I seem to have bad luck in the proximity of two particular cities in our country, both in the South. Both have struck me a blow in the past two weeks.
It was in Hattiesburg, MS nearly 6 years ago when the clutch went out on my truck. This ultimately resulted in a week of downtime. There were some silver-linings. I got to visit and photograph the New Orleans area 6-months post-Katrina. Also, I had only had the truck for a month, so I wasn't on the hook for the repairs. Bad luck in Hattiesburg struck again in September of 2011 when my company-owned truck broke down on Labor Day weekend. Due to the holiday and shortened business week, I was stuck in a motel room for 9 days on that one. Even more recently than that; remember my entry the other day about the painful experience of having an abscess drained? Guess where the hospital was where that was done.
This week, a new city is beginning to challenge Hattiesburg as my bad luck nexus. In March of 2010, while working as a flat-bed driver, I slipped and fell from the deck of the trailer and badly sprained my ankle in Prosperity, SC. I went to the hospital for this in nearby Columbia and was ultimately out of work for nearly a month. Now this week, I've been sitting in Columbia, SC in a motel room for two days waiting on my truck to be repaired. I was supposed to be home today, with the next four days off.
Thankfully, it seems to be resolving itself in a timely fashion. Assuming the truck is actually ready to roll this afternoon as I've been told, chances are I won't even be able to load onto anything and be Kentucky-bound until morning. Which means I won't even make it home until Saturday at the earliest. I can always extend my home time out the other side, but the whole point of taking my home-time on weekends is that I get to actually spend time with
welfy, rather than her being at work all day and tied-up with play rehearsals in the evenings.Here's to hoping the bad luck streaks in these cities are over.
