Category Archives: communication

Empty Nester

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Authored by Oswaldo Blackburn

We are moving my youngest daughter to college! She is the last to leave the nest so I am officially an empty nester. I do not know what I will do with my time, although over the last couple of years, I have had a glimpse into this upcoming period of my life. Summer has not needed me so much since she began to drive a couple of years ago. And I have relinquished a lot of my school mom activities and responsibilities as the girls got older. I was always the room mom when they were in elementary school. I organized the seasonal parties, called the other mothers for assistance, bought the teacher gifts, chaperoned school field trips and dances, and sent homemade cookies to class about once a month. I made sure my girls were happy and had a great learning and socializing experience in school. Now, I may call expertsatellite and add some more cooking and travel channels for my viewing since I will have so much extra time on my hands now!

Showing Some Initiative

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Guest post written by my buddy Bernardo Graham

As a stay-at-home mom for the last several years, I’ve enjoyed watching my kids grow up. As they’ve gotten older and more independent, I’ve found myself with a little more free time on my hands. My goal was always to go back to work after they started school and as the time got closer for that to happen, I was starting to get worried that with 7 years out of the work force, my skills were a little rusty. We recently signed up with satellite star internet.com and I decided to put our newfound resource to work. Lately while the kids have been occupied with their own entertainment or taking naps, I’ve started doing some research on going back to school. The local community college offers classes online and I’m thinking of taking some to increase my value to potential employers. Not only do I think it will help improve my relevance but I am hoping it will show some initiative on my part when someone looks at my resume and sees I’ve been doing more than just keeping house!

Now I’m Hooked

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Post contributed by Fletcher Vargas

I never really cared much about having Cable Television at home but when my sister wouldn’t stop talking about those Housewife shows I decided it was time to spring for satellite since it was a better deal and I got even more channels. Anyway, I’ve become obsessed with them all which is good since I feel like all BRAVO does all day is rerun old episodes! I work from home so I’ve actually been getting less work done than ever but those Housewives of New Jersey are just fascinating – I can’t pull myself away when they’re on there giving each other attitude! It’s also fun because my sister watches out in Oregon and we chat about the episodes afterwards which is a good way for us to keep in touch more often than we were before. I never watched much TV before now but I have to be honest and say that I totally understand what all the fuss is about when it comes to reality Tv. It’s totally addictive, at least for me!

Wedding planning with TV

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Guest post written by my buddy Fidel Hernandez

I used to plan my wedding by looking at magazines and online and I’ve gotten to where what I like to do most is watch on direct TV. It’s so much easier to find inspiration from one of the fifty bajillion wedding shows that are on TV and I think David Tutera is my favorite. He’s so over the top and he’s got this one show where he comes in and totally makes over someone’s wedding. That’s all well and good but they don’t really talk about how much it costs once he does it the way he wants which is what sets it apart – of course their wedding wasn’t going to look that good, they didn’t have 75k to blow on it, David! Anyway, Bridezillas is good and I loved that old show Whose Wedding is it Anyway. That was one about planners and their brides and I could totally relate to how crazy some of those women were, unfortunately. I think everyone’s waiting for me to be done with planning!

Thinking over my sorority rush fashion choices

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Guest post written by Gabby Herman

I’ve just decided that I’m going to rush the Greek system. This wasn’t something that I had thought over that much, but after I moved into my dorm and started hearing good things about the Greek system from older girls on my hall, I decided that it would be worth a try. Now, I still don’t know if it’s for me right now, but I guess that I’ll just have to think about it once I start meeting people during rush.

As I was online looking up some info about what I can expect during rush week, I ran across the site http://www.cleartvbundle.com/direct_tv_bundle.html. Immediately, I sent it to my mom because I knew she wanted to switch our home internet service to something better than our old provider.

I’m really trying to concentrate on my fashion for rush because I think that’s a big factor. I think that actually a lot of it has to do with how you put yourself together. If you do a great job of putting together an ensemble and doing your hair, it won’t be as noticeable if you’re wearing no name labels.

