We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties

God hates me. Now I am convinced.

I watch TV once a year, for a three week period in July during a little bike race called the Tour de France. For me it is a culmination of the Stanley Cup finals, World Cup, and final episode of Dallas when we finally found out “Who Shot JR”. And right now, as the Tour gets underway, my TV is not working.

We made the jump to digital cable recently and reluctantly – not sure the extra money we were paying for all the channels we never watch was quite worth it. Especially since our TV looks something like this:

You’d never put a Hemi in Pinto, so needless to say we didn’t shell out for HD or PVR.

With digital cable the remote control is all powerful. It is the magic key to the kingdom of reality shows, Martha’s Good Things, and all the Denzel Washington movies ever made. Unfortunately, that fragile little piece of plastic filled with delicate electronic circuits was not made for little boys with juice boxes.

And so the remote is broken, the TV stuck in Teletoon limbo. Which didn’t matter last week. But now it is a problem.

A big problem.

After spending 45 minutes on hold with Shaw Cable last night, and another 30 minutes on the line with a bored and mildly irritated service guy (think IT guy), it was determined the remote control was broken (brilliance) and we would require a visit from a technician.

Me: Are you SURE?

Cable Guy: Yes ma’am, I’m afraid so.

Me: When can he be here?

Cable Guy:  Uh…. Friday.

Me: (unsuccessfully trying not to swear) Fuck.

Cable Guy: (thinking “man, this lady loves her TV”) You can plug the cable directly into the set and get some of your channels.

Me: Would TSN2 happen to be one of those channels?

Cable Guy: Umm, no.

Me: Fuck.

(My Mom: Andrea LYNNE!!!)

Now that I think of it, maybe God hates me because I swear too much.

So until The Cable Guy comes on Friday, I have found a slightly dodgy link where I can watch the Tour live and in English on my laptop when I am supposed to be working. The only trouble is the resolution is quite low, so if I go full screen to watch the final sprint, it looks something like this:

I can pick out Movistar because of those crazy green helmets, otherwise it could be Larry Hagman winning that sprint for all I know.

Next year I’m not trusting my Tour experience to the fickle whims of technology. I’m going to France. By boat.