Or why real life would never make it in a novel.

So, I have this water cooler sort of thing set up in my bedroom; a five gallon plastic bottle and a ceramic dispenser. The water here really sucks so you have to drink bottled water.

Anyway, I went into Chiefland the other day to buy groceries and while there, I filled up the water bottles, brought them home and set one up on the dispenser. Now, imagine this if you will: The water cooler thingy sits on a small end table thingy. Note the use of thingy to describe, well, things. This is one major reason why this story would not work in a fictional world.

Anyway, below the water cooler thingy sits the modem that connects me to the internet. I’ve had much problems with this modem, it’s the third one since getting hooked up but that’s another story altogether.

Anyway, (I do seem to use anyway way too much but) anyway, along with the modem thingy is one of those electrical thingys where you plug a bunch of stuff in and it protects them from surges, what ever the fuck those are. My cell phone is plugged into there as is the modem and the router and my Bluetooth thingy. And who the hell came up with that name anyway? It’s not blue, it’s black and doesn’t look at all like a tooth.

Anyway, Wednesday night (was it Wednesday? Being retired means never knowing what day it is), after a good day of writing and after a good walk with the Dudes, I crawl into bed around midnight and I’m not there an hour when there is this big crash and … splash. Five gallons of water all over the modem and the surge protector thingy and my phone. I don’t know how the router escaped the carnage but it did.

It had to be a cat and dog thing, I don’t know what else to attribute it to. Luckily the phone was insured and I went into Gainesville yesterday to get a new one and good old Google has all of my contacts so I don’t have to type them all in again. It’s charging up now and I’ll download the contacts later today. The modem cost me 30 bucks to replace but hell, 30 bucks to get back online is a small price to pay and I didn’t use ‘anyway’ to start this paragraph so that’s a good thing. Sopping up 5 gallons of water off the floor sucked, of course. Used up a lot of paper towels.

So, I have to ask, if you read that this happened in a novel, would you buy it? Yeah, me neither. Funny how real life is.