333

A woman I used to work with several years ago once passed on an unusual quirk. She told me about this number she frequently encountered, “333”. She didn't know the significance of it other than she noticed it a lot. She'd be driving and pass a house with that address. It would show up on a ticket she bought somewhere. Something she bought would come to $3.33. Et cetera. Of course by sharing this, by bringing it to my attention, she passed the “curse” on to me, and I've been seeing triple threes everywhere ever since.

Tonight provided me with three great hours of television. Not only was there a phenomenal new Lost, but the long-awaited fourth season premiere of Alias, also by J.J. Abrams. I refuse to spoil Alias for my friends, but this was well worth the wait--a true return to form with some of the best fight scenes ever, and one revelation that wasn't what I thought it would be, and shocked me. And though there were obvious clues pointing to another revelation, I'm sure the theory I have could be wrong. They've misdirected me before.

Tonight provided me with three hours of beautiful women. We finally saw more of Evangeline Lilly's character on Lost, in many ways. Jennifer Garner is back in full form, and Abrams shows how well he understands what makes Alias a success. Take a beautiful girl. Put her in lingerie. Have her running and in distress, but also a strong independent woman who can take care of herself. Maybe give her a sword. Girls with swords are very in at the moment. Finally, find something for her to get emotional about. There have been so many times I wished I could be there to comfort Sydney as she was crying about something, but that damn Vaughn is always one step ahead of me. CIA. Of course, this season rounds out the triple play of beauty with the addition of the lovely and talented Mia Maestro as Syd's sister. Alias fans, now there are TWO of them. Crikey.

It was a good day for threes. I overcame three obstacles. I drove to work with the weight of my parents being out of state for the day and no one to rely on should my attacks come on. I was able to resolve three problems with book jackets over the course of the day. And at lunch, I purchased equipment to add jacks to my folks' old rotary phone, so I could install a DSL filter. That last one was a relief after yesterday.

It was a bad day for threes. A phone line generally uses four wires: red, yellow, black and green. DSL works by using only two of these lines, since modern phones only need two for a dialtone. Looking at the wire to my modem, I see that the two it uses are red and green. For some reason, I could only find a jack to accommodate lines with six wires, which the most recent phones have. At first I thought the wires wouldn't fit but I saw they in fact did. Jacks are universal; most of the six pronged heads have two dummy grooves that aren't used. As long as my home had the standard four wires(and why wouldn't it?), installing the jack would be a cinch. And I'd have it done before Lost began too.

I got home and climbed up on a stepstool, screwdriver in hand. I untwisted the ends of the four wires coming down from our phone in the kitchen. Those would soon be crimped in to a head. I then went to unscrew the wires leading to the outside, and noticed two things. First, all of them were white. Second, there were only three of them. I traced them until I hit the outside wall and at no time found a fourth wire. My dad pointed out that the newer phones were on another line, and pointed that out to me. We traced that to a corner of the basement where it was spliced open to reveal its contents. There was a red wire and a black wire leading up to some box in the ceiling, and an unattached yellow wire twisted back and unused.

There was no green wire.

This kind of explains why I keep getting errors trying to connect with my new modem. Why would James Earl Jones lie? He left me a personal message on my answering machine today saying my service was on. All the newer phones and jacks in our house have all four wires, but at the source where the lines come in the house, there are only three. I have three options:

1) Throw my hands up in defeat, as I very nearly did before. Cave and return the equipment to Verizon before I get charged, and learn to live with things the way they are, as it's my lot in life. I never win; why try?

2) Try again tomorrow. Install the stuff I bought today and put the filter on the main line, and see if it at least eliminates static and DSL travels through the red line. Do some more research to see if my theory can possibly be right, if I'm really missing a green wire. After 35+ years, my dad doesn't even remember what he did so long ago down there. And the four pronged dusty plugs he offered as solutions when he said I shouldn't have bought stuff because he had stuff wasn't helping.

3) Get professional help. Convince my parents to have someone from the phone company run a fourth line in to the house, or at least get an estimate of how disruptive and expensive such a task would be. If it's not disruptive, I'll pay for the work, no matter the cost.

I don't want to go back. I always do. I get beat once, twice, three times enough that I often give up after one defeat the next time I try something. I don't want to go backwards this year. I'm getting tired of it. I feel....suppressed, sometimes, like I'm so much more than what I am but I'm keeping myself dormant. Maybe that's ego talking, maybe epiphany. Right now I'm tired. Tomorrow will yield a solution or three, with some research on my part...

I'm not done yet.