One Small Explosion.....

... can change your whole perspective. And it wasn’t even our explosion! It was our neighbors! Now that I have gotten your attention, a brief synopsis of our latest adventure follows.


Something just seems all a-kilter

Sunday evening, we went to visit a neighbor for a few hours. When we came home, we noticed a few things awry. Pictures on the wall were off-kilter, or on the floor, and things in general looked out of place. Having lived in California, and enjoyed a 6.5 earthquake, our first inclination was that we had experienced an earthquake. Further inspection found quite a bit of minor damage. Most everything on the north and east walls of the house was on the floor. Our curio rack in the master bedroom with all of our porcelain treasures had fallen and was partly on the bed and on the floor.

Now, a slight panic is setting in. What the heck happened? A quick phone call across the street to our neighbors got us the news that our neighbor’s air compressor had exploded in his storage shed/engine repair shop in his backyard. Terry, our neighbor, had just left the engine shop to go get pizza, and luckily wasn’t hurt. The force of the explosion was enough to blow the 12 ft. shed door out, and cause a lot of damage to the engine shop. (According to what he originally told the city, “It’s storage, really!”) Riggggght.


Surprisingly, none of the glass was broken!

So, the upshot of all this is that a lot of our treasures were broken. Things we had collected and had emotional attachment to for the last 30 years are now gone. They were just porcelain things, small treasures, but a part of our life and our adventures for the last 30 years.


Kinda reminds me of some weird Toy Story scene....

Initially we were very upset and angry about the things being broken because of “you-know-who’s” engine shop. Don’t get me wrong, we are still kinda mad. But, then we had a slight change of perspective. We realized that we could have been hurt during this little gem of an explosion. The pups could have been hurt and real serious damage could have occurred to the house. This put a little different spin on things. Yeah, things got busted, but it could have been a lot worse. But, it brought the value of our health, our happiness, and our little house into a little clearer focus.

Amazing how a little event like this can change your point of view. I know that Jake’s Blogpost of 1/21 addressed a person’s end of life issues, and whether or not you (or I) would want to keep life sustaining machines running even though all hope is essentially lost. This is a deep, broad, painful, and sometimes divisive subject and I will not hazard my opinion here in this post. Suffice to say the past few days I have had the opportunity to realize how lucky we really are everyday. And on that positive note, I will end this little missive and wish you a great week.

That’s the news from here, more news and maybe a report from the gym next week. And lastly, this Sunday the entire country will close up shop and watch the Super Bowl. So, here's my commitment. I will root for the Bears. The Colts will never be the same since they abandoned Baltimore! I'll watch the game from the seat of the Little Red Bike, why not get a good spin done!
Jim