Abbie's Real Life Blog

Today, I hope, is the end of my three-month television nightmare.  This is the worst thing to happen ever in the history of America!

Sorry, I just finished Nathan Rabin’s The Big Rewind, which was pretty great and funny and interesting.  And he uses that quote a lot (ironically, of course).  My mother has expressed interest in it, though it spoke to me in such a generational way (as in, Rabin is clearly a member of what I consider my generation- somewhere between X and Y, old enough to revel in the beginnings of rap music and young enough to consider our laptops an extension of ourselves) that it’s hard to know how anyone else could get anything from it.  Which is ridiculous, of course, because it was a good book.  You’re welcome to borrow it whenever, Mom.

Anyway, I’ve been stuck between our local cable company, Mediacom, and DirecTV for about six weeks now.  I am still really mad at DirecTV for fucking me over entirely, so I tried to play Mediacom against DirecTV (as in, I tried to see if I could get Mediacom to come and set me up with cable during the six-week-long wait for a DirecTV appointment [to install a box that I could buy at Best Buy, albeit for twice the cost]), but I failed.  First, it turns out that the cable line was cut during our foundation work in fall 2007.  And then Mediacom failed to pull through on any of its subsequent promises to install a new line.  ”Oh, they’ll come out and do it in the next week,” promised the techie who showed me the cut line.  ”They’ll just come out and do it and then you call us and we’ll set up the cable!”  Less than a week equals at least two weeks, right?  Or four weeks, because that’s what I’m working on.  That’s after the request was ‘expedited’.  Fucking assholes.

The DirecTV appointment day is finally here, so today I have to commit to more years of DirecTV and say goodbye to my friend, TiVO, because DirecTV has its own, inferior DVR product.  (They do suggest that a TiVO/DirecTV box should come out later this year, but I’m not going to wait for that.  Anyway, fourth quarter 2009 likely means second quarter 2010, so by that time I could very well just go to the TiVO product.)

Too bad I already bought Tracy a TiVO for her apartment, or she could have taken this one.  I guess I will see if my sister can use it.

Even though DirecTV appointments have a window from noon until 4pm (and the last guy then arrived at 6:30pm), I am happy to have the afternoon off to do some gardening.  I bought 10 bags of mulch (all of which fit in the Civic!  woo!) and I’m hoping that the new mulch will help keep the weeds out until the real heat of August kills everything off anyway.

I’m feeling kind of negative today.  Or not negative- just pessimistic.

In other news, I watched Sullivan’s Travels, which was a really great satire from 1945, starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake.  Rabin referenced it in his book, and it was on the AFI list, so I managed to rent and watch it.  I totally recommend it.