Crisis !

Today is Tuesday. The last Journal entry I made was last Thursday.

For the past five days "The Pile" has been without Broadband connectivity due to a British Telecom failure at the Exchange and a "coincidental" issue with the ISP's modem. Fortunately 30% and I both have reasonable deductive skills and also mates who know how to configure modems so we have managed to avoid having two service providers attempting to blame the other and have managed to scavenge the right kit to resolve the problem ourselves.

30% has excelled herself with her self restraint with Help desk personnel who don't understand the problem and have repeatedly tried to get her to follow a non-relevant Help desk fault script that has nothing to do with the real problem. I also feel that I deserve a momentary acknowledgement for only giving the BT Engineer a withering look when he tried to blame the issue on our wireless router. I simply demonstrated that every machine in the house could connect to the wireless router and that when I connected a machine directly to the Broadband modem there was no Internet connection pointing to a modem config issue. This guy had turned up and was allegedly qualified. I'm an amateur and I had managed to suss out where the issue was.

Anyway, that wasn't the crisis, last Saturday we were going to take Tyson and Marauder to a dog show arranged by the Puppy Training Group that we attend.

I therefore planned to wear my magic pants to ensure good fortune and a plentiful supply of rosettes for T&M. Imagine my absolute horror when I ransacked the pants drawer to no avail.

Now before we go any further I need to point out that these are magic pants. Not "pulling pants" or "lucky pants" but bona fide, breathed on by fairies, chanted over by wizards magic pants. Let me explain....

... Lucky pants are pants that someone feels grant them good fortune when they are worn. I don't have a problem with the concept but if you think about it they are actually better described as probability pants. In other words an individual has a pair of pants that, due to probability, whenever worn the wearer has good fortune. If the wearer actually carried out a thorough analysis they probably have a corresponding pair of unlucky pants in the same drawer that result in a shitty day whenever worn. In other words, lucky pants may be lucky but there is an equal and opposite number of pairs of unlucky pants hence the correct terminology; Probability Pants.

Now on to Pulling Pants. These are a subset of Probability Pants in that they are lucky so that, when worn, the wearer manages to "pull" a sexual partner. The wearer obviously has pants that aren't pulling pants and so are obviously unlucky.

Now I will make an observation about pulling pants, they may well prove the existence of a Cosmic Joker since observation tends to suggest that the best pulling pants are the scabbiest items in the undies drawer. Consequently the wearer manages to pull but is too embarrassed to remove their outer garments for fear of ridicule or putting off their potential partner for the evening due to the rank but lucky undergarments being worn. This tends to suggest that the Cosmic Joker has had a hand in the creation of this particular sub-set of probability underwear.

Right, now we have that clear, I need to point out that my pants are not Probability Pants. They are genuine magic pants. If you look at the care label all the usual logos are there for do not bleach (triangle with a cross though it) and warm iron (stylised iron with two dots) but they also have the symbols for only wash in dew collected at midsummer dawn by a maiden, pure of heart and do not use Dwarf Dry Cleaners. These are real magic pants. When worn they don't just give good luck, they go way beyond that.

As a result of their power they don't get many outings and only for worthwhile causes. Obviously with that sort of power available in my laundry drawer I could be corrupted absolutely so I thought long and hard before deciding that the dog show was a just and noble use of their energy.

So you could imagine my horror to find or rather NOT find them. The end result was a rather paltry third for Tyson in the Puppy Class and Marauder had two sixths in the Puppy class and prettiest bitch.

30% has already had an official warning for not taking full note of the care instructions on these pants as the last thing you want is the magic being washed out and ending up in the Septic Tank - I mean - what use is a magical tank full of effluent?

I therefore had my suspicions that 30% may have lost these charmed garments in the laundry. She does, after all, seem to do the same with socks.

Imagine my joy a couple of days later when I was looking for my favourite socks and found the little devils hiding at the back of the sock drawer. If they weren't magic how did they teleport to there?

Normal Service has been resumed.