My "Feel Good" Moment For the Week

I love a good storm!! Seriously, I have never been afraid of thunder, lightning, wind or hail - having owned a roofing company for many years, I know that a good storm brings us a lot of business and everything can be fixed. (Unless, of course, you are dead). I am the kind of person who would make a good storm chaser, the louder the thunder and the bigger the cracks of lightning, the better I like the storm! Even four years ago, when we had hail the size of golf balls and all of my koi were floating dead in the pond, I thought that storm was the best I had ever seen! Two nights ago, we had a killer storm in early morning and I woke up and went outside on the veranda to watch the display. I have to say, it topped all! This one had a down side, however.
The storm only lasted about a half and hour and it was hardly worth going back to bed, so I got dressed, went over to the workshop and started some last minute printing of the title bars for the October calendar club page (which I had forgotten to do after handing in my layout). Everything was working just fine until I went to the Internet to check my emails. I thought that over a nice cup of coffee, before everyone arrived to paint and work, that I would get caught up. No Internet. Computer seemed to be working fine, but I couldn't get on. I called the host and asked if someone could stop by RIGHT AWAY!! You can not be without an Internet connection on shipping week! The dude walked me through all of the normal system checks that he could do over the phone, and he determined that the receiver was not sending out a signal. So today they sent someone by in person to check it out. I was a little frantic by then. Isn't it weird that a day or two without Internet can cause such a surge of anxiety??
Turns out, the receiver was fried by the lightning and the problems only began there. My computer was damaged too - the part that accepts the signal. The guy that came out to fix it is Japanese and was brought right from Japan (didn't speak a word of English when he got here) to do this job with the high speed Internet guys. Taku and I are no strangers. I seem to have a problem keeping my receiver in one location for more than a couple months. He has moved it three times during this renovation alone!! He does even act surprised when I phone to have him come and move it out of the way of some type of construction crew. He is a friendly little fellow, but you have to concentrate hard to understand what he is trying to tell you. (It doesn't help that I am almost computer illiterate, maybe I just don't understand the terms and I am blaming his accent in error). Anyway, after spending most of the afternoon patching up my system so that we could continue shipping, I asked him what I owed him.
Imagine my surprise when he told me that he would like to have a cup of coffee with me - with sugar, please! He went on to tell me that no one "talks" to him. He can be on a job site for hours and hours hooking up a high speed system and no one takes the time to have a conversation with him. He was happy to come out and rehang my receiver every week or so, because I talked to him. He wouldn't take anything for pay, except the cup of coffee, so we sat there and chatted for almost an hour. Turns out that in the four years he has been here, I am only the second person to have a receiver damaged by lightning. And the only person who took the time to stop and talk.
I guess the storm blowing up my receiver was actually a good thing, because after he left, I had this amazing feeling, like I had gotten to know someone - totally by accident. It reminded me of the time that I gave a drywall crew, working on our garage, some cold beer and they left me a drawing and a thank you note on the drywall. It was so cute that I didn't want to paint over it! It was my smiley face for the day!
Thanks Taku! You made my week!!!