The sad story of the state of my leisure time

Following my previous post I retired to my room where I discovered two things. First that, not only did my tv not have cable but that it didn't even have farmer vision.** Second, that my life is in a sad state. By that I mean that I practically had a panic attack when I realized there was nothing for me to do for the entire evening. Here is my tale.

After changing out of my gross survey-dirtied clothes I did a quick check of the tv. The news was on on CBC and some kid's movie on the next station up, but I didn't pay attention to the channel name. As I flicked through I realised there was only five stations. "Sucky," I thought. But it didn't worry me because all the shows I wanted to watch that evening (read The premiere of Survivor which I've been looking forward to for weeks!) would be on CTV, "and everyone in Saskatchewan gets CTV, even if they don't have cable". So I watched the rest of the kid's movie and ordered a pizza. I even saved my no sugar added chocolate bar to enjoy while I watched Survivor. By the way, Surviror is my favourite show. Anyway, I did a very small amount of work while I waited for 7pm to arrive. And then, panic struck. I turned through the channels and paid a bit more attention this time. There was no CTV. NO CTV!!! Which meant no Survivor. In a pout, I turned off the tv and worked on a couple reports. About 8:30 I was bored and turned the tv back on to explore what I actually did have.

CBC - which alternated between repeating the exact same story (every half hour) about the terrible shooting in Montreal and a ridiculously boring black and white movie.

TSN - which didn't even have a game on, just clips and guys spouting their sporting predictions. Not my thing.

Showtime - which had a special on about sex and art. Definately not my thing.

HBO - which had a documentary on profanity (and because it's HBO they used all the words they were documenting as many times as they wanted). Without a doubt, not my thing.

and CNN - all war stuff.

I tried to rent a DVD to watch on my laptop. But after driving by the turn-off twice and having to proceed five minutes down the highway until I found a road to cross over and double back, they wouldn't let me rent anything at the movie store because I was not from that town. I've done a lot of travelling in the past year for work, they always let you rent it if you are from out of town. You just need a VISA. Not this place - they were very unhospitible. I returned to the hotel almost in tears (not really, more perturbed than anything) because I was going to have to just sit and think. I had no book to read, nothing to watch on TV, no internet and no movie to entertain myself with. I suppose I could have found the bar and met some locals. I would have preferred watching CNN. So that is what I did. I kept working on reports and watched war stuff. I was very glad to leave that place the next day. Serves me right for forgetting to bring even a book.

** Farmer vision is the name my friends (most of whom lived on a farm) used for their television stations. Which pretty much consisted of chanel 2 - CBC and channel 8 - CTV. Cable was not an option for farm people back then.