Why I Love Our TiVo

(Let me start by saying that most digital TV set-ups can probably do the same kinds of things, but we have TiVo, so that's my point of reference.)

When Christopher and I were talking about getting TiVo, I was a little skeptical about why we would need it. We had a DVD recorder, so we were able to record TV shows without any problem. (Heck, I still have a VCR, too.) And I had no idea why anyone would want the rest of the options.

Well, Christopher - being the tech person in the family - decided that he wanted to move to a TiVo, so we did. At first, I only used it as another VCR. Just another way to record shows to watch them later. Granted, we were suddenly able to record hours and hours and hours of TV, instead of just 4 or 6 at a time, but it was still just the same stuff.

Then I started getting used to pausing live TV. It still kind of weirds me out to do that, but I do it all the time. We do it if we need to answer the phone, or if we need to take dirty dishes into the kitchen, or if the clock decides to chime right in the middle of someone giving a pivotal plot point. And, if we didn't pause in time, we can rewind and watch the scene again.

And, well, that's kind of addictive.

Today there was a "Glee" marathon on TV. Since they were jumping around through the seasons, and I wasn't trying to follow any of the storylines, I was all about the musical numbers. And I watched a few of them multiple times. (Luckily, Christopher wasn't around for most of this.)

Would it have killed me to miss them? No. Would it have been horrible if I'd only seen them once? No. Was it completely enjoyable to get to see them multiple times? Totally. I mean, didn't you notice the headline? Like I said, I kinda love our TiVo.

Changing of the Coat

Did you know that, in the winter, the Royal Guard outside of Buckingham Palace wear kind of all grey uniforms? None of that bright, flashy, red and black stuff. Basically they wear stuff the same color as the winter weather in London.

The same seems to happen in Minnesota in the dead of winter. People go from a broad spectrum of colors of coats to almost exclusively black and grey.

Now, if you live somewhere like Paris or New York City, you're probably used to people only dressing in black. Which means that nothing changes no matter what time of year it is.

In Baltimore, the weather never quite got cold enough for most people to have to resort to the all-black coats. There are a decent number of colors. You see browns and blues and reds and all sorts of colors all year 'round.

Before I left Baltimore, I got myself a brown leather jacket which is relatively well-lined, so with a scarf and gloves it was perfect for winter weather out there. After I moved to Minnesota, I learned that it was to become my fall jacket. I can sort of wear it until November most years, but that's about it.

And, happily, for the past few weeks, we've had "East Coast winter" - with highs back up in the 40s. And I've gotten to wear that brown jacket a bunch in the past month.

Then the temp dropped this week. And, in response to the return of January temperatures (today's high was 16), I reached into the closet this morning for my semi-black, well-lined, trenchcoat-style coat.

As I looked at the people hurrying along the sidewalks and running across the streets, I noticed we were all back in the same uniform of dark, drab colors.

Unfortunately, we weren't in London to enjoy it.

The Secret Life of Books

While I was at work, today, this video came across my desk. It kind of blew me away, both due to its subject matter, and due to the utter creativity behind it.

I watched it all the way through - and then again one or two more times - wondering at the amount of energy and forethought that went into it.

I decided that it needed to be shared, here, too, because I think you'll like it.

Of course, as anyone who has been reading my blog for a while knows, I have no clue how to embed a video in my postings.

So, please click HERE and check it out.

Let me know what you think!

Shards of Wisdom

Earlier today I felt a strange sharp pain in my lower jaw. In the way back along the side of my tongue.

At first I thought I might have simply bitten down on something strange, but then I realized I wasn't eating anything. It's weird how your brain goes through those steps, isn't it? "Ouch. Pain. What's causing it? It must be food. What am I eating? Nothing. Hmm... Maybe it's not food, then..."

Well, after my brain had that fun little conversation with itself, I started considering where the pain was coming from and realized that it's the same area of my mouth where - after having my wisdom teeth out a few years ago - I had the same problem a few times.

**At this point, if weird anatomy stuff freaks you out, you may just want to skip the rest of this post. Maybe think about unicorns and rainbows. Sorry.**

It seems that, when a tooth is yanked from its home, it can sometimes leave behind bone shards.

About six months after my wisdom tooth was pulled, I had this same kind of pain. It was a recurring jab for about 48 hours, then it became a weird bump that I could feel in my gum. The next day I could feel something kind of sharp in that same area.

The first time this happened, I went to the dentist because it kind of freaked me out. He kind of "um-hmm-ed" and then went into my mouth with a pair of tweezers and pulled out a tiny little fleck of something. It was probably a couple of millimeters long and about half as wide. He showed it to me and said "It's a remnant of the tooth that got pulled."

A little "irrigation" later, and I was on my way home, where I popped some Ibuprofen and went on about my life. For about another three months. Then it happened again. This time I just let it work its way out.

That was probably about 5 years ago - maybe more.

Since then I've had a couple more shards come through. And I'm pretty sure that today's pain is simply the next one coming through. Kind of makes me wonder what happened to that tooth when it was getting yanked out. And how much of it is left in there.

After all... I thought I was supposed to gain wisdom with age - not keep losing it (painfully) bit by bit.

An Epiphanatical Tiz List

*Epiphanatical (adj.) - pertaining to Epiphany and/or epiphanies.

