The Nashville explosion and my horrible ordeal

I've gotten quite a few emails these past few days asking if we were okay - it didn't help that it happened during a period when I said I was going to take a few days off, so folks that aren't familiar with my location really didn't know, especially that first day when there was no real word on fatalities and injuries.

I slept in Christmas, finally dragging my ass out of bed about 7, made some coffee and sat down at the computer to read the news. My homepage is my email and the first thing I saw was 3-4 messages from old friends asking if that was me in Nashville this morning. Huh?

Well, it was too fucking early for me to be interacting with people so I went to the news and saw the headline of "Massive Bomb Set Off in Nashville" or some such shit and my first thought was "Who in the fuck would want to blow up Nashville?" which was immediately followed by "Who wouldn't?" which was then followed by "I bet they'll pin this on the white guys."

We weren't really affected. Well, we were but it was actually in a positive manner - while we can make outgoing calls, we haven't been able to and still can't get any incoming calls which is positively glorious as far as I'm concerned - our phone hasn't rang since Christmas Eve. Not even once.

Our internet has been a little spotty. It's been up and down, but more up than down. When it does go down, it's only for a couple minutes at a time. At the worst, it's been a minor inconvenience. Unless I'm watching a video or switching sites, I don't even really notice.

My in-laws on the other hand..... their cable, internet, landline and cell phone is all through ATT, so it's been down since that shit happened.

Because my in-laws are elderly, we've been concerned about them not having any way to call out, especially if there was an emergency so I had a brilliant idea - I'll loan them my truck phone. 

Now anybody that knows me knows I'm not a phone person. I can honestly say without exaggeration that in the past year, I've spent less than 5 hours talking on any kind of phone. I didn't even own a cell phone for years until the truck started breaking down and Lisa got on my ass to get one so we wouldn't get stranded. To placate her, I went to Walmart and got a flip phone and about every 45 days or so I buy 30 bucks worth of minutes through Straight Talk which is good for a month. Like I said, I'm not a phone person so I think in the 6 months I've had it, I've made one call on it. Matter of fact, only 3 people have my number - Lisa, Woody, and his wife.

Anyways..... I figured I'd load the phone with minutes and drive it out to Portland where my in-laws are so they'd have a way to call for help if they needed it. I figured if ATT and/or the internet in town was down I wouldn't be able to pay with a card so I grabbed some money from the cash stash I keep in the safe for such a situation and headed to Walmart - the day after Christmas.

The place was fucking packed, but I wasn't going to stand in line, I was going to the electronics department for the card and pay for it there. Unfortunately, the system to load the card was down. So much for that plan.

I went back today (Sunday) and tried again. They were able to load the card, so I bought one and then headed back home to get online and load the minutes into the phone. I did that, then tried to call the cell from the home phone to make sure it worked before I made the 80 mile round trip to my in-law's place. Remember, we can make calls from the landline, just not receive them. Guess what..... it didn't work. I was redirected to customer service (Press 1 for English) which informed me that I was fucked.

Oh well, I tried. I really did.

So yeah, I'm not going to post much on the bombing if I can help it. There's nothing you can read here that you can't find anywhere else and besides, I'm already tired of all the conspiracy theories and rumors that are everywhere, so I'm just going to sit back and laugh at all the phone addicted people that have been going through some serious withdrawals.

And Lisa just now got a message from her mother saying their internet and land line was back up, but it's like ours - they can call out but can't receive calls which really isn't much help at all if the entire fucking region is like that. Seriously, what are they going to do if there's a medical emergency, call their daughter in California?