la Vie Boondocks

from an e-mail to my brother ...

Gentleman who repairs the emergency electric generator

showed up today -- it had taken him a long time to squeeze us in because our area had two authentic tornadoes last month, which made him a super-busy emergency generator fix-it guy.

Last Monday the weekly Self-Test failed, and we started freaking out. (Especially since this is Surprise Tornado Season in New England.) The guy opened the hood and spent an hour mystified and unable to diagnose the problem. (He's been installing Generac emergency generators for 40 years.)

Finally, as he was about to throw up his arms in defeat and frustration, we all noticed a big-ass black rubber hose dangling loose -- two years of vibrating now and then had loosened the hose, and The Thing wasn't getting its propane. It's working fine again now, so

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! 
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! 
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, 
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, 
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, 

Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! 
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once 
That make ingrateful man!

I learned a lot! It's an engine much like a car or lawn mower, so it spews out carbon monoxide (that's the Bad News) -- but the Good News is that carbon monoxide is heavier than air, so it hasn't been wafting up and through the windows and into our living room, and we haven't been snuffed and killed.

 

Love and Happiness (Al Green), Live Long & Prosper,

Bob