Okay, so, since I've started this one out with a whole new word, I guess I'd better make it good. But here's the thing: a "Tiz List" is supposed to be a list of things other people don't know about me. For this one, since it falls on Epiphany, I'm going to also try to make it a list of things I've learned about myself in the recent past. Let's see how it goes...

1) I can get kind of jealous - and at odd times, and over odd things. Never used to be that way, but I noticed it, recently.

2) I'm becoming more and more intolerant of people who are rude or abusive to people in service roles.

3) People who correct other people's grammar/spelling/etc. in public for no real reason (and not simply for sarcasm's sake on social media sites) annoy me. That's been true for a while, but the fact that I'm now working full-time as an editor/proofreader, it bugs me even more when people do it for no reason.

4) It annoys me that people type/write as if they are texting and blame all of their errors on the technology. I know that this seems in direct opposition to #3. But I don't correct people for it. And I fully realize that there are some people who have trouble with spelling and grammar and I'm fine with that. But if you're taking the time to write me a message, please send a message and not either a massage or a msg, and don't blame auto-correct for the fact that you didn't take the time to proofread.

5) I'm finding that I don't actually hate massages as much as I used to.

6) I fully expect that I will find myself in an altercation over someone else texting or talking in a movie theater within my lifetime. I used to ignore it. Then I moved on to glaring meaningfully. These days I actually ask the person/people to stop. I fear that sometime in the future that will not end well.

7) I'm always surprised when I have people ask me whether I drink alcohol or swear. I do both, I guess I just do them both gracefully enough that people don't notice.

8) I'm kind of terrified of losing my eyesight - and I hate the fact that the next time I get glasses I'll probably need bifocals. And it weirds me out that I may have something wonky with my retina that mainly only happens in dogs.

9) I'm also freaked out about the possibility of losing my hearing. Especially since many people know me for having "dog ears" and hearing everything.

10) Lately I've been having trouble finding the right words all the time. Sometimes I just keep going hoping that no one will notice. Sometimes I just look at Christopher and start hinting at the word hoping that he'll figure it out.

11) Some of the books I've been working on have me kind of freaked out about the climate changes we're seeing - even though the plots are improbable, reading the books has resulted in me pondering things I don't want to ponder.

12) I have survived for almost 14 months without a credit card. I have Christopher to thank for some of that survival.

13) I kind of hate not having a credit card, but I do enjoy not having credit card bills.

14) My dreams get wilder the closer we are to the full moon. I never used to pay attention to it, then I started noticing it. I usually have a night of really vivid dreams, then notice the next day that it's almost a full moon - not the other way around.

15) I don't make New Year's resolutions, because I figure the person I am on January 1st, is probably different than the person I'll be on December 31st, and I don't want to set my future self up for failure since that future self didn't have a say in the resolution in the first place.

16) #15 makes perfect sense in my brain.

When Did Late Get So Early?

It's currently about twenty past ten on a Wednesday night. Christopher and I got home from dinner with a couple of friends about forty-five minutes ago. And it feels *so* late.

It's not like we did anything radical. We met up at 7 at a restaurant, had one-course dinners (no appetizers, no desserts) and left a little after 9. By the time we left, I was trying not to nod off.

On the way home, I ran to the grocery store to pick up about five things. In - out - home.

I've got a piece of freelance editing I need to work on. I've got some house stuff I need to do. But I don't think I could focus well enough on anything to actually do any of it justice.

(For that matter, I don't know that I'm doing my blog justice, either.)

But it wasn't so long ago that I used to get home from dinners at 10 or 11 and still have a couple of hours of focus left for the night. A bit longer ago than that, I'd go out with friends and not even get to restaurants until 10... or midnight... or 2am...

I don't know the last time I actually saw 2am - or that I wanted to, for that matter. But, then, back when I was dining at 2am I'd never seen my 40s, either. I think I might be okay with that trade-off.

Movie Monday (-ish)

Oddly enough, even though I've seen numerous movies in the past couple of weeks, I sat down to blog with something completely different in mind. Which kind of ties in to the movies we've been seeing.

Let me explain...

The two movies that Christopher and I have seen since we saw "The Muppets" were each sequels. We saw "Sherlock Holmes - Game of Shadows," which was very much like the first one (full of explosions, intrigue, and lots of Jude Law and Robert Downey, Jr.), lots of fun, but just a little less fun than the first one (we'll give it a B). We also saw "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol," wherein Tom Cruise and his crew perform a bunch of cool stunts in nifty locations, with James-Bond-y gadgets - and at the same time they fairly successfully re-launch the series (also a B).

So they're both kind of new, but also the same as what has gone before. Which says something about New Year's in general, doesn't it?

Well, today I also got to do something brand new. Something I'd never in my life dreamed of doing. Something I'm not even ashamed to admit.

Yep. That's right. I bought booties for the dog, today.

We did not do this because it's cold out. We didn't do it because there's salt on the sidewalks. We did it because the rain/slushy snow that fell off the trees on New Year's Eve froze in jagged stalagmites on the sidewalks. (Stalagmites are the ones that come up from the ground, right?)

It's bad enough that she actually cut her feet on her walk, yesterday. Which was rather scary and surprising. And, yes, it got us to buy booties, today, which resulted in a rather strange tap-dance as she skittered around the house trying to figure out if she should take them off or not.

Eventually, she got used to them and we all went for a walk.

And, lo and behold, we all actually did something brand spankin' new in the new year.

How 'bout you?