Bad Appliance and Electronics Karma?

Two and a half months ago I went on an extended vacation.  Before I left, I knew I was leaving behind a couple of problems.  My water heater was full of lime which was causing my dishes to come out of the dishwasher heavily coated with white residue, and my landlord was going to have to work on it while I was gone.  Also, few days before I left, my microwave lost control and wouldn’t shut off unless I unplugged it.  Finally, in exhaustion, it gave up and died. 

Knowing my landlord would come over and clean out the water heater and thinking that I would replace the microwave when I returned, I innocently and happily left for my vacation.  Tra la, tra la.

I had forgotten that the Universe can sometimes have a mysterious, (shall I say warped?) sense of humor.

I returned to find that the water heater had to be completely replaced.  At the same time, my dishwasher had been found to have gone bad and a new one was installed.  Also, my refrigerator had died, taking with it the food I had left in the freezer, so it was replaced as well. 

Oh well, I thought.  The new fridge and dishwasher are both awfully nice, although at a cost to my landlord, who is also a long time friend.  Or used to be.  So, me and my travelling companion took hot showers, shopped for groceries to fill the new fridge, threw some dirty dishes in the new dishwasher and settled back to watch TV.

There was a problem.  I couldn’t pull in any channels on my TV.  I don’t have cable and have to rely on an HDTV converter.  Have I mentioned how much I detest the change from analogue to HD?  Well, that’s a whole other conversation, and I won’t go there right now.  Suffice it to say, for some reason, while I was gone, HD signals stopped getting through to my TV. 

The next day we went to Walmart and bought an HD antenna and a microwave.  The day after that, we took them both back.  Still no signal for the TV, and the door on the microwave wouldn’t stay shut, no matter how hard I slammed it.  We bought another brand of microwave while there and the following day took it back, too, because the door on it wouldn’t stay shut either.  I had applied my slamming technique even harder with that one.

We had determined that the HD converter had bitten the dust, too, while I was gone, so we went to Target and got a new converter and, finally, a microwave with a door that stays shut on its own, although I had now refined my microwave door slamming skill. 

A couple of days later, the upstairs toilet broke.  Two or three more days passed and the coffee maker got an attitude and refused to make coffee ever again. 

I’ve cast about in my mind for causes for the sudden rebellion of all these items and have decided it must have something to do with the Greenhouse effect.  My sister doesn’t agree.  She called me yesterday and told me that I couldn’t go to her place anymore until I had an exorcism or something.  She said her toaster and her TV both died the day before.

“But I wasn’t there!” I cried, and she responded that I must have left some of my aura or something behind the last time I was there.

That’s ridiculous!  Isn’t it?