confiscated my computers.

Turns out it was "only" my internet connection. That's not necessarily good news. For one thing, it's not something I can fix myself. It requires contacting my service provider, who has to contact their network provider if it's not an account or premises equipment failure, who has to contact the phone company that owns the wires if there's a problem with the circuit itself. And late in the day on a Friday is not the best time to get the ball rolling on something that's going to require a cascade of techs to actually fix. The word "Monday" kept popping up.

Fortunately, the trouble ticket got escalated smoothly from one company to the next, and by mid-morning the next day a tech from SBC showed up to start fiddling with the line to my house. She ended up spending a few hours on it, often disappearing, but eventually returning. (Between her short and stout build, her deft ability to tread through my leafy yard me hearing her, and general geniality, I suspect she may have been a hobbit.) It turns out there were problems with two sections of the line from here to the central office downtown, which she resolved somehow. She also replaced the ancient junction box on the side of the house with a new one, for good measure.

So I'm feeling a little less lost now. But still far from centered. But even if I don't know what time it is or who's going to be in charge of the planet for the next four years... at least now I'll have a means to find out.