This is ground control...

I can't think of a positive employment of the word "snag." Not that I am trying particularly hard to do so. Or at all. Jumping to mind: snagging my shirt as I tried to squeeze my way through a barbed-wire fence as a child; that feeling when you know you have not just hooked into a big one on the McKenzie River, but are snagged on the bottom and are about to lose the whole rig. That's enough. I don't want to go on. I can't. I must. I will. Our move into our new house has been very smooth. Snag-free even. From the moment we decided on it, through closing, even the packing and early stages of moving in. I made an appointment for the digital cable and internet service to be switched to the new address. Heck, I even decided to go wireless. But wait, there's more! I decided also to switch to digital phone service. To bundle. I don't like the sound of that one bit. I was elated when the appointment window was two hours, instead of the old "sometime before lunch." Between 8 and 10. Ante meridian. This was gonna be a cinch. No furniture in the way. Lot's of cable outlets. The equipment all nicely laid out where it would reside. Cables at the ready. Plug and play baby! Plug and play! I could even putter around until they arrived. Get a few things unpacked. I started to wonder when I heard the clock strike 9:30. At ten I became a little annoyed. At 10:30 I decided that I would catch the 11:15 bus if they had not arrived. At 10:45 they arrived. They were apologetic, and battered from their first morning job. What could I do or say? Nothing. When the techs saw everything laid out they became...giddy. Yes giddy. Thanking me for making it so easy for them that they might catch up with their schedule, they set about hooking up everything. This was so cool! When they went to check the signal, things veered off course. Badly. The cable signal was too weak. Like totally way too weak. On the exterior of the house they found that the previous dog had chewed the cables. All of them. Cables were replaced. Signals were checked and re-checked. Etc... After every single cable in and around the house had been replaced, some more than once (I suspect), the signal was again checked. Nope. What next? They pulled up the underground cable leading to the house from the Big Green Box and replaced it. At last, we had a winner. We were all quite happy to put a really bad morning behind us. As the guys were looking around out back during the ordeal, I heard one tell the other, let's call him two, that there were "lots of balls out here." I knew of the basketball the former owners left in the back corner, but that was it. It took me a minute. Shall I explain Dear Reader? I shall. "Balls" is cable tech code for doggie-you-know-what. The previous owner's dog was apparently not only a chewer, but also quite an athlete.