Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my family! Today, is my big brothers birthday. Happy Birthday Ted! However, most importantly, we are receiving our Sky television hookup. We’ve been in Rome for a month and we’ve only had access to a handful of local Rome television channels. For me, this hasn’t been a huge problem, but for my family, this has been a very huge problem!

The word has been: The man who lives in the Penthouse apartment on top of our building works for the Italian State Department and he is currently based in the Singapore. So, we’ve been waiting for his family member to provide access to the roof for the Sky technicians to install our mini satellite dish.

Today, the owner of our apartment, our housekeeper and a Sky technician (he has great tattoos all over both arms! Oh, and now I can see he has some on his back, above his underwear that has Pimp printed on the waistband, and NY printed on them – they’re hanging out!) have showed up to install our Sky TV. This will make my family very happy.

I don’t really watch television. When I sit down, with time to waste on a television program, there’s rarely anything on that I want to watch. I never really got into reality television (my life has been plenty, thank you -and really- how much of those shows are reality?) I’m too busy to watch a series – I’ll miss the next week because I’m at a PTA meeting or hosting a dinner – then I’ve missed too much and have no idea why someone is doing something. I don’t find the situational comedies comedic. And I don’t care for the majority of the cooking/adventure eating shows. For news, I read the New York Times and local paper, and catch CNN online. My brother keeps me updated with the obscure news via Facebook, so I’ve been good to go.

My family watches television. My husband watches MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News and the ESPN family of channels. My son loves the ESPN’s, but also still watches Nickelodeon with his Comedy Central. He also watches the History Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery and the like. My daughter eats up all of the teenage angst shows sprinkled all through the cable channels.

Sadly, I no longer receive The New York Times or local paper. I can read them online, but it’s just not the same. Even with my brother’s thorough updates, I’ve felt cut off from the rest of the world. I’ve struggled this last month staying informed of current events. Especially with the passing of Patrick Swayze.

So I’m thankful for our birthday gift of Sky TV!