Television Ailments

OK, I married a TV addict. This is no surprise. I knew of his condition for years prior to marriage. As a matter of fact, I'm more surprised that he didn't install cable into the house for a couple of years after we moved in. (Proof that at some point, he was money conscious.) Cable TV (specifically Comcast) has been the source of many, many unhappy days in our house over the last few months -- longer than that, but not worth going into...

A few months ago, together, we decided enough was enough. We began looking into satellite TV. We have satellite radio in his truck, and while we won't continue it, it works. The radio programming just doesn't meet our preferences. The quality is quite amazing. On our road trips, we rarely loose signal, and if we do, it's just for a blink under a bridge or through a tunnel. This TV satellite thing, wow, hold on to your pocket books because it is incredibly surprising. First of all, I think it would be easier to re-enroll in college than to learn about the options between the providers.


The details you learn when comparing providers is overwhelming. Of course, they all tell you about how much you will save over cable. Which, is really true, we're saving a ton over cable, but only for the introductory period. Of course, to sign up with a provider, we had to commit to be with them for 24 months. I know people who don't stay married for 24 months, but we just agreed to stay with a satellite provider for that long!

Direct offered more channels -- and more "on-demand" things. HE liked the on-demand, he liked the more channels, I was hoping for a DVR. With Direct, we would need a receiver for each TV that would be used. That's 3 receivers in our house. There's a monthly fee for each receiver in addition to the bucks that go out the door in the beginning just to lease the receiver. I wanted a DVR. I felt as if we needed a DVR. In reality, I'm sure we don't even need all the channels, but if he can have lots of channels, shouldn't I be able to record something on TV??? We went with Dish...few channels, yes. Cheaper price, no upfront fees to lease the HD DVR (or so we thought), DVR included (at least in the beginning), and most importantly, we know two families who use Dish.

What I've learned...
--Even with Dish, you will need multiple receivers if you wish to have your HD TV receiving an HD signal.
--Even with Dish, you will have your bill double after 6 months.
--Even with Dish, I will be able to record shows, but must watch them on that TV or the TV connected to that box. (This made me very sad.)
-- Dish has on-demand, but with way fewer things to watch on-demand.
-- The Dish receiver is only good for 2 TV's. If you have 3, you'll need more than one box inside.

Moral of the story, momma's don't let your kids grow up to be TV addicts. It's incredibly expensive and rather confusing. (This has been a real waste of my limited brain function over the last few weeks.)

Black Friday

Last year, at some awful hour, my dad and I embarked on our first (and maybe last) Black Friday outing. It was a blast, and his patience was unbelievable! This year, I did not have the energy to leave my house in attempt to experience the Black Friday madness. I hear the early sales should have been great, but this way, a few bucks stayed in my pocket!

Of course, I did have the energy to get the laundry done and sit here at my computer. I thought what a perfect way to get into the holiday spirit and the trend of on-line shopping! It was a great idea, right? I was not on-line at 4 AM trying to get those big bargains. After lunch, I attempted my first shopping. The first three websites I attempted each stalled out, I gave up. I wouldn't say that I have an abundance of either patience or perseverance, so I will have to shop another way, another day!

Hope your Black Friday experience was all you were hoping for -- even if that meant just getting to sleep in this morning!

Things Rita Will Eat

This is nothing to be proud of, and she probably shouldn't eat them...but can you believe a dog will eat these things??

Pasta, any kind
White rice
Grapefruit
Pickles
Apples
Bananas
Cotton Candy
Grapes (I quit letting her eat these.)
Alvocado (I don't think these are good for her either.)
Most nuts
Oatmeal
Most Cereal - granola
Granola bars


This little beagle is, well, not so little after eating so well! She's something special!

Let there be practice cake...

This is the practice cake for the birthday party this weekend. Dylan turns 5 on Saturday. He'd been asking for a Lightning McQueen cake for over a month. I really did not think I could pull it off. I had talked him into a race track with Lightning and some of the other race cars. Believe me, the little runt let me know which cars did not belong on the race track. (In other words, no Doc on the race track!)

Anyway, very long story short, I went out and found a cake pan last night. I avoided work today and produced the cake. It took me over 2 hours to decorate it; yes, I'm very slow. Now, I'm off to see if it "meets approval" before I make one for the party.

Who knew I could do this?

Purpose

I've been struggling as to what to put on my blog. You know, it's public, and anyone could stumble upon this, so I do have to have some caution in what I put out there. My life is really very simple. Pretty much, it's work, feed the dogs, cook, clean, do housework/yardwork, work, groceries (ie buy dog food - we go through a LOT with 4 dogs), work, attend family functions, etc. If I'm lucky, we get an invitation to hang out with friends, or people that I do not feel obligated to see. (I love my family, I'm glad to hang out with them, why do we live so far apart???) So what do I write about in my blog??? It just doesn't seem like my boring existance is worth posting about.

