Because of some break-ins in our neighborhood recently, we decided to have a security system installed.  This decision seemed simple enough.  Only, nothing is ever simple.

Since we haven’t had a land-line at our house since roughly 2004, we decided to have one installed.  Otherwise, we’d have to pay a huge fee upfront to ADT, ( along with a monthly charge) for them to monitor the system through our cell phones.  I called AT&T to inquire, and within five minutes I had agreed to one of their bundles that includes cable, internet and phone service.  Tim had actually been looking in to U-verse for awhile but had never closed the deal, so I thought I was doing him a favor.   And I was.  Because hanging out with the cable guy for 7.5 hours is what you call Building Character.

After 2 hours, we figured out that the phone service being installed was VOIP (voice over IP) and not a traditional POTS line.  Do you want to know what POTS stands for?  Are you sure?…because it’s so technical it might blow your mind.  It stands for Plain Old Telephone Service.  I have a degree in Telecommunication, so that’s how I know.  Worth every penny.  So, even though I told the sales woman on the phone that I didn’t want VOIP, because POTS works best with the security system, she apparently signed us up for VOIP anyway.

Thus began a 2 hour quest to get AT&T to comprehend that they are a phone company and ought to be able to install a standard phone line.  They finally agreed to get right on that – next Monday.  Maybe.  If everything goes well.  Did you know that’s why service operators wear head sets?  Yeah, so they can cross their fingers for you.

So we said to the cable guy, forget the phone service – just do not leave here until the TV and internet are working.  Do not.  He promised he wouldn’t, and got to work.  Soon after getting started, he wanted to know why we hadn’t ordered HD service for the gigantic HD television in the middle of our tiny living room.  I bet you can guess that we actually had ordered HD, but I’ll spare you the ridiculousness of the ensuing scene.

Tim’s mom was watching the kids for us and decided she’d had enough.  She popped some popcorn, stuffed it in her purse, and took the kids to see a movie.

The cable guy finally left at about 6:30pm and I found myself missing him.  He’d become part of the family in a way – tripping over the dog and remembering to close the back gate so she wouldn’t escape.  I only hope that when we make another rash decision that snowballs into a comedy of errors and forces us to spend a ridiculous amount of time with a stranger in our home, that that stranger is a lot like him.