{"id":4193,"date":"2007-01-23T09:34:07","date_gmt":"2007-01-23T15:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2007\/01\/23\/the-3rd-shoe-drops\/"},"modified":"2022-01-31T10:18:39","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T16:18:39","slug":"the-3rd-shoe-drops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2007\/01\/23\/the-3rd-shoe-drops\/","title":{"rendered":"The 3rd Shoe Drops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you know that if you google the quote-enclosed phrase “bad things come threes,”<\/a> you’ll get 17,900 results (as of this morning; later today, it may be 17,901, which is at least divisible by three, so we’ve got that going for us)? And so it seems that I’m not the only soul who, while not being superstitious or clinging to ancient and silly ways of explaining why the universe behaves like it does, still perceives out of the corner of my eye certain patterns that are simultaneously comforting and disquieting.<\/p>\n

In our case, #1 was Saturday’s ice storm that wreaked havoc on our 25-year old oak tree. #2 was yesterday’s snapping of the spring on our garage door. And #3 occurred this morning as MLB<\/acronym>‘s 5:00 a.m. treadmill workout was derailed when the television in the game room abruptly gave up its phosphorescent ghost.<\/p>\n

This is a disaster of epic proportions, as anyone who has endured an hour on a treadmill without the benefit of sensory distraction will attest. The TV isn’t that old, but it was acquired via deep discount at Best Buy, the discount being so deep that it qualified as an impulse purchase, and we just don’t do that sort of thing with electronics. It’s got a nice 20″ flat screen with front panel a\/v inputs and it fit snugly into the built-in cabinet. Ironically, this death came only a couple of weeks after I installed a UPS<\/acronym> to protect it and the other a\/v equipment from Midland’s notoriously jicky electric current. There’s bound to be yet another law to explain that, something along the lines of “no good deed goes unpunished.”<\/p>\n

NEWSFLASH!<\/strong> I was just about to smash the TV with an eight pound sledge when I had a brainstorm and plugged it into a different electrical outlet; it works fine. I should be happy, I suppose, except for two things. I really like that sledge. And, #3 is still out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Existentialism deconstructed with an eight pound sledgehammer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kitchen-sink","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6946,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions\/6946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}