As I am writing this, I’m holding my breath and typing as fast as my arthritic fingers will allow, because I'm rushing to finish it before the predicted big snowstorm strikes…and causes me to lose my Internet connection.
That's because I live out in the wilderness. I'm talking about hawks and coyotes eyeing the daily guests at my bird feeder. I'm also talking about having to wait for the deer to move out of my way before I can drive up my driveway. And due to this vast wilderness, the cable company I'd had at my previous house, only five miles from here, hadn't even reached this area yet when I first moved here.
So I ended up with two satellite dishes, side by side on my roof – one for TV and the other for the Internet. They constantly wage battles with each other to see which one will stop working first whenever there is more than one flake of snow or two drops of rain, both of which wreak havoc on the signals. And when a really bad snowstorm strikes and covers the dishes with snow, they end up looking like two giant white Mickey-Mouse ears perched on my roof.
At that point, I'd probably get better reception using a wire coat-hanger wrapped in aluminum foil.
Unfortunately, after a snowstorm, my satellite dishes are destined to remain buried until the spring thaw. Call me a pessimist, but I think climbing a ladder so I can clear the snow from them is a recipe for disaster. I can just picture myself clinging to an icy ladder and then falling over backwards with the ladder landing on top of me...leaving an imprint in the snow that resembles a giant snow-angel lying underneath railroad tracks.
A few years ago, when my first Internet satellite company went out of business and I had to find a new one, the technician who came over to assess my situation said, “We don’t install satellite dishes on the roof any more. It’s more convenient to put them on the sides of the houses or even on the ground, where people can reach them to clean them off in the winter.”
I was pleased to hear that bit of good news. Finally, I thought, I would have a reliable Internet connection throughout the winter because I'd be able to clean the snow off the dish without risking the need for any of my body parts to be surgically pinned back together.
The day of the installation, I was in the house when the technician came in, smiling.
“All done!” he said. “Your new dish is installed. And guess what? I decided to bend the rules a bit and put the dish exactly where your old one was, on the roof! No sense drilling any new holes in your house when there were already some ready-made ones right there for me to use.”
Let's just say the smile I flashed at him was so forced, it nearly cracked my face.
So I'm still plagued with “lost signal” messages every time I’m using my computer or trying to watch TV during a storm. Just prior to losing the signal, however, my computer is kind enough to warn me it’s about to happen…by completely locking me out. And my TV will freeze a program right in the middle of the action…which actually looks kind of pretty, like an explosion in a paint factory.
And at those moments, I’m grateful it’s winter and the windows are closed, because people in the next county probably would be able to hear me having a loud “conversation” with either my TV or my computer, where every other word should be bleeped.
By the time winter ends, there is a strong possibility I’ll either have destroyed my computer out of sheer frustration, or pegged a few big rocks at my satellite dishes to “dislodge” the snow from them.
On the other hand, knowing my bad aim, I'll probably end up accidentally knocking out one of the birds flying in to dine at my feeder.
# # #
Sally Breslin is
a native New Englander and an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has
written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is
the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to
science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net
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