Goodbye Express Mail.

0Josh • 28th Dec 2004 • blog entries, nome., station life

Odd, it feels like Christmas just swept right over us this year. I’m sure part of it has to do with being in a job this year where I had very little time off, part of it is due to the fact that Christmas was on a weekend….and the largest majority is because we aren’t home, things were different, and there were no after Christmas sales to be sought. Things are moving right along again at work, and at home. We were even forced to take down our christmas tree last night because all the needles were falling off and driving us crazzy.

A month ago Lydia and I decided that we wanted to order a satellite dish. We had been holding of for a long time, and the time was right. We’ve decided to go with a dish, because to pay for cable here, its about $80 a month. The dish came about 2 weeks ago, and I soon learned that it was going to be a tough project to get this 1.2 meter monstrosity on the side of our house…and facing the right way. Its about 4 times bigger than what we had on our house back in Seattle, because of Nome’s position on the earth. Within a few days I got the mount up, and the dish assembled. However I figured out that there was no way that I could point this thing in the exact position that it needed to be in to receive a signal. I called up the dish service guy in town and asked him to come out. He found this signal, however told me that it wasn’t going to last because my dish wasn’t mounted properly…and wind would knock it out of alignment. He was right, and 30 minutes later I was back to a blue screen. After talking with Lydia, I called him back and asked if I could hire him to
re-install the entire dish. He could come back in 3 or 4 days. I called him up the afternoon we had planned on him coming out, and he asked for another 3 or 4 day delay. Much to his credit, I wouldn’t want to work when it was 25 below zero, and would ask to come back when it was 40 degrees warmer too!

So on Sunday, the day after Christmas he came out to our house and re-installed the dish. At first he was having as much trouble as I had finding the right spot to bolt the support arms to as I had…but then he was able to get things going. Sunday evening Lydia and I sat down an watched “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”, a show that was a Sunday evening tradition the last few months we lived in Maple Valley. We are excited to have survivor thursdays, while also making sure that we don’t over do it on TV….it was kind of nice to have quiet evenings at home (when we weren’t renting DVDs ).

Things are rolling along at the radio station too. I got a 12 hour christmas program that aired christmas day, and I also got one for New Years. They are hosted by christian artists like Rebecca St. James, Jars of Clay, FFH, Mercy Me, and Erin O’Donnel. Its a pretty cool show, but it takes lots of work to rip all the CDs into the computer, and then edit the log so they play in order…..well, not so much lots of work, but lots of time….so I’m working on New Years this week.