Sparky saves the day.

I didn’t take this photo because I don’t have a stripper, truck or water.

Half of my electricity was out on Sunday.  The simplified explanation is that the wires running to a house are +120 Volts, -120 Volts or zero.  Like this:

Circuit breakers are either on the +120 V branch or the -120 V branch.  A hot tub would be on both.  Usually, when the power goes out, it’s everything.  The electric company says it’s rare, but it’s possible for only one branch to go dead.  In the past week, that has happened a few times, but not for very long.  On Sunday, it was out all day.

I pulled the cover off of my circuit breaker panel to test the power coming into my house to verify that was the case.  It’s possible to run extension cords to get power where it’s needed, but I didn’t bother.  I had computers, but no internet.  Not a big hardship, but it was irritating until the power company got it resolved.

Enbridge recently bought the natural gas infrastructure in my area.  Reasonably, Enbridge wants to check on all of the residential gas meters, and has been sending notices to customers.  The last notice said that they would shut off my gas if they couldn’t come in to inspect.  I’ve been meaning to call them.  This morning, the technician called to say he was shutting off the gas or inspecting my meter.  We went the inspection route.

I had no plans to leave the house because my truck is in the shop getting a new power steering pump. 

The technician was a great guy.  We talked all morning.  He is divorced, has three grown children, makes $43 per hour with plenty of overtime, his only hobby is drinking, and he needs to lose weight before proposing to his girlfriend.  Apparently she is a fetching lass who owns a dental practice.

When he left, I dicked around on some projects in the garage because I couldn’t go anywhere, it was too cold to do anything outside, and Sparky was taking a nap.

By mid-afternoon, it was time for my nap.  When I tried to get cleaned up, I found the water was shut off.  The Enbridge oversight shows that I don’t pay much attention to utility companies.  There were no notices in my mailbox and I had paid my bill.  My city and the water company weren’t showing any outages, so I called the water company.  They said there was construction on the street, and water would be off for a few hours.

Like the electricity outage, this wasn’t my fault, so that was good.  Also like the power, it wasn’t much of a hardship, but was irritating.  I thought I might like to take a shit at some point.  You get one free flush, but after that, it’s an issue.  Especially with no car.

In just a couple of days, I had natural gas, electricity, water and truck problems.  All resolvable, but I was still pissed off.  Being this fragile increased my vexation.  When in a sour mood, it helps to do something nice for someone else.  I gave Sparky a big hunk of Costco orange chicken.

There is a long list of things that dog’s aren’t supposed to eat.  Grapes are on the list, but I have no idea if orange chicken is bad for dogs.  I’ve seen Sparky eat goose shit, so we took a chance.  Sparky ate it, but started snorting.  Like if you have a big snot ball, and blowing your nose doesn’t help, so you try to snort it back into your throat to swallow it.  Yeah, that sounds gross, but people do it.  With Sparky, it’s the saddest, most pathetic thing.

 I don’t think Sparky is allergic to orange chicken.  It smells and tastes great, so Sparky probably snuffled the shit out of it until he sucked it up into his sinuses.  If dogs have those.  Anyway, he was fine.

That didn’t improve my mood and I hadn’t eaten anything all day, so maybe I was just ‘hangry’.  I had a nice bowl of thyme rice with butter chicken.  Sparky sat like a good dog until I invited him up onto the couch.  Being a beagle, he can be a food mooch, but he didn’t even do that.

Sparky snuggled up, and tried to look disinterested in my lunch. 

Only the very best beagles can be this well-mannered when food is nearby.

When I was done eating Sparky cheered me up.  He doesn’t know many jokes, so he did that ‘Wazzup!’ thing from Wendy’s commercials.

That’s an old gimmick, but Sparky says it is trending on TikTok and it is always funny when he does it.

Then Sparky made fun of some squirrels, and did that fake dialogue thing where he makes up what they are talking about.  It really wasn’t very funny, but he was trying.

After that, Sparky was trying to bet me that he could fit my whole head in his mouth.

I wasn’t going for that, but I did tell him that his breath smelled like oranges.  Sparky started fake gagging and told me that fruit makes him want to barf.

Sparky said the only fruits or vegetables he wants, are what come out of the ass-end of a goose. And maybe a deer, and whatever is inside a baby rabbit.

Sparky and I had a very pleasant afternoon, and later on, my buddy took me to get my truck.  When I got home, the water was back on at the house.