New year, same luck

I don’t want to think that I’m unlucky, but sometimes things just keep happening and you have to wonder if somewhere in a past life I broke dozens of mirrors or walked under a few hundred ladders. Who knows? What I do know is that luck has not been kind. Things tend to break around me and while I don’t know the rate at which I should be expecting things to break, the current rate feels incredibly high.

A new home is just a new chance for problems. When I packed my things and made a move to a new home, I couldn’t think of a better way to handle the move than just virtually tour a home and roll the dice. To be fair it wasn’t a bad choice. I like my home for the most part and while there are things that were wrong that I wasn’t exactly aware of when I bought it because I couldn’t see it in person, those things wouldn’t have kept me from making the purchase. I’m very fortunate to own, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

Shortly after I moved in, everything broke at pretty much the same time. No really, the washer, the drier, the stove, the refrigerator, water heater, air conditioning, even the garbage disposal started leaking. It was like the house was holding on just long enough for someone else to move in. Slowly, and to great strain on my budget, I’ve managed to fix and/or replace everything. Mostly because I could install and/or fix 99% of the stuff myself.

Basically after the past few years of living here I figured whatever could go wrong had gone wrong and that would be the end of the story. What else could break? Now before I continue I have to acknowledge one other bit of information. It’s not just limited to the house, my computer, car, laptops (new and old!) all seem to be cursed. Or more to the point, I’m cursed and everything else around me is paying the ultimate price.

Since then, I’ve fixed my car (fuel hose exploded recently, that was fun), my new laptop (which would randomly not want to wake up, find the boot drive, or crash at random times), my big computer (which kept overheating…), and all the things wrong with the house to the point that I’m okay not having to spend every waking free moment trying to fix something. Or I was…

New years day, I woke up and nothing too crazy had happened the night prior. I did however hear a metallic banging sound. Think someone throwing garbage into a large metal trash bin. I chalked this up to just that, someone doing some remodeling or moving. That was until I got a text message with a video from a neighbor. Half of the gutter on the side of my house was dangling and hitting the neighbors house. That was the banging I was hearing all morning.

There are two frustrating bits of information I should include. The first is that there was no wind or rain the night prior so why half of it fell is beyond me. The second is that this is a, at least, 40 foot (~12 meter) length of gutter and half of it was just dangling in the wind. That is important because somehow the other half of it is still attached so firmly to the house that it can hold and support this hunk of gutter without any real issue. After speaking with a neighbor who’s lived in these houses since they were built (they aren’t old, but they aren’t super new either), this has never happened before. None of the other, essentially carbon copies of the homes around me has ever had this issue.

I’ve since got the tallest ladder I own (not that tall), managed to get the end of the gutter, which was still 12-14 foot (~4 meters) off the ground, run some twine through the broken downspout and anchor it to my neighbors fence so it didn’t break one of their windows. Since then we’ve had a storm with some serious winds, upwards of 30 miles per hour (48 Km/h) and the rest of the gutter is still held to the house. The twine, which is some braided kevlar I just happen to have laying around (thank the gods for doing so many random projects!) somehow has held up to the stress despite being very thin. The neighbors gate seems to be holding up as well, no visible issues yet.

The only bits of good news are that I found someone to fix it on short notice (but that won’t happen until Thursday) and that the whole thing hasn’t come crashing down (so far). Oh and the neighbor has been polite enough not to be angry for using his gate handle as an anchor since nothing else was available. Unfortunately the entire thing needs to be replaced, which is costly, and the home is a three stories, so it’s going to cost extra since it’s so high up.

While I only have myself to compare with, it really does feel like things tend to break around me for some reason. Hopefully that will stop, I mean it has to stop eventually… right?