No Such Thing as Free HBO

Holding an official looking clip board, the cable company representative told me through the screen door that they had been reviewing my account and discovered that for what I was currently paying, I could have many additional premium channels including all of those from HBO.

Not only that, I could have a Comcast land line phone with unlimited long distance to all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

I don't think I have ever called Puerto Rico.

In spite of the fact that my cell phone is adequate and I already have hundreds more channels than I could ever possibly watch, I invited him to come in and sit down so we could discuss it further.

As Charles, my 18 month old, jumped up on his lap and sniffed the clip board, we discussed my cable needs. I apologized for the cat. He said that he'd gotten the same treatment from the animals next door and didn't mind.

So evidently, this wasn't just a special visit because Comcast was interested in me. In fact, my neighbor, Terese, subscribed to the same new package that I did.

I realized much later that I should have asked, "How can I keep the same service I have now and pay less?" Oh these sales guys are slick.

As the Comcast guy made an appointment for the technician to come and install the replacement modem for my new land line phone, I thought that I might as well ask about a second DVR for the bedroom.

I rarely view TV shows "live." With the digital video recorder I can watch at my convenience and fast forward through commercials. The only problem is I have to do it in the living room. Since I've been falling asleep on the sofa a lot, it has occurred to me that it would be nice to watch The Daily Show in bed.

So for between eight and nine dollars per month, I now have a DVR in my bedroom - with HBO and Starz.

Meanwhile, I realized that if I was going to have a land line, I should probably get a telephone. Terese told me about a sale at Sears, so for $20 I bought one with a speakerphone, caller ID, and some other features I'll probably never use.

On Sunday, my new DVR, phone, and modem were piled up on the dresser with my wireless router and bedroom TV ready to use. Charles enjoyed playing with the new wires, and I looked forward to an evening in bed with The Simpsons and a few reruns of Sordid Lives.

It wasn't the relaxing utopia I was expecting. In fact, my 20 year old mattress was kind of lumpy. As a matter of fact, I suffer from considerable insomnia, and I often wake up without feeling in one of my arms. Spending more time watching TV in bed would only make it worse.

So my new $800 memory foam mattress (on sale!), arrives this Saturday. I can hardly wait to snuggle up with the cats and enjoy some recorded natural disaster documentaries from the National Geographic Channel - on my new, comfy mattress.

I guess you can't have free HBO without paying a price.

Organizer Has Trouble Not Planning Summer Vacation

Among my strengths are organization and planning. From managing large project teams at work to hosting a huge holiday meal for 25 people in my little condo, I meet many challenges by writing it down first, anticipating every possible scenario, and following a plan.

Most summers when I have time off, I stay at home. I figure since many people come to Colorado for their vacations, why would I want to leave? I plan to go to the mountains, enjoy local cultural attractions, and catch up on home projects. Usually, however, I end up sleeping the days away, or watching movie after movie after movie without doing any of those other things. A day or two before going back to work, I realize I haven’t done one thing I thought I would do. Rest is all well and good, and I save money by staying at home, but I think this year I should do something more adventurous – something that really is a vacation from my routine.

Regular readers know that my big vacation every year is a winter trip to San Diego. For over a decade, I’ve escaped the cold, barren landscape of Colorado February for California’s spring-like weather and sunny beaches.

This year, Colorado was so cold and brown, and California was so green and warm, I almost didn’t come home.

The question is, what should I do this summer?

I’ve always had a fantasy about just getting in the car and driving. No destination. Just see where the road takes me.

But naturally, I’ve never actually done this. What if I get someplace and can’t find a hotel room? Reservations must be made ahead of time, just to be safe. What if I get to the middle of nowhere and run out of gas? When you’ve traveled in Wyoming as much as I have, you know that’s not such an unlikely possibility.

When I was a kid, my family got into the RV and headed for the Grand Canyon. It was a long, hot drive. My mom required us to drink one pop an hour (the only time she ever did that) so we wouldn’t dehydrate. My dad was sure we’d be able to find a campground near the national park without any problem.

He was wrong. To stay anywhere near the Grand Canyon in the middle of the summer, you have to make reservations months ahead. After driving for days on end, we parked at an overlook, peered into the canyon for a few minutes, and turned around to go home.

You really can’t appreciate the grandeur of such a place in less than a half hour.

