I hate when something trivial sets up a bad “tone” for the whole week. We had to call the cable company because we haven’t been getting all the channels we’re paying for and those we did still get had a really lousy picture. The cable guy, who, fortunately, is nothing like that famous Cable Guy, showed up on Monday, replaced the cable box/DVR and that night we watched Monday Night Football in HD and (almost) all was right with the world. Until I turned on the TV yesterday and found that we were missing some channels again and also we could not bring up the menus.

We called the cable company again and told them the problem. At the same time we requested a new remote control because the select button has been hinky for weeks but since it still worked it didn’t seem important enough to call them about it. Today the cable guy came again and brought yet another cable box/DVR and a new remote control.

So far everything is fine except that I really fracking HATE the new remote control. The buttons are tiny and too close together and all in the wrong places and it has this really difficult little switch to switch back and forth between TV and cable/DVR functions. I hate it so much I have started looking at universal remotes which is what I would have done in the first place instead of paying the cable company $10 for a replacement if only I had known.

And to top it all off, because fixing our problem involved replacing the box – twice – we missed both The Good Guys and Castle which we had recorded and intended to watch last night.

Now I’m going to be uptight all week wondering “What next?!”