Back In The Thick of It

After a fairly annoying afternoon with the cable company, I spent all weekend stuck at home from the ice. I got to the cable company on Friday afternoon with time to spare. I had digital box and remote in hand. I explained the situation to the desk woman: that I had talked with the tech line the night before, and they told me to come and exchange the box. When I finished, she (in her oh so condescending way) told me, "we don't have the boxes in the office. The techs carry them on the trucks." I politely told her that I didn't have time to take off from work to blow a whole day waiting on the tech. Casey was with me, and she must have sensed our anger. She scheduled an ememergency visit for Saturday morning. Afterwards, I explained to her that I wanted the missing 3 days of digital service removed from my bill: I wasn't paying for a service I wasn't getting!!! So, I went home grumbling, quite loudly, about how useless cable companies are. Casey hooked the cable back into the t.v., so we could at least have some form of television.

I got up Saturday morning to the sound of solid ice plinking on the kitchen air conditioner. It was about 5:45 a.m. and still dark. I opened the back door to find that everything was covered in a solid sheet of ice. No work for me on Saturday. I was grounded. Casey and I had gone to the grocery, just in case, the night before, and he cooked up a fantastic waffle and sausage breakfast. After breakfast, I decided to clean the house. I had nothing else to do. I was half way done, when the cable guy got there. It took him about 10 mintues to hook a new box back up, and we were in business. That's when we discovered that there's crap on t.v. during the day on Saturday. There we were with all of this digital cable and nothing to watch. I finished up with the house around 11:00 a.m. It was nice to be able to lounge the rest of the weekend with the house clean. Casey cooked all weekend. He made homemade soup, a pot roast dinner, and homemade chicken stock to use later. He was a very busy boy.

By Sunday afternoon, we were stir crazy. The streets were passable enough for me to run to the movie rental place and pick up a few movies. We watched a couple of fluff movies. My real find this weekend was the Long Way Round documentary. It's the documentary of Ewan McGregor (Star Wars, Trainspotting, Big Fish, Stay, etc.)and Charley Boorman's motorcycle trip around the world. Here's where they went:

"they rode through France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada before arriving 115 days later at their final destination, New York City, USA."

What they went through was incredible. They went places that people NEVER travel. The had to cross rivers, hire trucks, and use their ingenuity. The DVD is 2 discs long packed full of excitement. The also worked with UNICEF on their journey, and visited many of their sites. This documentary shows you things the Travel Channel doesn't. It also gives a good insight of different cultures around the world. If you are interested in watching, be sure to set aside plenty of time. The whole thing kept me on the edge of my seat. I sure think luck was on their side. I HIGHLY recommend watching. To see some clips, you can go to Amazon. Now, I just have to get my own copy, along with the book. It made a really boring weekend interesting.