Bloop Bloop Bloop thirty seconds at a time

It's one of my favorite times of the year...

Fall Season Premiere week.

Old favorites are coming back to my family room...Survivor! Desperate Housewives!! Boston Legal!!

In the stone-age time of 2002, "Season Premiere Week" would involve ignoring phone calls during prime time, labeling VCR tapes and having different shows recorded on different TVs...and then collecting dust as I never watched the taped shows.

But in 2003, my life changed. I met the first man who ever made my life truly happy...

Mr. Tivo.

When I got my first Tivo, it was a fairly new gadget and most people didn't understand it. My mom certainly thought it was a waste of money. I admit, I never told her how much it actually cost. (ahem).

But it didn't take long before our family decided we couldn't possibly watch TV without a peanut-shaped remote in our hands bloop-bloop-blooping our way through commercials. Someone recently asked me if I had seen that new commercial for something-or-other. Ummm. Nope. Commercials are for the neanderthals who don't have a "fast-forward" button on their TV.

I scoff at the poor souls who actually believe their cable companies when they say "Our DVR is JUST LIKE TIVO." Yeah. And a Big Mac is JUST LIKE PRIME RIB! As someone who has experienced both Tivo and Cable's DVRs, there is no comparison. They both do the basics - record TV. But Tivo does it easier, better, and with features Cable can't fathom.

• Record every show to my computer? It's a simple push of a button. Transfer the TiVo shows to iPod? One click.
  
• Record a show in the living room and play it in my office? No problemo.
  
• How about watching home movies on the TiVo?
  
• Or better yet, send home movies to the Tivo at your friend's house in Iowa? It's pretty simple. As long as you get the real Tivo.

So...a year later, I bought a TiVo for each of the girls for Christmas. The following year, Mom got one for Christmas, too.

Yes, we're addicted. I'm even creating a spreadsheet with lists of which series gets recorded on which Tivo so that we can watch EVERYTHING! I'm totally anal about not watching a series unless I see every episode. I still have a full year's worth of "Dirty Sexy Money" saved on my office's TiVo queue because I missed one episode and haven't taken the time to watch it online. But I will. Just as soon as I get through Chuck and Heroes and Pushing Daisies and...

Hmmm.... My "To Be Recorded" list is in serious jeopardy of being renamed my "Recorded But Never To Be Watched" list.

Yawn

Crap! Is it really 6:30 in the freakin' A M?? And I've already been moving around for a half an hour? Is this some sort of Twilight Zone episode?

No.

It's just my pitiful attempt at school-time parental duties.

Mom's 65-year-old arthritic back finally said "Gimme a break!" and she's been flat on her back in a Vicodin-induced stupor for the last 24 hours. Which meant that I actually had to set three alarm clocks (one of them in the bathroom so I'd be forced to stumble bleary-eyed and bare-assed nekkid through the hallway to shut it off instead of just rolling over and hitting snooze) to make sure the girls make it to school with all of their clothing intact and the morning fuzz scrubbed away from their pearly whites.

So, here I am, ready to go to to work. Andi gave me the wag of her finger not too long ago for going two months between blog entries. I hang my head in shame (which puts my forehead perilously close to the desk which will inevitably be a precursor to a quick little 20-minute "desk nap" if I'm not careful). So here I am.

Yawn.