First World Problem?

Tonight it’s quiet. Oh, there is the sound of lots of rain outside and a little thunder rumble here and there, but inside is the sound of the poker game on David’s computer and me clicking on the keyboard. The Reds and Pirates are in a rain delay but the Reds are ahead 9-2 in the 7th. I know this because Buddy Bat, my iPad, tells me so on the mlb app and he’s been making the sound that there is news every time the Reds score. But there is no sound in the room that would give any idea that there had been a ball game of interest going on in Pittsburgh. For the average American home, this is a quiet house.

There is a home in Toledo where there is no television to make the sounds of announcers telling of the rain delay. I happen to live in that home. Let me go back a few days to tell the tale.

On June 14, David taped and I posted on Facebook this video:

Post by Davonna Lividini Patch.

Marco has been going insane when the chipmunk is right on the window ledge! You notice that the TV is on the chest and he is jumping behind it like a madcat. We’d been chuckling at this behavior for a couple of days. It was in the area where the cat stands, hammocks and scratching posts are. What harm could he do?

Well Monday I turned on the TV to watch Investigation Discovery at lunch. The television showed snow. My first thought is to make sure the set is on channel 3. It was. Then I checked for a loose cable and lo and behold I found the cord for the cable wasn’t connected to the TV. Marco’s shenanigans from the morning must have knocked it out. I turned the TV and moved the cable to the area where the connector for it sticks out of the back. I pulled the metal ended cable back quick when there was a spark! Marco didn’t knock the cable out; he broke the entire connector off! I was moving toward putting the cable into an open socket in the back of the TV.

Now it is a very old TV. We just don’t watch enough TV to have ever made replacing it a priority. We’ve talked about it but since we’ve talked about a new TV we’ve had the basement waterproofed, a new roof and we’ve both gotten new computers. I’ve gotten 2 eReaders and a tablet in that time too.

David moved the TV Tuesday morning to try to find the connector that broke off in case it can be put back on. See our TV really is NOT a priority; if a little duct tape could have put it back in place… But the connector was nowhere to be found. During the searching process the old fat-designed television was put on the love seat so it wouldn’t get knocked off the chest David was searching under. We’re not totally sure what happened to the loveseat, but it got jarred and the TV tumbled onto the floor. David saw a broken plastic frame on the front and I’m sure I heard a muffled tingle of broken internal glass. The time for TV talking is over.

So I took myself to school that morning to find out what we needed to look for in one of those new-fangled TVs. It was actually fun research. I hadn’t looked for a TV in a very long time. I remember when….let me pull the gray hairs to the front so I look the part that statement fits. I remember when I worked at the production house that produced the very first commercial in HDTV. Serious, the first TV ad ever produced in high definition was edited at the production house where I worked. Now most of the TVs in stores have high definition capability.

I learned about the fact that my antiquated notion that the lines of resolution are important is no more. All TVs have greater resolution than they did the last time I shopped for an analog TV or monitor. The refresh rate is the thing now. How many times does the picture completely rebuild itself in a second? The basic-quality ones do it 60 times in a second! I wrote down all my technical notes and how many inputs of what kinds we might need. With as often as we watch DVDs, we could get a TV with the connector to watch a DVD in one of our computers and not have to buy a new DVD player. We have the information we need to ask the right questions when we shop for our new TV.

Before we get the TV we have to have an electrician come in to bring our 1950s house up to safe grounded 3-prong outlets. We’ll also need to reorganize the living room so I can have a desk there instead of the dining room so I can see the TV where we’ll put it. It’ll be flat but a bigger screen than Old Broken and besides, we want to have it away from the ledge outside the big window where the chipmunk plays! Then once the TV is selected and placed, we’ll need to switch to the fancy cable stuff, so the cable guys will need to come in and set us up.

It’s going to be a few weeks, months, before we have TV again. But when we do have it again we’ll be part of the American 21st century! We’ll have been without it for long enough that we might just sit and watch a show or two. Nah, I want to see a Reds or Tigers game on the fancy schamcy new TV first. Or maybe I’ll just watch an episode of Blood Relatives on ID.