The lesson: plan ahead.

When I was young, I loved to travel spontaneously. I once wandered around England in a rented car with no idea about where I was going. But somewhere along the line, I lost my desire to explore. The last time I was adventurous out on the road was probably in 2003 when my friend Brian talked me into leaving the interstate to visit Ole’s Big Game Lounge in Paxton, Nebraska.

So this year, on June 12, I’m going to get into the car and start driving. I will not go to California. Nor will I go to Wyoming. There are a few other places I probably won’t go, like Texas, but other than that, who knows where I might end up?

The test until then is to avoid planning. Stay tuned to BillsWeek for updates on this challenging situation.

Old Technology in Fiction Can be Distracting

While mopping through ketchup during my lunch break, I’ll often have one of Sue Grafton's alphabet mystery series in front of me. Detective Kinsey Malone has a gun but hates to use it. She drives an old VW Beatle. She likes men but has trouble loving them. She's also not above breaking and entering if it will help the case.

And as far as I know (I'm only up to Q), she's stuck in the 1980s.

Picture it: a rainy night. The car won't start. The shadows close in. The angry suspect doesn't want Kinsey on his tail. As the danger increases, Kinsey makes a mad dash for the phone booth across the street. As the bad guy's footsteps come nearer, she closes the folding glass door behind her, puts down the gun, and rifles through her bag looking for change so she can use the pay phone.

I don't like picturing Kinsey in the 80s. I want to picture her now. It really annoys me when she types her final report on a manual typewriter.

Kinsey should have a cell phone and a laptop. But Grafton has made a conscious decision to set these novels in the 80s so the storylines flow together better. I suppose it could be distracting if at the end of one book it is 1986 and at the beginning of the next, it's two weeks later and 2007 (I’m reading another book about relativity and space time, but that’s not the subject here).

I suppose it's just my quirk to deal with, but I'm really distracted by old technology in books, movies, and TV.

In the movie Broadcast News, the workaholic network newspeople run through the hallways carrying huge video cassettes. If Holly Hunter is such hot stuff, why doesn't she just download the video digitally? I know, I know, the movie was made in 1987 when high tech meant having video in cassettes instead of on those giant reel-to-reels.

I think part of the problem is that technology changes so quickly. Our gadgets come and go out of date before our popular fiction does. Case in point, video cassettes or no, William Hurt is hot in this movie.

Quick poll: who still uses a fax machine? I don't think Kinsey even has that option. She is always mailing something (you know, with an envelope and stamp) and waiting several days for a response.

If the book or movie is old enough, it’s less distracting and more amusing. For example, in the 1957 film, Desk Set, with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, a computer occupying several rooms threatens to take over the company. When the giant machine malfunctions, it spits thousands of paper cards all over the place. The lesson, of course, is that computers can't replace people.

At least in the 1950s they couldn't. Now I'm not so sure.

Before my very eyes, technology is changing. When just, like, five years ago, I heard a prediction that the internet and television would morph together, I thought, "What do I give up? My computer or my TV? Well, it won't happen for a while yet."

But it's happening. I just installed a little contraption which picks up the signal from my wireless router (or at least it's supposed to - there are some kinks to work out) and plays content from the internet through the TV/surround sound/home entertainment system.

It doesn't stop there. It's now common to carry your phone, web browser, global positioning system, office assistant application, games, TV, and tons more stuff on one gadget - that can fit in your pocket.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we are living in the future. Think about it. The new stuff we have is more advanced than what we were expecting just a short time ago.

I want to call Kinsey Malone and tell her that it won't be long before she can type her reports and keep her billing records, and instantly gather and send information from all over the world, on one little machine that she keeps in the back seat of her car.

Spence and Kate would never believe it.

Global Warming? We Should Be So Lucky (or, Relaxing With Television)

In 1859, a coronal mass ejection caused telegraph lines to burst into flame. Since that was the extent of high tech communication in those days, nothing else really happened when the sun rained unruly protons and electrons on the planet. Protected by Earth’s magnetic field, most people didn’t notice anything but an unusually strong aurora borealis.

Cosmologically speaking, these solar storms are not unusual. In fact, another CME is predicted. This time, more than telegraphs will be affected. Our power-based infrastructure, from electricity to communications, is dependent on satellites and power grids which could black out when the sun "ejects" again. Scientists warn that the world could be catastrophically disabled for months.

