LIFE'S little PROBLEMS

 Dear Blog, faithful listener:

   I have now 2 working television sets in my house, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. There are at least 2 more, but they haven't been used in a while, because how many tv's does one person need. 

   I mostly have the tv turned on in the living room. While I used to watch shows in bed at night, I seldom have of late, because I stay up til early morning,  due to troubling discomfort when  lying down.

  Sometime in the late fall, though, I found it impossible to activate the bedrom tv. The picture would come on, sometimes without sound, and sometimes not at all. 
The channel would not change. The volume would be at the highest level, unable to be lowered. I replaced the batteries in the Spectrum remote several times, even checking their functioning with the batteries in my working remote. I rebooted the tv, numerous times. All to no lasting effect.

I knew there was a problem, and attributed it to the tv set.  I figured I could ask someone to help me swap out that tv  with one of the inactive tv sets, but I just didn't care enough to do anything about it.   

 Until the arrival of this bitter cold weather. The house gets chilly at night, the thermostat on automatic settings. Rather than adjust the setting, I just wanted to pile on  4 or 5 of my favorite fleecy blankets and watch tv in bed. But the tv does not cooperate. I went through ritual after ritual again:  turning it on and off, rebooting, pressing every damn button on and off the set in every conceivable manner, trying to use the remote which came with the tv, all to no avail. The best I could do was get a single channel with maximum volume, unbearable to even my aging ears. I hesitated to ask for help.The people in my family are very busy, and I can't allow outside repair folks into the hellhole of my bedroom. 

   Pondering my plight one chilly night, while watching the living room tv, but wanting to get under those fleece blankets, I walked into the bedroom, unaware I had the remote from the living room tv in hand. Lo and Behold!  The bedroom tv sprang alive.   Two identical Spectrum remotes, and one remote just ate batteries for no purpose. 

  Next day, I called Spectrum, and the nice man sent me not one, but two new remotes. They come with batteries.