We have three satellite dishes on our roof and I can't find a program worth watching. To be honest, I don't even turn on the TV anymore because there is such a ridiculous amount of PORN - it's everywhere! RTM has gone through and put parental control locks as best he can but it seems like the channels change randomly and you click to the next channel and boom, they're doin' the boom-boom. Right there in your living room. And even when the parental control catches it, you still get a solid second for the frame to freeze itself in your brain. I'm not some prude; I just want a flippin' sit-com.
We bought a DVD player when we got here so that it would work with the current but that hasn't worked out so well. We brought it home and found that it doesn't play American DVDs - it displays "wrong region" - some pointless attempt to stop piracy. So we brought it back to Carrefour and they programmed it, right at the front desk, to accept Western discs. Great. It worked for two weeks till the power strip got turned off, then Wrong Region came back. When I brought it back to Carrefour (on Friday) they said they'd have to get it in for service - two or three days. Four days later I call to see what's going on and the word is that service takes at least two WEEKS, maybe a month. Don't call us, we'll call you. No, I can't get my money back because the lady who fixed it last time misplaced the receipt. So we bought this stupid thing to use for four months and a quarter of that is shot.
Not that it really matters because we haven't gotten any of our Netflix movies anyhow. Or any other mail. It turns out after weeks of waiting, calling the Swissvale post office, and calling CMU's post office that our Pittsburgh mail has been forwarded to RTM's office at CMU Pittsburgh, not Qatar. All our magazines, movies, mail, etc. have been sitting on his desk in his empty office. Maybe next week we'll get our August mail.
At least the Wii works. Here's a picture of the assemblage we needed to construct to plug it into the wall.
That's the Wii cord on the left plugged into an adapter plugged into an adapter plugged into a transformer plugged into an adapter plugged into a power strip plugged into the wall. But it works. 'Nuff said.
Enough groaning - what are we DOING? Here are the stop-gaps we have in place - we download tv shows on iTunes on the computer, we play DVDs on the computer, we play on the Wii, we'll buy a new blessed DVD player if we can't get the other one fixed. So there is no deficit of screen time, at least in the kids' lives.
But it's complicated.
