Never Put All of Your Eggs in One (FIOS) Basket

I've read that when you own a boat and you're out on it, if one thing goes wrong, you can bet that two more will, too. It's the law of diminishing returns, literally because getting back to land is going to be a bitch.

Yesterday morning, the USS Murphy, a doughty little dinghy was gently bobbing on the Sea of Life As We Know It. And then, Richie discovered water on the garage floor. It wasn't a flood, nothing as dramatic as that. He called the plumber, who said he'd be at the house by 1 p.m.

Relieved at the hour, we took off to run some errands. Back home, the phone rang at 1:15 p.m. The plumber had been delayed, he'd have to see us later in the day. Later became 3, then 4 p.m. He finally showed up at 5 p.m. At 5;30 he was still working away and Richie poked his head in the front door to holler, "All the water is turned off!"

At 5:45, he came back in and I asked him to turn on "All in the Family" which comes on at 6 p.m. And that's when we discovered the TV was on the blink. We both thought it would sort itself out eventually and he went back to get into the plumber's way.

I'd already discovered that Internet Explorer wasn't working on the notebook, but I shrugged and decided tomorrow morning was plenty of time to check the mail.

Richie came back in, looked at the still non-functioning TV and turned it off. He said the plumber was almost done so I called for a pizza to be delivered. Barely five minutes after the plumber had departed, the pizza arrived.

Since the DVD player on the TV worked just fine, we watched Clint Eastwood's "In The Line of Fire." (Note to Clint: sweetheart, you're 'way too old to play a romantic lead. Quit embarrassing yourself and give it up, okay?)

This morning? The TV still wasn't working and neither were the Notebook or the downstairs PC. Richie picked up the landline to call our FiOs provider and IT wasn't working! Undaunted, he grabbed the cell phone, stroke masterfully to the TV and called the number on the screen.

He was directed down to the fuse box, where he discovered one of the circuits had flipped. It seems that the plumber blew it somehow; he forgot to re-set it in the drama of shutting off the leak with the plumber. Once the fuse was fixed, everything worked again.

And what started all of this in the first place? A pinpoint leak in the copper pipe of the USS Murphy!