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While I was home yesterday, I was on a conference call when a different call beeped through.  I could see that it was the local elementary school.  Thinking some child of mine needed help I interrupted the conference call to accept the elementary school call.  It was Chloe’s violin teacher who was calling to let me know that Chloe’s playing suggested she hadn’t been practicing much.  She wanted to know if there was something going on at home that she should know about.

SOMETHING GOING ON AT HOME?!

I was very distracted by the conference call so I assured her that everything was fine and Chloe would practice; goodbye.  But the more I thought about it the more offended I got.   Chloe’s VIOLIN teacher, who has only JUST taught them how to rosin their bows despite ostensibly teaching them violin since SEPTEMBER thought she should check on what was happening at home.

DUHWHAT?!?

This is crazy.  Also, I should mention that as it turned out Chloe hasn’t been to class in over two weeks because some foul weather cancelled school.  Its not like she spent the whole hour having to focus on Chloe because she’s fallen behind or something.  She hasn’t even seen chloe for weeks!  So what prompted the called?

And on what basis did she think “something” was going on at home?  Abuse perhaps?  A death in the family?  What was she hoping to find?

Coincidentally, she’s right - chloe hasn’t been practicing but that’s not really the point.

What kills me about this is that she NEVER even asked Chloe what was up.  She never took chloe aside and wanted to know why she hadn’t practiced her violin.  Not once.  She never even casually asked Chloe, in front of people what was up.  Why is she calling me up, interrupting MY work to ask me what kind of nefarious activities are going on at home that are keeping chloe from practicing PLUCKING her violin?!

I think I need to call her back and find out if there’s something going on at school that is preventing Chloe from learning how to play the violin.

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Food: Cheeseburger in a Can is Both the Best and Worst Thing I’ve Ever Seen

Genius or afront-to-humanity - you be the judge

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Yesterday was a tremendous pain in the neck.  I stayed home so we could get rid of the Voice-over-IP system we were using and replace it with standard telephone service from Verizon.  While they were out I asked them to switch my TV service to FiOS as well.

The telephone portion ran quite smoothly and even the TV portion went ok.  But it turns out that Tivo won’t function they way it used to.  It only gets the first 50 channels because it does not have Verizon’s proprietary descramber box.

My TV has several input options – one is set to Tivo and one is set to Cable.  When I want to watch something on Tivo I use the television’s remote to switch it over to the Tivo input.  But now, because I need a descrambler / cable-box the Tivo box has to be inserted in between the television and the cable-box.  The cable-box can only put out one channel at a time, so Tivo also needs a way to change the cable-box’s channel.  But if it does that I can’t watch something else at the same time Tivo is recording something.

At my house, Tivo rules.  The whole family uses Tivo to record shows we like.  If this system doesn’t work with Tivo, then it’s a deal breaker.

As far as I can tell, I have only two solutions. 

1. I have an extra cable-box that I am renting.  I got one box for each TV, but one of the TV’s is only ever used to watch network tv so it doesn’t need a box.  I can devote the extra cable-box to the Tivo and let Tivo change the channels on that one willy-nilly without impacting what I am watching on the other cable-box.  This option will cost $4 a month.
2. I can dump this FiOS-tv and return to Comcast.  With my tail between my legs.  They might not see it that way though.  I wonder if they would give me any incentives to come back.

I think Liz would prefer option #2 anyway because, although it doesn’t offer 20-bajillion channels (50 may be sufficient for us) she is familiar with where they all are.

More on that as things shake out.

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