TV of the direct variety

Perhaps some day I will write an epic poem about my month-long struggle to have DirecTV installed. But a picture of the results is worth 1000 words:



On the left is my neighbor's apartment. I happened to look up at it a month ago and notice that it had sprouted a satellite dish at some point. (Their other neighbor, not appearing in this picture because I couldn't get a good angle showing all three apartments, had also sprouted a dish.)

On the right is my apartment, now featuring my satellite dish, finally successfully installed Friday evening at about 6:30. Yes, there were men standing on my third-floor balcony railing in the dark, and yes, they were both wearing work shirts with the name "Jesus" on them despite the fact that their names were Manny and Carlos. No, despite the DirecTV commercials that preceded the current "celebrities reading letters" campaign, I didn't feel the need to hug them after the installation was complete.

I do feel a little like hugging them now, now that I've been using the DirecTV version of TiVo for a couple days. I can record two shows at once!