June 30, 2016

Stuff and such

I've seriously been feeling sorry for myself lately.


Like, I'm going to sit in bed and watch The Bachelorette on Hulu at 3:30pm on a Tuesday because I can think of nothing better to do kinda sorry. I have a half-painted bathroom (uh, it's not going anywhere), two unhappy dogs (it's too hot to go outside during the day), and an empty DVD player because I'm out of True Blood DVDs and Amazon hasn't come through with season 6. I could watch on Amazon Prime but there's something really cathartic about putting discs in the DVD player.

That's something I never thought I'd say: It's cathartic to go old-school and use DVDs to watch reruns.
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I started watching Gossip Girl again because my True Blood DVDs didn't show up on time and I needed something to play for background noise. I listened to two audiobooks and several podcasts and then turned to Netflix.

I was trying to figure out why I like Gossip Girl, aside from the obvious (Blair and Chuck). Like, why is it comforting to me? Well, it reminds me college because it was on when I was in college, though I didn't watch it then. But the clothes, the hair, the music, the cell phones...it all comes rushing back. Kind of like how I felt when I drank a Miller Lite the other day. Miller Lite really tastes like 21 years old. My brother left several cans in the fridge a few weeks ago and it isn't going to drink itself, right?

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Speaking of being old...Fallout Boy is still around and my students this past year were big fans. Someone had a Fallout Boy shirt on just about every day. They would write song titles on post-it notes and stick them on their nametags. Weird, right?

And when we learned about measuring units of time, I introduced them to that super-complicated word "century" and they were all Oh, like the Fallout Boy song?


I was like Yeah, sure. Like the song. Anyway...

I tried to tell them that I was listening to Fallout Boy 11 years ago when I was 19 years old, and that Fallout Boy is not exactly a new thing.  But then they tried to do the math to figure out how old I was and we got off track. (I don't think they actually did figure out my age).

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We get a storm most afternoons. Since our modem was fried by a lightning strike last summer, when we have lightning and thunder nearby, I unplug the modem.. It's wildly inconvenient, not just because I have to find something to do other than Netflix, but because I have to move the end table and crawl underneath it to unplug the DSL line and the power strip.

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Along the same lines, we have a cell phone signal repeater. Since we live in the middle of nowhere, we get little to no cell phone service without it. Unfortunately, it's also been fried during storms. Not the booster itself, but the adapter plugs. We've been through 5-6 in the last year. If I call the company (Wilson Electronics), they'll send me new ones for free but it takes like a week and a half. And I can never find the phone number; they're not an easy company to work with simply for that reason...you also can't order their products online. They have a website but you can't actually order from it. It's ridiculous. The last two times I've called, I've been directed to Utah and then to Georgia. I'm not sure where the actual call center is.

So, anyway, we had a stock of adapters that Scott ordered on Amazon and I couldn't find them when the current plug died on Tuesday-ish (all the days run together now). In all of my purging/storing/cleaning of the last few months, I'd put them...somewhere. So I drove all over Colorado Springs and no one had an adapter (the more I think about it, the more I don't like this town, by the way) and then when I finally told Scott about it, he ordered me a new one on Amazon and then I ordered one on Amazon too, of a different brand, because it never hurts to have two if history tells us anything. He also mentioned there were a few in the basement somewhere because he'd stocked up, "remember?". In the haze of pre-deployment, it started to come through that, yes, there was an adapter or two in the basement...in a white box...somewhere. I started digging and found it. I got very excited because I'd solved my own problem...and then I plugged it in and it died within an hour because it was cheap or something.



So, when Amazon Prime came through on Saturday, I was elated. Cell phone service again! And, after two years of this nonsense, I've discovered it would be beneficial to plug it into a power strip.


5 comments:

  1. I'm nearly done watching Gossip Girl. Blair & Chuck are my faves!

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  2. Talk about old school - one of the boxes I brought over in this most recent load from my inlaws had all my old VHS movies. Unfortunately I have zero clue as to where my VCR is but I was like "I forgot about that movie" ha!

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  3. You should stock up on adapters! Like, a boatload.

    Chuck Bass is one of my most favorite characters of all time.

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  4. I tried to watch Gossip Girl and I just couldn't get into it. Maybe I'll try again.

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  5. i love dvds :) kc can't understand why i like to own them when we can get things 'for free' (netflix is not free) but i love them.
    lol @ your kids and century. it's a long boring story but i have to tell people at work 'trilogy' a lot and they ask me how to spell it, and they say it like trill-ollogy? and i'm like how the bloody hell do you not know this word? drives me bonkers.

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