Summer Heat-Induced Ramblings

Weather.com is a pathologic liar. I've known this for years, and yet, I still place an unfailing trust in them. This gullibility combined with my stinginess has resulted in countless episodes of me nearly suffering from heat exhaustion. Early every morning, I eagerly check the weather (on weather.com), and based on their impressively incorrect predictions, I frequently decide it would be a good day to open up the house and let in the cool summer breezes (this desire is mostly motivated by my excitement over the prospect of saving money by turning the a/c off for the day - I literally get giddy over the $5 I could potentially save by being slightly too warm for my own good all day. On a side note, I clearly do not have a stable grasp of the traditional weather patterns of the varying seasons). Inevitably, because of this cycle of lies and blind trust, I end up covered in sweat, digging my nails into the carpet as I try to crawl across the floor in a last-ditch attempt to drag myself to a water source by no later than 10am, usually accompanied by an almost 2-year old screaming with excitement while he jumps on my dehydrated back, in accordance with the toddler law that "any adult on the floor is fair game."

In addition to this almost daily bout of overheating, as many of you know, there is a humanoid parasite growing inside of me. We're somewhere around the 2/3rds mark, and this not only aids on the rapidity of consuming heat exhaustion, but it also serves to diminish my already meager motivational inspirations.

To top it off, I recently went into battle with Dish Network. One day, out of the blue, our DVR stopped working. The receiver still got the satellite signal, so we could still watch live TV, but, as modernity would have us all believe, live TV is for losers. The defunct DVR hard drive meant not only could we no longer access all our previously recorded programs, nor make new recordings, but we couldn't even (*gasp*) pause live TV. After alerting Dish Network to the problem, they reassured me that this kind of thing "happens all the time," and they would send out a replacement receiver within 3-5 days.

Anxiously, I waited for UPS to deliver my new, hope-filled black box of TV recordability. Finally the day arrived. Husband helped me replace the old receiver and send it back to Dish. We patiently scrolled through countless channels and programming lists to repopulate our DVR schedule. Once again, I felt complete.

Then the unthinkable happened. My new DVR (that arrived in that UPS box with so many promises of years of pausable TV) stopped working. The power cord was faulty. After checking and re-checking our connections, I called Dish again to report the problem. They guided me through a 30 minute test procedure to ensure the issue was with the DVR, not the operator (although most of them were moot to begin with, as the box couldn't even turn on). Defeated, the customer service representative told me they would send out a replacement DVR (again) in 3-5 days (again). I waited.

In the meantime, with no working TV, Boy and I watched movies. He discovered his favorite movie is WALL-E. We have now seen WALL-E at least 20 times. Although, as far as children's movie addictions go, WALL-E is probably at the top of the list, as it has very little dialogue or music, and mostly consists of seemingly random beeps and whirs. Seemingly, because, after 20+ viewings, one can, remarkably, begin to memorize the precise timing of these electronic sound effects.

After a week of WALL-E and waiting, with no replacement DVR in sight, I called Dish Network again. They informed me that they had received my request for a second replacement DVR, but that they, in fact, have a policy that prevents them from sending out a new DVR within 2-3 days of having just sent one. But seeing as how the only situation that would necessitate replacement DVRs at such a frequency is the one we were in - that the initial replacement (refurbished) DVR sent to the customer was, itself, faulty - the only evident purpose of this policy is to prevent customers from receiving timely restoration of services. After "clearing up" our issues, Dish agreed to send me a second replacement DVR. In 3-5 days.

We now once again have working TV (and the power to record TV), I continue to turn my house into a sweat lodge most days, and I'm still incubating a fetus. However, I blame the combination of these three factors (and a great lacking of inspiration) for my failure to write a new blog post during the entire month of June. Although, logically, I should have had more time to write while WALL-E played on repeat (okay, that's a slight exaggeration; I don't think we ever watched it more than twice in one day), instead, I was seemingly crippled by the repetition, sweat, and increased hormones.

That being said, hopefully I will return to writing on a somewhat more regular schedule. But I make no promises, as weather.com is a known fabricator, and my longing for cool breezes will always play the fool to their trickery.

In related news, after having received multiple requests to post recipes of various food items I regularly prepare, I'm considering sprinkling the blog with a smattering of food-oriented entries. In general, I'm thinking of altering the content of the blog slightly, so as to include more current happenings (no cute anecdotes of the adorable things Boy does, I promise), much like this entry. If you feel strongly about this one way or the other, please leave me a comment, and I may or may not take your opinions into consideration, depending mostly on the current temperature and humidity level of my house, and any heat-induced hallucinations I may be experiencing at the time.