HDTV at Last

Have you ever noticed that when you are waiting for a service man to come to your house or a delivery person to arrive, that you are always the last person on the route? I'm not sure how everyone can be last, but that seems to be how it works. Over the last thirty-seven years plus, the lovely Mrs. Sneed and I have lived in six different residences. I think I can say with a high degree of confidence that our mail has always been delivered late in the afternoon. I asked our current mailman Keith about it and he said it is because they have to deliver mail to businesses during working hours. I'm not buying it, there is something more sinister going on. The reason I bring this up is because the DirecTV guy came today to hook up our HDTV. HDTV of course stands for High-Definition Television, a picture so clear that you can see bald man's head sweat, which as the lovely Mrs. Sneed pointed out, isn't worth paying for. But there is more to it than that. I'm sure that it is just happenstance that Dick Vitale's sweaty melon popped onto the screen just as I was showing her the quality of the picture. Our appointment was supposed to be sometime between 1 pm and 5 pm. I figured that I would have to act fast if I was going to take care of matters this morning and still get back by 1 pm, even though I knew our guy would arrive closer to five than one. The corollary to the "last on the route rule", is that should you count on being last and plan accordingly, you will be first. Another truism is, should you notice your neighbor's car lights on and go next door to tell her, the delivery guy will arrive while you're gone, knock at your door, leave you a note and disappear, all in under a minute. So I figured that I would be home bound from one to five today. I went to get Sneedlet at 11 am, leaving myself plenty of time to get back by one pm. I needed to pick him up so that he could be out of his mother's hair. She has school work due Monday and he doesn't add much to the homework completion process. I also had to keep him out of our house, because the lovely Mrs. Sneed has important work to do and doesn't have time to watch videos with his highness today. It fell to me to keep him out of trouble or at least out of sight. When I arrived to pick him up, he inexplicably refused to come along. It took both Daughter Sneed and me to force him kicking and screaming, into his car seat. This was followed by a 25 minute drive across town with him screaming his brains out. I took him to the mall playground, got him pizza for lunch, we went to the bank and then just made it home by one. By then we were once more the best of pals. Sneedlet and I spent a lovely three hours outside in front of the house playing. Technically, I sat in a chair trying to read, while he raced around, stopping periodically to ask me if I was asleep. Why this fascinated him is beyond me, but it weighed heavy on his mind. I want to go on record here as saying I don't sleep in the driveway. The neighbors don't need anymore evidence that I am a weirdo. "The guy" arrived promptly at four-thirty. I asked if we were his last appointment and he confirmed that we were. He said he was actually a bit early, because the customer before us wasn't home. What a break for us. The fellow finished up his work around six-thirty and I have to tell you that this HDTV is amazing. Merle. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor