Feeling Jinxed lately.

Recently my wife flipped our faucet-mount water filter, and the thing broke off the faucet. The faucet-mount units tend to leak anyway, so our faucet is unfiltered, and without an aerator right now, while I search for a new faucet altogether, one that will have a built-in faucet. Years ago, before I grew used to filtered water, I'd have thought it crazy to care about this, and I'd have been perfectly happy with tap water. I'm spoiled.

Thursday evening, 2 weeks ago, the battery in our minivan bit the dust, and we needed to buy a new car battery. That's OK - the car was still on it's original battery, now 5 years old, and just entering winter. A new battery wasn't really a bad idea, all things considered.

Last Thursday evening, when I came home from work, my wife reported that one of our VCRs (the one that's only a year or two old) was eating any tape inserted. OK, no sweat. Saturday morning I bought a very low-end, but working VCR off of somebody via Craigslist for $10. I still hoped I could figure out the problem with the good, fairly new VCR and fix it.

This past Thursday, exactly one week after our newest VCR died, our other good VCR died. This unit is absolutely frozen. It won't move any mechanical parts, at all. It makes no noises, at all. It exhibits absolutely NO reaction at all to any button presses. The only sign that it even has power is that the display works when it is plugged in.

It's possible the jinx might be spreading too. While sitting at my dining room table tonight, with 2 VCRs and one phone disassembled and laid out in front of me, while I tried to fix them, I saw red & blue lights flashing outside, in front of my house. I walked over to look through the living room window to see what was going on, and there were a couple of police cars parked in the middle of my street. Next to them was an Altima, headlights on, passenger door open, front end against a telephone pole and airbag hanging out of the steering wheel. I think the driver must have taken off, because one of the police cars kept driving off, shining it's lights every-which-way. After a while a flatbed came along and towed the car away, not bothering to turn off the Altima's lights. Shortly after that, a firetruck came back to the telephone pole, along with a police car, and a bunch of guys with spotlights checked out the telephone pole. Finally all of the police cars, tow trucks, and fire trucks all went away, and I was left sitting at my dining room table with 2 broken VCRs and a broken phone.

You've been warned - bring valuable possessions near my aura at your own risk.