PAgent’s Progress

Our long-suffering 12-year-old RCA 27-inch television began to crap out a couple of weeks ago. This was the sign my wife and I had been waiting for: the justification, however small, to get a New Television. And Christmas presented a perfect opportunity to do so, as we could, with a straight face, tell ourselves that it was our gift to each other, thereby killing a couple of birds with a single piece of electronics.

I should explain that, as a general philosophy, the wife and I will hold off on upgrading an electronic device until it is unusable, either because it is broken, or because the technology involved has developed so much that it has become hopelessly outmoded. Then, we will pony up and buy the nicest, most advanced replacement that we can afford. It’s a pretty good system. Of course, this is also the reason that I am using an antique iMac. No matter how slow it is, it still works.

For example, when our original 21-inch TV had died, and went shopping to replace it, I was looking at some nice flatscreen 21-inch models. My wife pulls me over to this ginormous 27-inch high-end beast. “Why would we get something that big?” I asked. “It’s just the two of us.” She explained that her family had always had a big TV in the family room, and it just seemed like that’s the way it should be, and that we would grow into it.

So we trucked the beast home, and have watched it for 12 years. It has survived two toddlers, a handful of cats, and two moves. But it doesn’t seem so big anymore. The wife and I typically watch DVD’s in widescreen mode, and sometimes the actual picture is just a band across the middle of the screen. You can’t see any detail at all. The technology has advanced.

So, since the TV was developing picture problems, we embraced our yuppie tendencies and got a brand new plasma flatscreen TV, HDTV-ready. We had been routing TV sound through an old pair of Polk Audio bookshelf speakers, but we decided to go ahead and get home theater sound as well.

Bottom line, it looks GREAT, and it sounds GREAT. And even though we still just get basic cable, there are a bunch of channels that our TV picks up even though we don’t subscribe to them. Including, apparently, a set of channels up in the 114-116 range that were showing premium content. Sometimes they would be showing a recent movie, or an HBO program. And it was the damndest thing, as soon as the movie was over, the channel would be GONE. No signal at all. And we noticed that sometimes you would be watching one of these channels, and it would start going in reverse, then forward, then reverse. Or it would just stop, mid-movie. I began to suspect we were watching someone else’s movie-on-demand: watching them fastforward through the boring parts, or rewind and watch the interesting bits.

One evening I scanned up into the ‘on-demand’ channels, and found a program that featured a bunch of naked people engaged in, well, engaged in exactly what you would expect. That’s a pretty impressive sight on a 42-inch plasma television. Let’s just say it gives you pause. The wife was somewhat speechless.

Over the next couple of nights we caught a variety of R- and X-rated content. Speaking as a parent, no matter what your philosophical stance on censorship, it’s amazing how fast you become a fan of the V-chip the first time you’re flipping channels, and flip to a couple in the doggie position, moaning and making the bed rock.

The cable people have assured us that we should not be able to see this stuff, and that we “must have one of those fancy new televisions” if we are able to see it at all.

Now I think it’s kind of funny, and (once the kids are safely in bed) we surf through the on-demand channels to see what people are watching. Sometimes it’s just a movie that plays through normally. Sometimes the show stops and starts, goes forwards and backwards. Last night there was a really, really bad horror film on, and it was obvious that it was being watched by a man. The entire movie was viewed in fast forward, except when it looked like there was a chance one of the girls was going to take her shirt off. Then it would play at normal speed, but only until it became clear that nothing was going to happen. Then, back to fast forward. It cracked me up.

I have assembled and set up the new altar…uh, TV stand. Once the cable guy hooks us up with digital cable, I’ll finish hooking up all the components and setting up the satellite speakers. If all goes well, we will then be able to control the whole system with one remote. And I’ll believe THAT when it actually happens.

I dropped off the car this morning at an auto body shop to get my rolled fenders sealed. The mechanic was tall and thin, and both friendly and pleasant. He was also so wall-eyed that he had to cock his head to one side to look at you directly, making him look like a monitor lizard sizing up a mealworm.

While the car was being worked on, I opted to walk away for some breakfast. I found myself in a locally-owned restaurant. I entered at the same time as a large family. On this day after Christmas, everyone was displaying their new presents. From the brand-new Oregon Ducks football jerseys and hats, to stuffed animals shoved in toy pet carriers. The aftermath of the gift frenzy was writ large on their very bodies.

After breakfast, I went shopping at a pet store. Then I picked up the car, and got the oil changed. I began to realize that I felt strangely relaxed. I had only been home with my family for three days, and this little set of errands already felt like a mini-vacation. I could feel myself slowing down, and the tension leaving my shoulders.

And I am returning to work tomorrow, may God have mercy upon my soul.