No lights. No television. No refrigerators or cell phones. I picture myself cowering in a closet as gun-toting, survivalist extremists plunder the city.

How do I know about this?

I spend many an evening relaxing to documentaries on the Discovery, History, and National Geographic channels.

Occasionally opting for educational programming over brainless entertainment, I sit riveted to the screen as scientists describe in detail how the world could come to an end. Volcanoes, asteroids, viral pandemics killing tens of millions: all are inevitable and have the potential to, if not end life, change it forever.

Usually, about 40 minutes into each program, the somber narrator says, "It's not a matter of if this will happen. It's a matter of when."

I don't need distortion from FOX News to make me worry. I don't need Nostradamus or predictions about "2012" to cause anxiety about the future. For that, I rely on actual science, graphically broadcast through cable TV.

Sometimes I think we know more than we ought to. In the time before mass communication, our worries were limited to more local problems. News was what you learned of your neighbor while visiting the general store. Of course our ancestors lived with anxiety too. Starvation, for example, was just one crop failure away for many of them.

But do I really need to know that the super volcano at Yellowstone blows up every few hundred thousand years, plunging the world into darkness and leading to the extinction of species? It could happen tomorrow or in 50,000 years. But it will happen. There is not a thing we can do about it.

Geologically speaking, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was not that unusual. It's only a matter of time before another random object from Space crosses our orbit with the same effect as thousands of nuclear bombs.

Smaller disasters aren’t much better to contemplate.

The Cascadian Slip Fault, just off the coast of Oregon and Washington, gives way every few centuries. The last time it happened was in 1700 according to carbon dating at the site and also records of a related tsunami in Japan. The next time, a 9.0 earthquake and accompanying ocean waves will wreak havoc in the great northwest.

And we all know that one of these days, California will be leveled by "the big one" – a long predicted earthquake the length of the San Andreas Fault.

Tragic as they are, hurricanes are small fry. That volcano in Iceland causing some inconvenience in Europe is a pipsqueak. Floods? Blizzards? Climate change? We should be so lucky.

Hmm. I wonder what will happen on Idol this week.

Census Tests Good Citizenship

Everyone should take responsibility for being a good citizen. Part of living in a free society (ok, we can discuss the accuracy of that description later) is that everyone must do their part to keep things working. And for Americans, in many cases, we do it voluntarily. I love those signs along the highway, for example, that announce which civic and business organizations are keeping that stretch clean: The Kiwanis, First United Methodist Women, Al’s Plumbing and Heating, The American Nazi Party … Ok, maybe not all of the groups are nice ones, but they are doing an important service by picking up the trash along the road.

It concerns me that with Social Studies increasingly cut out of the curriculum, our children learn less and less about citizenship in school. Even the word itself seems old-fashioned. The most visible example of Americans “participating in our democracy” are those annoying “Tea Party” people who not only make demands purely in their own self interest, but don’t seem to understand even the basics of how our government works.

I take pride in my good citizenship. I recycle (most of the time). I vote in every election. I obey traffic laws (well maybe not always speed limits, but I have a very full schedule… ). My cats are spayed and neutered. And I drive a hybrid car which is a never ending source of self-righteousness.

Unlike many complainers in the United States, I have no problem with the census. It is, for one thing, constitutionally mandated. The data is helpful to government and businesses in countless ways. So if I can, I would like to help.

Except for one thing - I think I threw away my census form.

See, it’s because of junk mail. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even go to the mailbox unless I’m expecting a Netflix DVD. It’s a pain to stand over the trash can and carefully sort out the bills and rare personal correspondence from the newsprint, pizza coupons, and catalogs of companies I haven’t ordered from in years (this is a time when I should recycle …). It’s not hard to imagine a piece of business class post, mass mailed from some obscure federal office, getting lost among the junk. I must have tossed it without a thought.

This is surely a blot on my citizenship. I would be embarrassed to have a census worker come to my door. It’s not like I’m too ignorant to know it’s a census year. I’m not going to answer the door holding a shotgun, proclaiming that I don’t want to be counted because I don’t trust the “govermint.” I would probably apologize for making them come to my house because I was so careless with the mail.

