Aliens in the White Mountains

I am sure Paul sent me this link thinking that they might be family or something. Considering that we are in the White Mountains, and the entire satellite dish issue, I might just call my cousins for a direct connection.

Is it so difficult?

I froze for a couple of hours while the heat came up to temp, all to be here for the cable dude when he delivered my cable box Friday morning. He even tried to cancel at 8:30pm on Thursday because he was overbooked. Finally at 9:30am he arrived. The poor bastard had driven here from Burlington Vermont. He gets out of the van labelled DirectTV and I knew this was not going to be a happy morning. I thought we were getting cable and not a dish. He walks around the house with a thing that measures angle and signal connectivity...he goes up on the roof...he walks up and down the hill and then he comes into the house with the news. There are 4 trees in the way of the signal. It turns out that the dish has to point out to the southern sky, it also has to be at a 32 degree angle and all sort of other technical crap.

The dude apologized profusely and said that his supervisor would be out next week to see if there is anything that can be done to get cable/dish/satellite to work for us. At this rate it is going to be spring before I get my TV hooked up!

Bear Crap

Good morning from Waterville Valley where it is a balmy 27 degrees. I woke up and went for coffee at Dunkins down the hill, and when I got back home I realize that there was a rather large hunk of crap on the driveway. I assume (and Rich correct me if I am wrong) that deers crap dainty little nuggets of crap, while animals such as bears leave rather larger deposits. Well, there it was...a big hunking chunk of crap. Maybe a moose dropped by...couldn't whatever it was have the courtesy of going a little further into the woods to do its thing? Animal manners are just atrocious!

Progress in New Hampshire

For those of you who don't follow the Waterville Valley weather report (and let's face it who doesn't) my co-worker Cherie brought this to my attention. (weather Oct 22nd) If you click on the weather thing, you will see that we got our first snow. By the time I arrived here tonight, it was all gone, but it is colder that a MOFO.

By the way, I realize that the idea (for some) is to disconnect from the modern world and all that nonsense when they go to a mountain retreat, but me, being a city boy (alas from Puerto Rico) need the modern connectivity conveniences of DSL and cable TV. I drove up here tonight to finally (yeah right) receive the cable box and be here for the geeks from Best Buy so that they can install the TV and do their thing so that I can have TV radiation during the week-ends. I am to used to knitting, reading and watching TV while I do laundry and I am not willing to live without it.

By the way, speaking of temperature, last week the electrician connected the new programmable thermostats, they are suppose to warm up the house on Friday and let it get cold again on Sunday night. We have decided (although after today we might not) to have the low temperature at 50 degrees. Since I came up on Thursday, I had to manually set the temp to 68. It has been about 90 minutes and we are just cracking 58. The instructions say that it should be about 1 degree for every 5 minutes and I am sure we are on schedule for that, but all the surfaces especially the granite are cold cold cold. I fear that my mattress will freeze me on contact when I go to bed!.

I have to drive back to Boston either Friday night after the install or Saturday morning, after all I do have to do my laundry, but the reason for a city week-end is that my friend Luis as always, has invited us to the Berklee School of Music annual fund raising gala. Luckily, we don't have to pay for tickets to go to the dinner/dance, but it sure has been a lot of fun to go for the last 10 years or so.

the week that was

This has been a very hectic week. The cruise ship I call work is currently registering 14 new guests to the offices. Supposedly all very important and worthy of some attention. On Monday the will receive their embarkation talk form me. It will basically be a "This is not Cunard, more like Royal Caribbean" I really hope they are easy and not high maintenance.

On Wednesday night I drove up to New Hampshire to receive the TV equipment that was going to be installed on Friday. The Best Buy experience has been pretty good, however, getting phone,dsl and cable in New Hampshire has been unbelievable! It took us 4 weeks to get phone service 8 weeks to get DSL and we are going on 9 weeks to get the cable hooked up. I spent yesterday about 1 hour getting the DSL to work, and today the lovely Maria from the Philippines helped me for 2 hours to connect the wireless network in the house. It seems that the router was not configured properly when it left the factory and I paid with 2 hours of chit chat while the computer turned on and off following Maria's commands.

Oh, by the way, last week-end we attended a lovely illegal wedding ceremony. It was simple, happy and although wearing a suit and tie at 87 degrees made me sweat, it was just very sweet.

As far as I can tell, fall in New Hampshire is pretty much done. Now we get what the real estate agents call "Winter Views" which means that you can see the mountain across from you through the bare trees.

Yes I'm here

I realize that I left all of you hanging with the cold that I had last week. I can't say the cold is 100% gone but it certainly is better. I went to the GP doctor and was told "there is a big ass nasty bug going around, rest, plenty of water...blah blah blah" In other words, shut up and put up with it... no drugs for YOU! Bummer

Since there is really nothing going on, I haven't written any updates.. bad blogger, slap me please. We still don't have internet connection in the house in NH so I just don't even think about it. I have to admit that since the cable company is taking their sweet time in connecting us, all I do is sleep. In bed by 8:30pm and wake up about the same time in the morning.

Aside from that, worried about the economy as everyone is and dreading to look at my 401k, as a matter of fact, I won't even look at the envelope when it comes in.

I won't be updating the blog daily so please forgive me in advance. I like the boring not doctor driven life...