Cold snap.

Cold again here, with two inches of snow overnight and still falling. Five to eight inches of snow due Sunday night, then single-digit temperatures through the week. Really getting tired of it. Come on, March! It's 19 days until spring! DO SOMETHING!

It reminded me of another escapade that happened during my recent hiatus, not directly connected to my concussion but indirectly. 

Our cable box had been rebooting a lot for a month or so, and every time it would, the sound it emitted (inaudible to humans and, apparently, smaller dogs) would make large dog Tralfaz nuts. Really, he'd run upstairs to get away from it, and if the master bedroom door was open he would go into the master bath, the farthest point in the house from the cable box. In January I finally got through to the cable company -- they don't make it easy to speak to a human being -- and was told that we had an outdated box. Free of charge they sent us a new one, asking only that we send back the old one when it arrived. 

Okay! Well, the new box arrived; I installed it -- not that I'm a whiz at these things but it was simple -- and I packed up the old box and prepared to drop it off for return delivery. 

Then I fell and hit my head, and couldn't drive for two weeks. 

I was concerned because I was afraid the cable company would raise our bill, believing we now had a second cable box going. I feared this because I got an e-mail from the cable company saying they were raising our bill because we had two cable boxes going. I called them and straightened it out (it was an automatic missive, they claimed), but I figured I'd better get the old cable box back to them ASAP. So, since my wife was tied up with work and the house and dogs and all, and I couldn't drive, I arranged for the delivery company to come pick up the package. The pickup was set for Wednesday. 

Tuesday night we got an ice storm.

I didn't expect the truck to come, I really didn't, but they didn't contact me to say it wouldn't, so I put the box on the porch per instructions. Sure enough, the guy came, parked out front, went over the ice to pick up the box, got it in the truck... and crashed into my mailbox.

Apparently he fishtailed backing up or something -- I didn't see it happen, I just saw him standing out there and my mailbox on the pole facing parallel to the sidewalk. This being atypical, I figured I'd better see what was going on.

The guy was very upset, very apologetic. He offered to have me talk to his boss. I said no, that he probably shouldn't have even been sent out in this weather, and I wasn't mad. We shook hands and parted as friends. Then I tried to twist the mailbox back into position and snapped it and the crossbeam off the wooden post.

Sooooo, there we were. I left it all and went back in the house to lie down.

There was no mail delivery that afternoon anyhow. The post office, despite its famous non-slogan, wouldn't send out its mailmen on a day like that.

The next morning I went outside with my little hammer and electric screwdriver and a pocketful of nails and screws, figuring there had to be some way I could get it all together, at least until I could get to Home Depot. And it worked. As it turned out, the nails hadn't been bent, so I mostly used the existing nails to bang the structure back into place. It's leaning, and the box itself is dented, and there's a split in the post, but it'll do until it gets warm. Can't replace a mailbox post in this weather.

So that's my mailbox saga, and another example of how things are related to other things. If I hadn't fallen on the ice and cracked my skull, I would have dropped off the cable box myself before the ice storm hit and (in theory, because we never know for sure what would have happened), all would be well. Or at least I wouldn't have to spring for a new mailbox and post.

Oh, Winter! How you taunt me!