the empire strikes back

i'm going to have to abandon the notion that nothing ever happens to me.

it all started a couple of weeks ago on a fine tuesday afternoon during which things at work were unusually quiet and i got to leave work early.
"awesome," i thought to myself, "time to run an errand in hyde park before heading home."
the errand was, unsurprisingly, unsuccessful, as tati cycles turned out to be closed for the entire month of june so that the owner could recover from the physical and emotional burden of too many back-ordered bikes. [to her credit, my good blogmate tried to warn me that i should probably call ahead, but did i listen? of course not.]
you might wonder why this part of the story is relevant (i suppose it's not), but had it not been for the fateful deviation to the bike shop i probably would have made it safely back to lakeview sans the ensuing chaos.
as i drove out of hyde park the sky grew darker, the thunder louder, and the lightening brighter, and pretty soon i found myself working my way up lakeshore drive under torrential downpour. by the time i made it to the s-curve conditions were downright apocalyptic and LSD was unequivocally flooded. as i proceeded north it quickly became clear that all the west-bound exits that ran under LSD were impassable, as evidenced by the stalled out cars, roof-deep in rainwater.
just as i was beginning to wonder if i was going all the way to milwaukee, i found what looked like a reasonable off-ramp, several exits further than i wanted to go... which, in fact, was also flooded. so i turned the car onto what i thought was the on-ramp back to LSD, resulting in the following frantic cell phone call to my good blogmate:
jo-na (reading the caller ID): "hi jo-na, what's up?"
jo-na (panic in her voice): "um, i seem to be driving my car up the lakeshore bike path."
jo-na: "the what?"
jo-na: "the bikepath! what do i do?"
jo-na: "let me get on google earth and figure it out"
with some moral and web-based support i found my way off the bike path, under LSD, and finally to clark and foster from which i was able to get home... i didn't have a new bike, but i was home safe and dry.

fast forward to a few weekends later when i finally managed to procure said bicycle with the gracious assistance of the bikemyers family. the bike purchase happened in a frenzy of retail therapy during which i also acquired a new TV, a big CD storage shelving unit, and the misplaced urge to engage in some limited home improvement.
to my surprise i was able to assemble the new bike storage rack without incident... if only the rest of it had gone as smoothly.
i got the CD storage solution up and running (with some help from ss) and had it all loaded up with CDs before i realized that i'd gone about the organization scheme all wrong, so i sat down at the foot of it and got to work. it turned out that i had the whole thing sitting a little too close to the wall, such that it was precariously balanced on the lip of the baseboard. i looked up just in time to see quite clearly that my newly erected media empire was inevitably going to come toppling down on my head, and managed to stick my arm up in such a way that while all the CDs came crashing i didn't actually get completely whacked in the face by storage solution. i also managed to contort my neck in a funny way such by the next morning i couldn't really rotate my head or drink diet coke out a of can without a straw.

the next day, with the CDs and bikes all in proper position i moved on to some minor electrical work. the bathroom light switch was getting a little testy and i had one of those ill-fated, "how hard can it be?" moments where i decided that surely i could unscrew the broken part and take it to the home depot for replacing. i don't know if was feeling invincible after my adventures in the rain, or if i sustained a minor concussion when the media empire fell on my head, but it didn't occur to me that perhaps it might be a good idea shut of the power to the light switch before sticking a screw driver into it. the minor electrocution transiently made my neck feel better, but when my teeth stopped chattering i looked up to realize that i'd blown out the electricity in the whole apartment, thus deprogramming all my electronic gadgets, including my new TV.
what's that they say about idle hands?

from these events i conclude:
1) my life isn't nearly as boring as i think it is
and
2) i am an idiot