The gremlins are back in full force. I think they’re making up for lost time. Last night I set a water bottle against the faucet to see just how much water I could collect from the leaky faucet. Five hours of restless sleep later the bottle was full. That means I am going through at least five 18 oz bottles of water a day without actually drinking or using it in any way. I left another bottle against the faucet before I went to work, and I plan to use these bottles to ‘water the pets’ and, in a sense, fight the gremlins.
For the people who haven’t followed me that long, I have an ongoing war with gremlins. These creatures, which may only exist as physical manifestations of what we call ‘luck’ plague me each spring. By May, 2-3 mechanical devices have inexplicably stopped working in my home. I’ve had 5 addresses since moving to Arizona and the curse has trailed me to each one. This year is a doozy. My vacuum died, a light in the bedroom closet decided to stop working and burn out every replacement bulb within a day of the replace, my boys’ rocket launch igniter died and won’t light the fuse on any rocket, no matter how many new batteries I jam in there. I watched a fan die. An HDMI switcher inexplicably stopped functioning. My mac power source spits sparks when I plug it in. Alexa works intermittently but develops amnesia and bad hearing when I connect her to a once useful bluetooth speaker. My upstairs TV has problems with all of its HDMI channels.
This problem has spread beyond just me. My girlfriend’s TV up and died. Her lights started to flicker. Gremlins, man. At this point I am merely reporting. I don’t have a plan of action here or any hope of defeating the gremlins. I just hope they go away.
Some Thoughts:
- Craig Alanson’s Expeditionary Force is worth the listen. RC Bray does an excellent job portraying the characters. The writing itself is less impressive and repeats itself to the point where I feel like I’m reading a serial story that had previously been released as webisodes or parsed in a monthly journal. However, the voice acting makes it work and helps you ignore the little problems that would otherwise add up along the way.