aint got no tv

I aint' got no good tv. I've been watching the Olympics voraciously for a week, and suddenly, I can't get to them. I have had Directv for 9 years and been pretty pleased with it, then today some of the channels wouldn't work. This happened a couple of months ago and they told me what to do and I did it and it fixed it. Today, instead of telling me what to do, they wanted to collect more money from me for a service call, AND sell me 'protection plan package' which means I pay a less in a service call, but still more per month for the same thing I've been getting. So, after a bit of wrangling, I cancelled Directv. DO YOU HEAR THAT DIRECTV? YOU COULD HAVE KEPT ME AS A GOOD CUSTOMER IF YOU HADN'T BEEN SO GREEDY!

but now I can't watch the Olympics until I get some rabbit ears. I hate the local cable company. Really hate them, so they are out of the question. Next year, there should be an alternative, but who knows when that might happen. Intellectually, I know it's probably a good thing that I will watch less TV, but intellectually it's bad because I'll watch worse TV. We tried this once before when switching from cable to satellite and it was awful.

So another business has lost my business. They probably don't care, but here's the list:

Capital Toyota
Economy Honda
Comcast
DirecTV
Yellow Deli
EXXON
that's all I can think of.

grouchy.

secrets

I have no idea why this sign says what it does, or why there's a security person and an Italian Stallion standing by it. I took this shot in NYC about 3 weeks ago. It's a secret why someone cut a hole, painted and labeled the two pipes on a random street. Someone's sense of humor? Maybe. Something serious? Maybe. I don't think so, but maybe. An insult to Siamese people? I hope not. I have no good theories about this.

Which brings me to todays theme. Secrets. I was the recipient today of secrets. The repository was open, I guess. All day at work, people kept coming to me to confide things. Nothing earth shattering (at least not to me) and nothing especially good or bad, but they were personal, touchy things and people seemed to want to share them with me. I won't tell them though. I can keep confidences but it's more fun to gossip. But I won't.

I was in Manhattan recently. We were driving to MA and decided to drive through the city. Here's a scene from either Broadway or 8th Ave. looking uptown. I enjoyed it, but then I wasn't driving. Manhattan is an exciting place, but I wouldn't want to live there. I did live there briefly many years ago. The grey faces of the people bothered me and the bracing-for-anything I had to do every day when I left the apt. I still like to visit, though not as much as I used to. On this journey we drove through the Holland Tunnel and up Manhattan to the Bronx. It was slow and I wouldn't do it again, but since it was on a Saturday the traffic wasn't horrible. It's a weird place to live...so separated from nature, yards, soft ground, trees, quietness. And the past few times I've been there, I've noticed that NYC is turning into a giant mall. They have the same big box stores as every other place in America, only they still have many thousands of the little places, too. For now.