Apparently I’m not the only one who, for whatever reason, almost didn’t participate. As I tried to enter King Soopers the other day without being accosted by the usual folks asking for something (you know, the Shriners, pollsters, girl scouts), a woman intercepted me and asked if I’d been counted.

Before I could snarl that all I wanted was some milk and cereal, and couldn’t I just enter the store one time without being harangued, I realized she was giving out census forms. I stopped in my tracks, took an envelope and thanked her.

The next day, my stats were on their way to the feds, my model citizenship restored for one more day.

stamping out! Random acts, of Capitalization and, senseless Acts. of punctuation

i have a Sign, Above; My desk at Work - proclaiming the Title; above Which is one of My Missions in Life - writing! poorly On Purpose Is harder, Than it Looks (for me - but. i spend Several Hours a Week! editing sloppy Punctuation even, stuff Written. By Upper management who. should Know better has our Educational System, deteriorated that Much or Is This, A result of The internet, age, which,. includes, An increase In texting that usually results in writing, Shortcuts abbreviations Etc. or perhaps it Has Always Been this Way i believe english is a Living Evolving language and I make A distinction between casual Writing on say facebook versus a More formal, report at Work! but Without some Standard's. it Is difficult 2 Communicate don't get me Started on grammar usage and, the way, other People drive i may b a Snob but. 1 Thing i Know 4 sure; My Ability to Edit and correct, Other's horrible, punctuation, and, capitalization, Ensures greater Job, security At Least I Hope so

I Do Not Clean Alone

I don’t believe in ghosts in the usual sense, but I do believe that I am haunted by my mother every time I clean the house.

I hate cleaning more than anything. I’d almost rather go to the dentist. I really hate it. But is it worse than living in a dirty home?

I like to play a little game called, “How many inches of dust can you stand?” It’s even more challenging when I don’t feel well, like this week when I missed two days of work.

I won’t bore you with the details of my illness, but I will say that I knew I was feeling better when that little dust ball near the TV (the screen of which itself was covered in a layer that dulled the color of every broadcast) – that little dust ball I’d been staring at for 48 hours finally got to me. Like Lazarus, I rose from the sofa, summoned the Windex and went at it.

This is where my mother comes in. She wouldn’t tolerate, for one minute, a dust ball near the TV. Dust simply wasn’t allowed in her home. Her standards were extremely high. When I came to visit from graduate school one time, I tried to help her clean, and she yelled at me for vacuuming the stairs wrong. How many ways can there be to vacuum stairs? I stopped offering.

Mom was notoriously hard on professional house cleaners. Even near the end of her life when she could barely walk or talk, she’d leave sticky notes around the house reminding the cleaning woman to “dust the banister” or whatever was “forgotten” last time.

That’s why she haunts me now.

It’s all I can do to dust the surface of things. But her voice is in my head reminding me to get under the knick knacks, not just over the surface. She still tells me to get the floor’s edges, vacuum under the chairs, and dust WITH the wood’s grain instead of against it.

I don’t think she liked cleaning any more than I do. She was just tougher. Her sheer grit overcame any inclination to be lazy.

For several years, I hired a service to clean for me. I had to stop that when Charles, my 18 month old (kitten) came to live with me. Unlike every other cat in the world that I know of, he doesn’t hide when the vacuum is going. He chases it. In fact, he loves to help clean. Chasing the dust rag is great sport, and attacking the sheets as I throw them over the bed is tremendous fun (see photo). Making the bed always ends with a kitty sized lump in the middle. This makes hospital corners, which my Mom bent over backwards to teach me, very difficult. And it makes me unable to subject the cleaning service to his attentions. I would have to pay more for them to put up with him, or they’d accidentally let him out because he runs to the door whenever someone comes over.

It was only recently that I could overcome my mother’s voice as I cleaned the house. It occurred to me that I don’t have to feel guilty for not edging the carpet or washing the kitty nose prints off the windows every time. Or ever. Oh I still hear the voice – I just realize now that I don’t have to let it control me.

I live alone (well, with Charles and Lily). I clean for myself. If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough.

My neighbor loves to clean. She vacuums every day. In spite of her cats and dog, the place is always spotless. I wish I loved to clean like that. But it will never happen. I’ll have to settle for not feeling guilty when I finally do run the dust rag over the tops of things and vacuum around the chair, and I’ll do the windows some other time. Maybe.