Birdhouses

I'm thinking of hanging some of these bird houses on our front porch. No bird in it's right mind would make a nest in one in that location, but they are very decorative. 

For no obvious reason, other than the fact that we feel a certain familiarity with the Alpine roads and small Italian towns (not that different from small French towns, although the French probably blanch at such a suggestion) we have become avid Tour de France watchers. We know all the characters, have been through the awful downfall of Lance Armstrong and most of the otherGC riders of his day, and are now following some of the young newcomers. 

Since the Tour comes on at 5am here, we have a small television in our bedroom which we never watch any other time. When we turned it on ten days ago, it didn't work, which was the last straw for Comcast, our cable provider. Since the cable is still lying on the ground after repeated attempts to get them to install it properly, we finally switched to Direct TV. The Direct TV guy came today to install a satellite. 

Currently, Tommy, the Universal remote programmer, is here switching all our components over to the new system. We inherited most of the entertainment system from the former owners, but couldn't make anything work until we finally noticed Tommy's card after six months. Tommy is the fellow who told us about the "singing rocks" in the garden and brought us the joys of Apple tv and streaming Netflix. 

I never thought we would require a brace of guys to keep us watching about three television programs and coordinate a number of services that we never use, but it is a sign that once again technology is running away from us faster than we can keep up without some help. Although we call it "communication" it seems to me that it is almost the opposite.Tommy is a personable and competent young man, and it's almost worth not having to go through an annoying menu to call him. He actually answers his own phone.