Saturday 23 July 2016

Weekends at home

Because of the way TV programming is organised, weekends at home are more challenging than weekdays. On weekdays there is a whole newsroom full of staff at the ABC producing the programming for ABC News 24 - the 24-hour TV news station of the public broadcaster - but on weekends they function on a reduced staff so they fill the remainder of the time available with reruns from the past week. Which is not as fun as wall-to-wall news. What do they think, that the news stops on weekends? People stop getting into trouble and having car crashes? What is it about weekends that makes the TV so boring?

I went up the road to have a bowl of ramen for lunch after sleeping for most of the morning. The ramen was good but when I get home I want to sit down with the TV on and drink wine and watch social media. That's what I do in the afternoons. It's like a ritual for me now - the TV on in the background with the browser windows open at Facebook, Twitter and TweetDeck, Google Plus and LinkedIn etcetera. There are a lot of windows open at my pages.

The other problem with the TV is that the volume is really low. Even when I turn the volume up to 100% it's still low because it needs to be fixed. I can't take the TV to the repair shop however because it's too heavy for one person to carry. So I have to buy a new one. Maybe when things have settled following the death of my mother I can think about spending a bit of cash on a new TV. Right now is not a good time.

The other thing that has happened is that the death certificate came through from the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. This means that my lawyer can get on with the job of getting probate for my mother's will. One of the big ticket items that has to be looked after when someone dies. In the meantime I will sit here and watch TV and drink wine. Some people have very thoughtfully offered to do something together in this period of mourning, but I find it all a bit challenging. Going out, I mean. It's so much simpler to just stay at home and engage on social media like the mad thing that I am.

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