Columbus Day TiVo Wedding

In a fit of pique last week caused by a particularly dickish asshole at Adelphia, I signed up for DirecTV. I was Christmas-level excited about this. I could not wait for my dish and my TiVo to arrive so I could sit on my ass and bu-doop my way through the jolly, jolly fun of primetime TV. It would be like TiVo and I were married, and my TiVo husband would thoughtfully tape all of my favorite shows, and suggest stuff I might like even more. I even considered taking a half-day off last week so the installers could come sooner than Monday, which would have been an act of idiocy right up there with surfing the internet for porn at work. With a monitor that faces out. But I showed admirable professionalism and self-restraint when I scheduled the installation for yesterday, when I knew I’d be off work for the day.

This meant that I had almost an entire week to wait for the installation, which gave me loads and loads of time to stress out about all the things that could go wrong. Maybe verbal permission from my landlord wouldn’t be enough, even though I had a form from DTV that said it was sufficient. Maybe the homeowner’s association would forbid the dish installation. Maybe the oak tree really was blocking the southern sky completely. Maybe the DTV installers couldn’t turn off the cable and wouldn’t be able to connect. Maybe they’d charge me extra to go on the roof and I wouldn’t be able to afford it. Repeat. Repeat. Lose sleep. Begin stressing about other similarly ridiculous things, like whether the new adapter for the laptop would cause it to catch fire while I was sleeping. Yeah, I don’t know.

Somehow, I made it through the last several days without dying of worry, and the morning of my Columbus Day TiVo Wedding finally arrived, albeit dreary and rainy. I’d scheduled installation for between 1 and 5 p.m. and had stayed at family headquarters on Sunday night so I could watch the NU game on their TiVo and visit my kittens and, oh yeah, spend some time with the fam as well. So of course, when I woke up yesterday and checked my home voice mail, the technician had left a message asking if he could come earlier than 1. I called him back and told him I was an hour away but would rush home, and he could stop by any time after about 12:30 and I’d be there.

So of course he showed up at 4:30.

And when he arrived, he told me pretty much immediately that the oak tree did indeed block the main satellites, and that the homeowner’s association prohibited dish installation on the front slope of the roof, which would be the only place he’d have a chance of getting a clear signal, and even that wasn’t guaranteed, but it didn’t matter anyway, because he couldn’t go on the roof in the rain.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR WASTING MY ENTIRE AFTERNOON.

At least I got to watch The People’s Court. Did you know it’s actually on twice on weekdays? That’s awesome.

Anyway. The technician left, and within five minutes I was crying over being left at the altar by TiVo. Seriously, I cried. About TiVo. Would it make a difference if I told you I was menstrual and was feeling barfy and could barely stand up due to cramping and that the crying was likely a result of my whacked-out hormones more than anything else? No? Okay then.

I immediately went to Kroger and bought all kinds of insane Menstrual Girl comfort food, like cheese and bread for grilled cheese sandwiches, and tomato soup, and clam chowder, and Spaghettios, and apple cider, and hot cocoa, and about 400 kinds of chocolate, and two big-ass bottles of Aleve. I had grilled cheese and tomato soup and chocolate milk for dinner, and at least it warmed me up.

So my plan to singlehandedly make Adelphia go out of business by getting DirecTV didn’t exactly pan out. I did, however, learn that Comcast is acquiring Adelphia in our area in the next nine months or so – HA, FUCKERS. I don’t know jack about Comcast’s service reputation, but I doubt it could be worse than Adelphia’s, and I do know that TiVo and Comcast are planning a deal in the wake of DTV’s decision to market its own DVR and separate itself from the TiVo brand. And the TiVo brand is very important to me. But I can’t wait nine months to have a TiVo baby. So now I’m making plans to get a stand-alone TiVo box for the downstairs TV. They have a good rebate deal going on until the end of November or so, and I might even be able to get a better deal on eBay. My mom thinks eBay’s a front for stolen goods, though, and that nothing you buy there could possibly be legitimately acquired. She’s made me kind of paranoid and I don’t trust the lowest prices anymore. Maybe I’ll go legit and buy my TiVo boyfriend at Target when I get paid.

And then we’ll live in harmony.