Are You Kidding Me?

My family knows how much I enjoy my mid-afternoon TV time.  I eat lunch, read the newspaper, and eventually move on to writing or artwork for the afternoon.  They will tell you I’m a creature of severe habit.  If for some reason, this time gets interrupted, it’s bothersome.  Today I came home from yoga, put my clothes in the wash, showered and made my shake.  I turned on the TV and sat down with my newspaper.  The sound went off and a message appeared on the screen: This station is temporarily out of service.  It will resume shortly.  After twenty minutes, a time I call reasonably “shortly”, nothing changed, so I unplugged and reset the cable box.  It loaded the stations, the time came on, and when I pushed power I got: apdl.  Okay, time for action.  I called Comcast:

Comcast: How can I help you?

Me: I explained the above, ending with the apdl message.

C: Oh, I’m so sorry! Are all your boxes getting that message?

Me: Wait I’ll go check. Yes, all of them have a service interruption message on them.

C: Okay.  Let me run a scan of all your equipment.  Give me a few minutes.

Me: No problem.  Take your time.

C: I found a service interruption in your signal.  I’m so sorry.  Let me see how soon we can get a technician out there.

Me: Okay.

C: You are not going to believe this. I have to read you the message I got for the reason for your interruption.

Me: Okay

C: Sunflares will be disrupting services through March 15.  These disruptions occur for 15 days in early spring and fall.  Service interruption will be for about an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, resuming normally after 7pm in the evening.  We are currently upgrading our lines to avoid sunflare interruption in the future.

Me: What?!

C: Yes! Isn’t it crazy?

Me: Sooooo…..I just wait?

C: Yes. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: Uh…no.

C: Okay, have a nice day!

Are you kidding me? Sunflares? I hate cable companies as much as I hate going to the DMV.  It’s been three hours and the sunflares are still interrupting my service.  And on Y&R, Brook was going to walk in on Eric and Taylor making out and now I missed the look on her face due to sunflares.  I’m back to work writing and illustrating in a quiet house devoid of The Talk.  I’m sure I missed some huge celebrity news on that show today.  Sunflares.  Are you kidding me?  I guess they’re not.

And so, as another day goes by, I guess that was my new thing to learn today, and…. I have written.

Whoa!