Monday, August 08, 2005

IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE

.....such as losing the remote control. It's not a garden variety remote, either. It's the fancy schmancy DVR remote to the digital TV. The Tivo-like remote. It's amazing how its disappearance has had an adverse affect on my life; and I didn't think I watched a lot of TV for it to affect me so.

Since having my DVR, I have gotten "hooked" on rewinding live TV shows to catch something I missed or to watch my own replay of a Cardinals game. Another advantage to this is if the phone rings in the middle of a show, I just hit pause and I don't miss anything. I also tape The Daily Show and catch up with it when the time is convenient for me.

Without the remote control, I can basically turn the TV on and off and manually change the channels. This is a pain as the "system" seems to take a few seconds before advancing to the next channel. When one has several hundred channels from which to chose, this takes awhile.

Quiet often, I tend to tune in to one of the music channels; but since those are in the 900 range on my channel selection, I haven't been taking the time to manually select those.

The house has been torn upside down and sideways in my search for the remote control. I thought back to the last time I saw it and that was last weekend when my daughter and son-in-law were in town. I remembered seeing Tim sitting on the couch watching a Cardinals game while Jenni and I ran errands. When we got home, they opened their luggage and re-arranged things prior to leaving for the airport to go to Florida.

Naturally, I suspected the remote ended up in their luggage. They have claimed they've searched it and can't find it. With it being such a fancy schmancy remote, I can't go to Target and pick up a universal remote. I've put off calling the cable company to get a replacement because I know it's going to cost me a lot of coin. I keep waiting for the kids to call me and say "guess what?" In fact, every time they have called, I've started off the conversation with "you found it?" I think that was beginning to annoy them.

Last night, I was getting desperate. For the UMPTEENTH time, I removed the couch cushions, this time stacking them in the middle of the room so they would not be able to camouflage my objective. Then I ran my hand all around the edges of the couch, finding tissues, a sock, two pens, lottery ticket and......THE REMOTE!!

Ta DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Life is back to normal.....except I am now missing the little black rubber plug to the little metal thingy on the steamer on my capuccino maker. You wouldn't think that little thingy would make a difference, but it does. I've been placing a folded paper towel over the teeny tiny opening, but it's not the same.

When I called the kids to ask them to look through their luggage for it, they hung up on me.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

When one has several hundred channels from which to chose, this takes awhile.

Well, excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me!

That is a truly hilarious story, sly, especially the last line.

When we first got married we had an old, manual black & white tv. One of the tubes (remember them?) in the back was loose and we actually used a fork to hold it in! That we didn't burn down the place is amazing now.

It was years before we got our first tv with a remote. It's scary how far we've come since then, especially looking back to where we were.

When we were kids our first television had a small screen with a magnifier (literally) in front of it to make the picture look bigger. (All right, I've already admitted I'm old.)

Now we all blithely talk about VCRs, DVDs, TiVo, hundreds of channels, etc etc. I still remember getting our first VCR in the early 1980s.

Geezer bus boarding in 10 minutes!

Anonymous said...

Jeff - and you wonder why Dave referred to you as the "AARP guy"?

I now have to have 4 (four!) remote thingy's for each of my TV's - this is getting ridiculous!

Anonymous said...

When my family first got cable and a remote box, the "remote" was a big box with big push bottons, that was actually wired to the tv. Long wire connected the box to the tv. No possible way to lose that thing.

Leetie said...

Sly, I'll send you my little black rubber thingie. I'm not using mine. :)

wysiwyg said...

Arrrr....but when *I* were a lad, my parent's remote control was one of *us*.

"'OY, Jim-me-lad", me old dad used to say, "get up an flick it over to the sorts willya!"

But o'course then me mum would say "'OY, Jim-me-lad, forget that, fick it over to the soaps willya".

By gum, by the end of the evening I were in such a lather I could barely walk.

But you tell that to the kids of today......

Anonymous said...

And how many channels did you have "when you were a lad", Wys?

We had 2-4-5-7-9-11-13 until cable. Now, like Sly, there are hundreds.