Family Time

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A lot of people have family time by getting everyone together for a joint activity like a game night or a vacation. Not us! We really, really like to watch movies together as a family and now that we have this awesome 3D TV we like it even more – we’ve got four pairs of glasses so everyone can watch! We recently subscribed to cable through direc.TV or someone and it’s been the best…we’ve got tons of movie channels to choose from and we usually let the kids each pick one. My son obviously goes for more of the action movies while my daughter likes the comedy stuff like The Hangover. My husband and I don’t really care because we just love getting to spend so much time with our kids and not hearing them complain about it! In my opinion, family time is whatever you make of it and as long as you’re together it doesn’t matter if you’re knitting, cooking or watching movies like we do. The point is that we all make the effort!

Guest post from: Constance Rodgers

You Must Leave The Runway….

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Contributed by Alec Bates

As a straight woman, I have to honestly say that the only reason I DVR “Project Runway” on my TV by Direct is because there is no way I could miss super model Heidi Klum telling a wanna-be designer every week that they must “Leave the runway.”

This show is actually great to watch and is oddly, for reality television, very entertaining to watch. I think it’s fascinating to watch these very unique individuals come together and create for their passion, which is designing clothes. I think it’s really interesting to watch their thought processes work, and see their ideas for fashion pieces go from conception to birth. Of course as with any reality show, the producers always pick a lively group of individuals whose clashing personalities are bound to collide, especially when they’re under so much time pressure to get a project done, and since they have Heidi Klum sitting out there at the end of the week ready to judge their fashion creations.

Besides seeing the creativity in their fashion creations, it’s also fun to see their own individual creativity when it comes to their own outfits. Some of the fashion designing contestants look as though they just rolled out of bed that morning, leading one to think that perhaps they need someone to design an outfit or two for them….

Dora the Explorer

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Post contributed by Noah Schmidt

I guess that my favorite educational show for kids that comes on these days would have to be Dora the Explorer. I have to admit that the first time that I saw this show on satellite tv that we got after seeing this Cable TV comparison, I was not impressed. I really did not understand why my daughter liked it so much. However, as time went by, I watched more episodes with her. The more that I watched, the more I learned about the Spanish language. My daughter was learning it as well. That is a great thing to learn. Our culture here is now filled with people who are speaking Spanish and this is a great show to help our youth learn more about it.

The reason that I like the show so much is the fact that it is a teaching show in disguise. I was not impressed in the beginning because it just did not seem like a show that would teach my daughter anything. Now I know different. I am so glad that I gave this show a chance. I now even recommend it to my students at school. They love it just as much as I do.

The Best Is On CBS

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Guest post by Homer Nielsen

One of the best things about being a football fan is having four networks to watch football during the week. Besides the Sunday afternoon games on FOX and CBS, you also get a Sunday night game on NBC and a Monday night game on ESPN. In addition, if you watch sports on TVByDirect you can also get a fifth network to watch football: the NFL Network that shows games on Thursday night in the second half of the season. To me, though, there is one network who’s NFL coverage stands out above the others: CBS. While NBC and FOX tries to act cool, and ESPN can be a little bit self important at times, CBS stands out above the rest because of one main reason: they actually treat the football game like, well, a football game.

What do I mean by that? Well, CBS doesn’t have any “explosive” graphics, or cool, hip studio analysts, they just have the best announcers and the best game producers in the game. If you are interested in actually seeing a game with people who actually know what they are talking about, then CBS is your best and, sometimes, only choice. The NFL Network isn’t too bad either, except most people in the United States don’t even get the network on cable or satellite providers.

Ornament garland accents

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Guest post written by Dahlia Brockwell

I’ve never been all that crazy about garland that’s actual greenery because I have pretty bad nasal allergies. But then, I also don’t really care for the Christmas garland that’s made out of artificial greenery either. I think I can attribute that last part to my mom making me hang up that stuff all over our house because I was the youngest and she was afraid to get up on the ladder to hang it.

I’ve kind of made it my goal to find a different kind of garland to use in all of my Christmas decorations though. I went online to try and find some ideas about it. When I was doing that a few weeks ago, I happened upon some Direct TV Internet prices that looked pretty appealing. After doing a little bit more research, I decided to sign up for the internet service.

I found this really great idea to put together some DIY ornament garland. Instead of using greenery, it used a lot of ribbon, rope and ornaments. I had some extra ornaments that just wouldn’t fit on my tree anyway, so I made a couple of bundles of garland like that and it looks so great!