I don't know another way of saying it. This hasn't been a good week. In fact, it's been a very bad, not good week. There are times in life when you feel like you just can't win and there are other times you look back on those times as the "good ol' days".

Sunday night my wife and I were returning home from a Valentine outing in my college clown car when she asked me to roll her window down for a moment. As I did, it made a grinding sound and a clip, down in the bowels of the door must have broken because the window fell out of the frame. We proceeded to drive the rest of the way home with the window mostly down - with it 20 degrees F outside. Strike one.

Wednesday morning, I was driving the wife's truck (since mine's not currently serviceable - you know, with the window and all) and suddenly the keyless entry stopped working. It's not a big deal to me because my first car was a 1965 Dodge Dart that had hand crank windows, no A/C and only an AM radio. But to Steph, it's kind of a big deal so I added that to my list of things to fix [read as: get fixed by the local shop at some expense]. Strike two.

This morning, the wife calls me at work to tell me water is pouring into our bedroom through the ceiling. In Ohio we've had about 18 straight months (or so it seems) of snow, ice and dinosaurs roaming the earth. The ice in the gutter, last time I looked was about 5 inches above the roof line, causing an ice dam which was backing water up under the shingles and into the house. Strike three.

So, I did what any manly man would do - I had her call our insurance agent to find the name of a good contractor who was not afraid of climbing onto a steep, ice-covered roof, which she did and he did. How much that will cost - only Ben Bernanke knows but when we got home tonight, there was a channel cut in the ice to allow the water to drain where it naturally should - into my air conditioner.

I am trying not to take it personally. "It's just entropy", I say. Merriam-Webster defines entropy in part as " a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder." A trend to disorder - that about sums it up. Broken windows and door locks - water soaked carpet in the bedroom. It's entropy alright.

Then it occurred to me that much of what AoM stands for is resisting entropy. Like Sisyphus of old, we press against this boulder we call life every day until we will it to the summit, only to find it back at the bottom each morning. Some of us have skills and a toolbox; others just good contractors. Nevertheless the fight goes on. Man vs. life - Sisyphus vs. Entropy.

Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow will be better. After all, they're not calling for anymore snow until Monday. That gives me a full 4 days for the sump pump to stop working.