This afternoon, my wife took a group of boy scouts and girl scouts to a nearby assisted-living center to sing carols. I went along to play the piano for them. We had done something similar last year, with only girl scouts, and the residents had seemed to really appreciate it. This year we had been instructed to set up and perform in the memory unit, a building next to the main building where they housed residents with memory problems.

I was rather nervous about the whole thing, because even though I had worked up the music for the family sing at school, I hadn’t had the chance to go over the songs with my wife beforehand. Some of the music called for repeats that we didn’t take, some didn’t have any repeats, but we took them anyway, some needed to have intros improvised. There was certainly the potential for mischief, if not disaster.

My wife didn’t seem to take my concerns seriously. I tried to get her to commit to a song order, or to tell me how many times to play certain verses, to no avail. I became even more concerned that I would embarrass myself. Finally, with some exasperation, she said “Even if we screw it up completely, these are Alzheimer patients. They won’t remember it.”

There are several fountains on the sidewalks surrounding the Portland Pioneer Courthouse. The fountains are adorned with various Oregon critters cast in bronze. The animals are a popular attraction downtown, with children climbing on them, teenagers putting things on their heads, and sundry Portlanders simply touching them as they pass by. They are so well-loved that their bronze is shiny where many hands have brushed them. It’s good to see that the animals are getting into the holiday spirit as well, as evidenced by the festive red ribbons tied around their necks.

An unusually cold week here in Portland was capped by two days of strong winds coming down the Columbia Gorge, and the promise that freezing rain was on the way Sunday night. The wife and I had made our plans to go see a movie with the kids, do some shopping perhaps, when the snow started falling. It was a mean-spirited snow, unlike the big, wet, fluffy flakes I grew up with. This was wind-driven shards of ice that swirled around the house in spirals that reminded you of the Cold Miser.

As Portland drivers are simply unable to drive on any type of frozen water, we opted to stay home. Then, at around 2:00 in the afternoon, our lights went out, synchronous with the dull ‘BOOM’ of a transformer blowing nearby. We had joined an approximate 6,000 PGE customers that were without power due to the storm.

This is the first house I’ve ever lived in that didn’t even have a functioning fireplace. No alternative sources of heat whatsoever. The outside air temperature was hovering around 25 degrees, so it looked like it would get pretty grim if power didn’t get restored. The wife and I went and pulled on a couple of extra layers of clothing, long underwear and fleece mostly, and heavy socks. We got out a couple of sleeping bags and comforters that we could huddle under.

The gas range still worked, so we could eat warm food. And my Nintendo DS still had battery power, so I could still play Animal Crossing. Yes, I sat in a still, dark house, and played Animal Crossing. It was kind of surreal. After a while, the kids got invited down to a neighbor’s house to play in the snow. After they left, we started getting flashlights and candles together for the evening.

By this point, the house was well and truly chilly, and the cats were none too pleased. Seeker, the alpha kitty, stood on his cold heating pad for a few moments, then ambled over to the heating vent in the kitchen. He stuck his head into what is normally the most direct source of warm air in the house. Nothing. Then he climbed on top of the iMac. Still no warmth to be had. He began to look pretty pissed off, which was funny, but if the heat didn’t come back on soon, it would be a long night for the kitties, and I expected they would have to sleep in bed with us. Joy.

I fixed dinner (spaghetti), and adjusted the faucets in all the bathrooms to a trickle (the last thing we needed was frozen pipes). Then, we noticed a PGE truck creeping through our neighborhood. They were checking each transformer as they went with a spotlight. A bit of hope blossomed in our hearts, as we contemplated having warmth and light again.

At 6:30, with no fuss, our lights came back on. Shortly after that, I turned the heat back on, and the temperature in the house began to climb. After four and a half hours, the temperature in the house had dropped to 55 degrees, which wasn’t that bad, but I hate to think what it would have been the following morning.

I went to bed last night with the dire promise that the roads today would be sheets of ice, and no one would be able to go to work. Instead, a cold rain was melting yesterday’s snow into slush. I got to work barely a half-hour late, although I spent part of the day feverishly doing some of the Christmas shopping I had intended to do yesterday.

It’s easy to forget how inhospitable the environment can be without the benefits of modern conveniences. I’m sure the survivors of the 2005 tsunami, or even the survivors of Katrina on our own shores, would gladly trade our few hours of relative cool for their desperate situations. Perhaps this was a subtle wake-up call. A gentle reminder as Christmas approaches to remember how lucky we are.

Here’s hoping each and every one of you is well-fed, and surrounded by warmth, light and love this holiday season.

In case you haven’t wandered across it previously, you should go read Jon Carrol’s article on the Unitarian Jihad.

Then go here and get your Unitarian Jihad Nickname.

-Brother Nail Gun of Enlightened Compassion

Calm down. Some of my best friends are Unitarians.