It is Not a Coincidence!

I'm not sure what to call this post but I have more stories about Ned taking care of me.

The first one happened right after I arrived back in San Miguel on Sunday. One of the first things we always did shortly after we arrived was check out the phones and the Internet to see if they were working. I checked. Sure enough the Internet wasn't working which, of course, meant that the Vonage phone wasn't working either. The family had told me to let them know when I got here. I had no way to do that without a working Internet connection but some friends sent them an email so they wouldn't worry. It hasn't been that long ago that we didn't have Internet and Vonage and Skype and I guess several other technical marvels of connection but we do have them now. I can't begin to tell you how stranded I felt. Even worse is that I knew that Megacable was having problems and the stories from friends about not being able to reach Megacable by phone or having to go sit in their office for several hours before they could report a problem or waiting three or more days for a technician made me want to cry.

Ned was always the person who dealt with the cable company and when it was out he would start calling a little after 8 in the morning although the company didn't open until 9. Most of the time he managed to get through to someone before the office was officially open. I knew he had a number somewhere that would get him into the technical area instead of the general customer service area. But what was the number. Monday morning I looked in several places for the number. Then I just sat down at his desk and started talking to him. I opened one of the desk drawers and there on the top of everything was this faded cable bill from October, 2004 with numbers and notes scribbled on it. About 8:45 I started calling some of the numbers but never got an answer.

Okay....it was looking like I would have to go sit at Megacable until I could report the outage but first I walked Carly. On the street behind our house I saw a Megacable truck and also a neighbor who speaks Spanish. I told him about my problem and he asked the technician if he would go check out the problem. The technician said he would have to call the office to get permission to go into the house. I could see a clipboard with pages of addresses for him to take care of and I didn't have much hope of him getting permission to help me. He stayed on the line for about 10 minutes with the office and then said that he had permission. I was overjoyed. He followed me to the house and after an hour I had a new cable modem and working Internet. The chances of that happening in less than 24 hours after I arrived in San Miguel are so remote that I knew Ned was still taking care of me.

Another thing happened today. Last night I wanted to watch a DVD movie but when I went to put the movie in I realized that I didn't know how to work the remote to get it to play. I'm sure you men are shaking your heads and wondering what in the heck is the matter with me. Well, using the remote was Ned's job. My head was already full of Photoshop and Lightroom shortcuts and important stuff like that so I just never bothered to learn how to do it. I figured I would have to pay the guy who set up our dish, TV, DVD, etc., to come show me how.

Nope, once again Ned was taking care of me. This afternoon there was a knock on the door and who was there? Richard, a friend who comes to San Miguel from time to time. He was here for a few days and I didn't even know he was in town. He had been to comida or somewhere and thought about me so he just stopped by and knocked on the door. I told Richard my sad tale about the remote. He took it and in about 30 seconds had it figured out. I wrote the sequence down and so tonight I can watch my movie.

If you are thinking that these are just coincidences, you will never, ever convince me of that. I know from deep inside that it is Ned still watching out for me.