Now, I do look at my blog -- is that weird? It's not like I'm here to read what I wrote...but, once I added the music feature, if I don't like what's on the radio, I listen to a couple of songs. (We've got a Sirius account. I'm not sure I think satellite radio is worth the $.) The first thing that pops up is a picture of the great pups and those few opening lines...I'm the ordinary 30-something. Married, childless, wondering what I have to offer life. Blogging because it seems like the thing to do; a way to stay connected with people I miss; and a way to express myself....which has been encouraging me to do a little more soul searching. I keep telling myself there's more to life than what I'm doing, now how do find that????

Today, I did a search on "how to get to know myself better". First of all, I was really disappointed with the search results. It took a little clicking to find something, anything with some substance.

Somehow, I managed to find a website that offered a "quiz". Yes, this seemed very childish, or teen-ish, but this is what my "quiz" told me...

Your view on yourself: You are down-to-earth and people like you because you are so straightforward. You are an efficient problem solver because you will listen to both sides of an argument before making a decision that usually appeals to both parties. A little generic, but I guess it applies to me.

The type of girlfriend/boyfriend you are looking for: You are a true romantic. When you are in love, you will do anything and everything to keep your love true. This brings an entire blog of another day, that I'm just not sure this is the place to even think on the topic, besides, I'm already married...

Your readiness to commit to a relationship: You are ready to commit as soon as you meet the right person. And you believe you will pretty much know as soon as you might that person. Again, too late...but nice try...oh, and it took 14 years to get married.

The seriousness of your love: Your have very sensible tactics when approaching the opposite sex. In many ways people find your straightforwardness attractive, so you will find yourself with plenty of dates. WHATEVER

Your views on education: Education is less important than the real world out there, away from the classroom. Deep inside you want to start working, earning money and living on your own. This is no longer a choice for me. However, I do appreciate real world education goes a long, long way.

The right job for you: You have plenty of dream jobs but have little chance of doing any of them if you don't focus on something in particular. You need to choose something and go for it to be happy and achieve success. BINGO! This could have been the best few words in this hoakie "quiz".

How do you view success: You are afraid of failure and scared to have a go at the career you would like to have in case you don't succeed. Don't give up when you haven't yet even started! Be courageous. BINGO, again! For me, this goes way beyond career -- let's talke LIFE.

What are you most afraid of: You are concerned about your image and the way others see you. This means that you try very hard to be accepted by other people. It's time for you to believe in who you are, not what you wear. This was a total yes and no. I am beginning the phase of my life to let go of acceptance by other people. What does it matter? I probably don't accept something they do in their life.


Who is your true self: You are mature, reasonable, honest and give good advice. People ask for your comments on all sorts of different issues. Sometimes you might find yourself in a dilemma when trapped with a problem, which your heart rather than your head needs to solve. This has happened a lot recently. My head and my heart have been struggling a lot lately. Those old "PROs vs CONs" list have been used for so many things recently!

Weird neighbors?

Does any one have that crazy neighbor next door? I think I have one. I am CERTAIN to others, I am the crazy neighbor next door.

Our neighbors hated when we put up the fence. Since then, many of my friends and family have immediately commented -- "Fences make good neighbors" or something like that. We have FOUR dogs -- who would want to live next to us without a fence? I don't have little dogs, ie, I do not have little dog poop. Also note, the fence seemed to put a stop to the continually adding of hounds at this house.

The house next door has been prepared for demo. I'll post pictures on another random rambling. The sewer clean outs were removed. While I'm not sure why they do it, apparently it is a rule that they decided to follow. I snooped over the holiday weekend, and it seems that they removed some flooring from at least one room. (I only peeked in one window, so maybe they removed more.)

Apparently there was an older lady around the corner. She was recently put in a nursing home. I believe she had a thrifty-ness, or just a weird obsession with saving things. As they have been cleaning up her property, they have removed numerous trash bags full of empty 1/2 gallon containers of ice cream. I don't know if she rinsed them and kept them in the garage, or if she just kept them. They are paper containers, so I'm not sure what she was saving them for, but there were many, many, many years worth of ice cream. I don't think even we eat that much ice cream. --- and we (I) LOVE ice cream.

Since I don't know many other neighbors, there's not much else I can add. Perhaps one day I will list more of my weird neighborly habits!

Chowhound???

I know the internet has been around for years now. I hear that it may even run out of space or something crazy like that. Of course, everyone says you can find anything out on the internet, and I believe that, too. I love the internet; we have a SPECTACULAR relationship.

The web provides me a place to confront my secret questions, things I would be way too embarrassed to ask another human! Additionally, it's providing me this great blog space so I can remember what has happened in my life. (Of course, lately, I have had a hard time knowing what to blog about because everything seems too personal to put out on the web...what would people think of me if they knew ____....I digress...)

Today, I was not asking it a personal question, but a very relevant one -- where to have dinner!? Last night we discussed what we'd like for dinner tonight --eating out is not something we do often, so we try to put a little planning in it! My hubby wanted a good, southern Chicken Fried Steak. He swears he had a really good one somewhere, but can't remember where. I was kind enough to go through our receipts for the year, and I cannot find where he's had one out, go figure. But when I did a quick web search, I came across a web site --- www.chowhound.com I was surprised! I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. But it's such a nice little list of people's honest opinions! Since I have such a love of food, this could be a MEGA-time waster...so excuse me, while I'm off to read about Farmers Markets in the area!