what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

May 23, 2012

The challenges I faced yesterday weren’t anything so serious as to cause death, but compounded they were enough to make me feel pretty darned close to a meltdown. First… when you have work deadlines that require an Internet connection to complete, it’s horrific when your service takes a dump. Certainly you’ve had it happen to you before and know how it feels. I pay for 30M service. I had 7.73Mbps download, but NO upload. That means since there was no way to transmit verifications, I was not able to get email you guys. NO EMAIL!

If my lack of connectivity was a one time thing, it would’ve been frustrating. Since I’ve had a bucket truck in my driveway working on it a bajillion times in the past 30 days and know the names of the service techs by heart, it’s now a big deal. I make my living promoting “The Ultimate Customer Experience®” — but when I don’t get it, I have a difficult time delivering it.

And… no photography practice for me either because I was simply too busy complaining. I hope y’all have taken a ton of photos in Tv mode and they are all amazing. More of that tomorrow (if I can connect of course), but I wanted to share something from Facebook.

The photo I posted for Jerilyn’s birthday has been “liked” by around 35 people. My old friend, Dennis Sipe, that I haven’t’ seen in person since college, commented on it. Twice. Not to take anything away from Jerilyn Masters, the birthday girl, but I think what grabbed the interest is the old pop machine in the photo. With Facebook scrolling, you can’t see my original comment. I said…

Shelley McKain Erwin
Seems like only yesterday Jerilyn Masters and I were making laps through C’ville before school — eating Doritos (oh yah, our breath was amazing!) and buying drinks from the machine at McKain’s Garage. Happy birthday, J!

And what followed wasn’t one ‘happy birthday’ wish for Jeri — but primarily talk about the ‘good old days’ and that darned pop machine. I guess it’s much more interesting anyway. Sorry, Jerilyn… I hope your birthday was the best evah. xoxo

And to all my real-life friends (you know who you are), please remember that I have quite a collection of old photos (and new ones too!). Please be nice to me because some of them are not flattering, and with an Internet connection crazy bad things can happen. Evidence that Jerilyn was on her best behavior — because that photo could’ve been of her asleep with drool on her pillow. Or sitting in a booth at Kern’s Grill eating a greasy burger with a lovely green broach on the front of her shirt. They say… what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 😉