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| Black hawthorn tree in the foreground; farmhouse in the distance |
Yesterday
morning (Tuesday, June 11), the TV receiver began making a whirring sound,
trying and failing to acquire signal. I tried to reset it to no avail. We had
to call DISH – not something I enjoy doing.
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| Late-blooming lilac |
Mike
placed the call and reached a tech who was apparently an American woman. The
ability to understand her was great, but it became obvious that patience wasn’t
her long suit, nor is it Mike’s. She asked us to do all kinds of things, which seemed
ridiculous because clearly the receiver was not working. Eventually we concluded
that the hard drive had failed, and she authorized a new unit. When she tried
to sell me an upgrade, Mike took over the conversation again. We could use that
during football season, but we get along all right without it.
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| Standing water in June's field |
So,
now we’re without TV, our connection to the world at large and our evening’s entertainment. And because the hard drive failed, we will likely be
unable to transfer any of our recorded programs. That’s no big deal except for the last half of my favorite rendition of Pride and Prejudice, which
I’ve already seen three times anyway.
We
do have a seldom-used DVD player, already connected, and Mike suggested we investigate
using it. We couldn’t make it work until Mike had the bright idea to reset it. Aha!
We laughed that it would be bedtime before we could watch something.
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| A curious doe pauses a moment in her flight (June's place) |
Oh!
And what would that something be? The only DVDs we have are just a few that
someone handed to Mike years ago: two Harry Potters, For Love of the Game
(a baseball movie starring Kevin Costner), and Inside Man (Denzel
Washington). We considered a Harry Potter, but I figured Mike
would enjoy For Love of the Game.
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| Bess waits in shade of pine tree |
So,
we settled down to watch, he reclining on his side of the sofa, I on mine. Half an hour into the movie, I could stand it no longer. “This
really isn’t a very good movie, is it?” We laughed, and Mike said we should
have chosen Harry Potter. It was too late by then, so we turned
it off and read until bedtime.
Mike
headed into town this morning for an all-day board retreat, and he is under
orders to search for DVD movies. We’ll see if he finds anything.
Meanwhile, Bess and I are off for a walk while it’s cool. Yesterday, as she and Mike ambled around the pond, she came upon a rattler in the path. We have always held her back from them, so she hasn’t learned the danger, but before Mike could get to her, she lunged at the snake and it attempted to
strike her. Mike said she took to the air and jumped back about ten feet, nearly into the pond. He wasn’t sure but what she had been bitten, but we saw no evidence of that. Yes, she has been vaccinated against snake bite, but we still don’t want that to happen. KW
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| Schafer (sp) Butte. The distant view is already hazy. |
3 comments:
You could also pretend that the lights don’t work and have a true retro experience. Reading by candlelight! Or maybe conversation? Or perhaps just looking at the stars and contemplating existence. How did our ancestors do it??
Dan and I have been in reading moods for the past few weeks and it's been so nice so just sit in the living room with the windows open and read and listen to the night evening sounds. I'm kinda with Hallie on this as just last night I was thinking that this was probably how my great-grandparents spent their evenings.
But I also agree with your frustration--especially not getting much help in the way of customer service. When our cable goes out, so does our internet and land line (though not much loss there). Fortunately Spectrum has what so far has been excellent customer service and the outages happen rarely and are usually short lived unless its because of a bad storm. Hope Mike brought home some good movies!
Ha! We hardly need candlelight or kerosene lanterns to read on a summer's evening. It's not quite dark yet between 9:30 and 10:00. And we talk all the time. Do I have to think of more to say? And while I would like to go outside and gaze at the stars, I don't dare because the mosquitoes eat me alive. And I'll tell you what our ancestors did -- they went to bed so that they could get up with the sun -- 4:30? 5:00? 5:30? Truth be told, I could probably do that.
But -- we both have good books.
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