Holiday fun!

I never know how to report these big family days, other than to say that there are 11 of us here in one house....  Now we do have several bedrooms but still not enough to keep all the kids apart...

So, when one kid wakes up, that fairly much means they're all awake.......!!  Five of them............!!  They attempt to be quiet, but they're kids............

Anyway mid morning I rode the black scooter into town to go to Wal Mart...  I purchased a pancake griddle like the one I bought in Yuma for the motorhome... and noticed that they had the really big life vests in stock, but I only found one that was what we use...  it went into the cart too.  The checkouts were swamped, but  I got thru...

Out in the parking lot, I was bungee cording all this stuff to the bike, and it was almost too big to sit on the seat behind me but it finally fit and was strapped down.....

My daughter in law looked at me kind of funny when I was opening the boxes at home.........  "How did you get that stuff home?" she asked.

"Of course, in my back pocket," I answered.....  She didn't buy it.....

Direct TV called me last week and explained that our old TV receiver was being phased out and wouldn't work after this summer........  They offered to send me a new one for free....  OK...

Fast forward to today, and this afternoon I was trying to get it set up...  Absolutely no instructions came with the box at all.......  But that isn't the worst of it...  The reason we have an old box here is that we have all old TVs here too...  We use old TV 72 ohm cable in the walls...  No HD or Digital at all...  The old Direct TV box has channel 3 output which goes to all the old TVs...  We select one channel and watch it in all the rooms............

But of course the new receiver doesn't have a channel 3 output.... man that's low tech...  So the scooter had to be ridden back into Wal Mart to purchase  one on a card....  Seems Wal Mart does low tech fairly well....

But when it was time to call in and register this new receiver, I found out fairly quickly that the new box was now leased, and it would be $6 every month for it....  Of course my old one is worthless...  Welcome to the USA....!

I asked for a supervisor..  and it took quite a discussion, but this lady finally explained that the $6 is the up charge for a second receiver........ and that I have been paying it for several years...

So it does turn out to be free as compared to what I was paying before, and the only problem was the first representative and her explanation...  I was persistent but never lost my cool...  Just trying to understand...

Oh, but they want my old receiver's card...  Have to mail it in...  They want to compare over ten years of purchases of movies to what we have paid during that time............  We don't purchase movies from the satellite company so it won't take them long...

But just for good measure, the supervisor decided that we need a $10 credit on our bill for the next 12 months.........   I spent years as an auditor, so I'm always interested in how stuff like this works.........  Another holiday at the lake...

Retired Rod