It was another strange day today. To begin the day, the cable TV was still not up. So, Rick called and they admitted we must have a problem since everybody else seems to be fine. Okay, we’ll send someone out but it could be anywhere from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Great, thanks a lot. Just what I wanted to do while my Mom is here visiting, is spend the day waiting for them to come. We went to the grocery store early [and the wine store; I’m certain we’re going to need some kind of sustenance here]. Rick had to drive into New York City this morning for a meeting with a potential client and we knew he would be pretty late in getting home. The cable guy arrived around noon and said there was nothing he could do and that he needed the next level of technician to come out. He had seen another tech down our street working and asked him what he was there for. When they discovered they were there for the same reasons, they concluded the problem was widespread. 24+ hours later and still no TV.  I guess we should be thankful that we still have internet service and phone since it’s all through the same cable.

Not having TV is a bit like having a power outage. You KNOW you don’t have any power, yet you go over and flip on the light switch. Nothing happens. Same thing with TV. I don’t watch it much, but somehow when it’s not available you miss it all the more. You can’t watch the news. You don’t know the weather forecast. You can’t watch your favorite programs, and worst of all, your TIVO won’t record them! Hey, what’s up with that?  I must admit, if this kind of outage happens again we will go back to DIRECT TV. We brought our dish with us, so no real biggie there. It’s just more cost effective to have the digital cable, phone and internet all rolled into one.

Anyhoo, no TV. My Mom can’t watch her Soaps. We read. I knitted. We weeded the flower beds. We decided to watch a movie. Great. We decided to watch a DVD. I can’t find the remote for the TV in the kitchen area, which has a VCR and DVD bulit in. We put in the DVD, start watching the movie and all is good. The doorbell rings, the dogs go crazy and I need to put the DVD on hold. Only without the remote I have to use the few buttons on the TV; SKIP [reverse], PLAY, STOP, SKIP [forward].  I can’t pause it, I can only push STOP. Will it start back up in the same place?  You all know how frustrating DVDs can be. The door turns out to be the kid down the road asking for a school donation. Crap, all that commotion for that?? I say no to the donation and push the PLAY button. It works, but I decide to feed the dogs while we are at a stopping point. When we start it back up the darn DVD starts at the beginning instead of where we left off. Again, without the remote I can only use SKIP, which is not really fast-forwarding. Let’s just say things didn’t go smoothly and after much back-and-forthing [the end of the movie, the beginning again, etc] we finally get to the point where we left off. At this point it’s frustrating and my Mom, who doesn’t own a DVD player, doesn’t understand why I’m having so much trouble.

The movie was good [The Butcher’s Wife] and we are expecting Rick to call and say he’s back from his trip into the Big Apple and on his way home. The phone rings, it’s Rick. It’s about 5:15 and he’s still at the studio in NYC. Okay, dinner without him. On a Friday evening when it’s raining it’s going to take him forever to get out of there. We decide to watch another movie while dinner is in progress. All goes well until the DVD starts to stutter and the picture is breaking up into pixels for several frames. Then the picture freezes altogether. We wait and watch. Well, I say to Mom, I’ll try to do something. I push SKIP; nothing. I push PLAY and it goes back to the beginning of the movie. Mom and I just look at each other and start to laugh. We can’t help it, this is ridiculous. SKIP really does mean SKIP and we keep SKIPPING over the part we need to be watching. We laugh some more and pretty soon we can’t stop. I swear, I only had one glass of wine so far…well, maybe one and a half. My Mom has tears rolling down her face she’s laughing so hard. It may sound stupid to you. Maybe you had to be there.

Rick finally arrives home at 8:15. It’s raining. The TV is still not working and they are supposed to come tomorrow between 2:00 and 4:00. More waiting. My poor Mom. Let’s hope the rest of her visit goes more smoothly. Tomorrow we’re going to eat lunch out at the TEXAS WIENER place and see how that is. Then spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. And so, the end of another strange day.