There is a disturbance in The Force. What a weird few days it's been. I think it's just not safe to know me.

OK, first some loser parolee threatened our friends at their home the other night -- scared the whole neighborhood --- cops everywhere, they said, and even the chopper. Fortunately, the officers caught the creep --oops I meant to say suspect -- hiding in the neighborhood.

Then, just as I was leaving work on Wednesday, the phones went berserk and the fire alarm went blasting. Turns out the basement got flooded, messing up the phones and the Internet, and generally wreaked havoc on the newspaper. Then the fire alarm wouldn't stop, so people had to work with earplugs. Reporters couldn't use their land lines and had to rely on cell phones, no voice mail.

Folks from all over the building worked until the wee hours getting things straightened out. They even dried things out with hair dryers. The next day at the morning editorial board meeting, there was actually talk about "trunk lines" and "modem lines" and "chatterbox." We are frighteningly dependent on very complex technologies that we just take for granted every day. We think nothing of it until they go haywire. Amazingly, the paper was on my porch when I got up at the crack of dawn. That's why they call it the daily miracle.

My husband came in to work at the office over the weekend and our e-mail was down, the Internet was down, PeopleSoft down. And again this morning the Internet is up and down. Geez, don't you hate days like this?