Summer Fridays 2013: Waiting for Godot

Not really, but Waiting for the Cable Guy doesn't have the same oomph.

My second Summer Friday for the year was not nearly as exciting or adventuresome or altruistic as last week. I spent it cleaning, waiting for the cable guy, paying bills, waiting for the cable guy, and then taking a nap, because ... waiting for the cable guy was exhausting. (Actually the last week of work and the weather was exhausting.)

For months, I've been dealing with some equipment issues that kept my at-home Internet activities limited to my patience levels (which, to be honest, varied on how crappy the connection speeds were). I managed to work around them for a while, but it was painfully slow - even when I was using the back-up wifi connections. I knew I needed a day for a service call, so was waiting for summer Fridays so I could I just have a day.

Here's a hint. Your modem connections are supposed to show more green lights than just this. The "send/receives" should be steady.

It's also very handy to have a tech brother on stand-by to walk you through terminology and sites to do testing of your stuff BEFORE the cable guy comes. Thanks J. That speedtest.net site (left) is handy. Also it's also super handy to know that your download speeds shouldn't be .09 , or below 1.0 anything!

I will grab my validation where ever I can get it. To wit: the first thing(!) the tech said when he saw my set-up was: "We don't even USE that equipment anymore." Hello! No wonder it wasn't working. I knew I wasn't going crazy the last (mumble amount) of months. Basically the modem was toast. I have a new one now - and it's like night and day! From .02 or .09 Mbps downloads to 18+. AH, streaming video and sounds, how I have missed you. Oh dear. Skype ... that means I have no excuses anymore.

The only real problem is that now that the connections are fast and secure again, I'm totally distracted from reading. I am not kidding when I say that I'm in the middle of those five books up there, the bottom one which I started in JANUARY and can't seem to finish.

Thank Goodness I have the next two Mondays off, in addition to a series of other Summer Fridays. Maybe I can finish them. I also do want to get back to my plan of Island Hopping, but there are other little projects like Waiting for the Cable Guy I need to finish this summer, like retroblogging, and oh, this....

THE BANE OF MY CRAFTING EXISTENCE.

Photo of the Day: 3 Things I Love About This

Photo credit: @usanetwork via twitter

May 17, 2012
@usanetwork:
Here's @TimDeKay & Matt Bomer doing TalkStoop at the ‪#USAUpfront‬. pic.twitter.com/qqRLrYzV

There are three things I love about this photo. Two are fairly obvious, and one reveals a bit too much about what kind of girl I am, so we'll just let you fill in the blanks on your own.

Somebody's Watching Me ... Watch U(SA)

With apologies to Matt Bomer.
I admire all of your body ... of work.
(Please, people. This is a family site, and he is a family man and a gentleman.)

Most of the time when I'm running around the Upper West Side, I'm doing my own thing, running my errands, heading hither, thither, and yon, minding my business ... as a typical chill New Yorker.

Then something happens and you have to react/document. There was the time in the Post Office when I stopped someone from getting harassed by a pervert -- but that's another post on another blog.

Then there was the evening when I left late, and had to leave from a different exit than my usual. I came around the corner and saw a flurry of activity in front of a neighboring business. Now, things happen in the area all the time. I work for a destination of note in and of itself, not to mention it is part of an arts complex. "We've" seen presidential motorcades, Fashion Week, festivals, film shoots, and film premieres, to name a few, but this one was different.

A cable upfront from the channel I watch all the dang time! USA

I swear, if the cable company looked at the percentage of time my t.v. was on, and to what channel it was tuned, it'd be primarily the character-driven programs and NCIS rerun-heavy USA Network. I didn't want to be too much of a dork, so out my iTouch came (to be "checking for cell coverage" you see) and snapped these on the run. The daylight photos are at one time of the day, and the night shots are from the evening after the upfront.

My boss is pretty lenient on things, but I didn't think I could take a two hour lunch to sit out on the street and watch the red-carpet arrivals. Like with most other major NYC events in recent years, most recently the Shuttle Enterprise "fly-overs," I watched it happen via the Internet, specifically via Twitter feeds.

Actually, it was probably better that way. It was hot and crowded--two of my least favorite things about NYC. And on my screaming scale of measure of what I could hear up in my office, on a scale of 0 to "Holy Cow, it's a Harry Potter Premiere, two-days of rabid fans screaming for hours," it was only about a 2. If you didn't have press creds, you wouldn't have gotten close to the talent, and since I don't wear stilettos, I probably wouldn't have been able to see anybody, I mean, anything. This way of ogling is much better for all concerned. No fear of sudden-onset-stupid-fan ness, no hyperventilating hysteria, more ability to be silly and not embarrass the actors or self, unless.... you happen to mention something to a friend .... more on that in a minute.

Regarding this large poster of Matt Bomer seen throughout, I apologize again to the tech crew person who probably had to clean it off again the night before the event. I may or may not have impulsively "splatted" myself all over it in an embrace, leaving a face print/drool. Also, it truly doesn't do him justice. Why not have it be black and white and blue to show off those baby blues? WHY!?

There was a reenactment of my "splat" the next night when it was all over, which unfortunately? fortunately? was captured by my friend Cynthia.

Whoops, now I'm dizzy from all the silliness.

So, um. Yeah. That happened.

Grateful List 1/27 - 2/1

My grateful list for last week is much more mundane.

First, I am grateful to my dear friends, who have obviously been reading the blog, and then send presents in order to fulfill my requests to Santa.

Not only did dear Jane send me her namesake, but she included some of these delectable treats from a CT-based chocolatier.

I am grateful to whoever invented chocolate covered potato chips!

But mostly last week, I was grateful to USA Network, which kept replaying Burn Notice, so that I could drool over the deliciousness of Jeffrey Donovan over and over and over again.

I have admired this actor since I first saw him on my favorite episode of Witchblade, and then from his work in smaller films like Come Early Morning and Believe in Me, but hello!

Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen + swimtrunks/wet t-shirt = a very very grateful Auntie Nettie.