Welcome home, Donnie

Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

Last Thursday evening, a house became a home.

Or at least that's how I tried to explain it to my wife as a man dug a hole in our new back yard. He was throwing up a satellite dish, which my daughter and I have named Donnie the Dish. Nothing says "home" quite like 200 digital satellite channels, including enough sports programming to make your head spin.

My wife doesn't see the need for 200 channels, like the Game Show Network in which you can watch replays of old 1970s game shows. Or ESPN Classic, on which I found myself watching a 1984 USFL game at 1 a.m. the other night. I, on the other hand, definitely see the need for Donnie's presence. My reasoning comes in three words -- January, February, March.

Like most Alaskans, my family's habits change with the season. We aren't TV hounds by any means (except for during hockey, football and baseball seasons, or any time ESPN is on the air, at least in my case), but as the seasons change and darkness envelops us for winter, we find ourselves trading in tents and sleeping bags and fishing rods for a movie at home or a favorite television program.

I admire those people who can live up in the woods, without electricity or running water. I like doing it for a weekend or two, but couldn't handle it for a decade at a time.

It's a romantic notion to live off the land, providing all the essentials for your family to survive by your own two hands.

The only survival tactic I know to put food on the table with my hands, however, is the U-Scan at Fred Meyer, and therein lies the problem for me.

So I freely admit that I'm not a mountain man, and my family would starve if it relied on me to put food on the table any other way than bringing home a paycheck, a sack from Carrs and maybe a salmon or two from a weekend outing.

I need grocery stores. I need electricity. I need Donnie, and all of his 200-channel glory.

If it makes me a weaker man, so be it.

Casey Ressler (valleylfie@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor and an official "Friend of Donnie the Dish."