“Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong,” says the eternal pessimist Murphy.

Or maybe not.

Given what’s been going on around us lately, Murphy might be an optimist.

It began with our home phone going on strike — or at least it seemed that way when the phone stopped working but the Internet connection, which is part of the same Citizen’s service that also provides phoned. continued to function.

A visit from the technical folks at Citizens provided a new data terminal on the outside of our home after an examination revealed burned connectors, probably from a lightning strike.  But even with the new box, the phone still didn’t work.  Turned out the same power surged fried the internals of our wireless phone system.  Replaced the base unit and everything seems to be working…for a little while

On Saturday night, our phones and the internet went down.  Plugging our phone into the terminal unit on the outside wall showed a dial tone, so I took about a 150 feet of wire with new connectors and ran the line from the terminal box to the base unit of our wireless phone system and the modem and router for our DSL connection and we had service.

A check of our existing phone hone revealed a lot of static visible on digital readers.  The phone wiring probably dates back to 1977, when our house was built.

That leaves us with a decision on whether or not to rewire the house internally — at our costs — or wait until the promised 1 Gig fiber service arrives sometime next year and then rewire with fiber.

To avoid paying for two rewiring charges we decided to keep our temporary “fix” in place for the time being.

To make matters worse, a busy week compounded by our phone wiring problems also left our yard unmowed before the rains arrived on Monday.  With the rain forecasted to continue to at least Friday, I made need to use a brush mower to clear the yard.

Then a warning light on Amy’s Mini Cooper told us that her front brake pads had gone bad.  The car also needs its annual safety inspection this month.

If I see Murphy on the road, I’m liable to run him down.