IT Dependency

Nick left on a 3 week vacation to Togo yesterday morning. He has a good friend from highschool who is stationed there for the Peace Corps. She has some vacation time to take, and Nick is starting Law School next month, so it's the perfect opportunity! He's going to be staying in her guest room - in her house which has no electricity and no running water. I'm sure he's going to have tons of great stories when he returns (and hopefully pretty presents for his pretty girlfriend!)

Last night, when Nick had been gone for approximately 14 hours, I learned just how much I depend on him. It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to switch our television settings so that I could watch a DVD. Seriously. I actually called one of our friends to find out if he knew how our TV works.

Now, I'm not a complete idiot. I say this from experience - not just because my mom has convinced me. Normally I can figure these things out pretty easily, but this new setup has me a little stumped. Nick and I purchased a fancy new television a few weeks ago. It is widescreen, has HD capabilities, and even PC hookups, so we can watch stuff from the laptop (I even played online Tetris on the TV!) This is particularly cool for Netflix streaming movies. We just choose something from the "watch now" list, hook the laptop up to the television, and it's just like watching any other DVD. The HD part is pretty cool too. We don't actually have HD service, but because the television is set up for it, we have access to the HD broadcasted channels. So, several of our standard stations have multiple channels, so you can watch the same programming in HD.

So, all in all, it's pretty cool. The only unfortunate thing sofar is that I have to find the proper menu on the television, and not just click that handy little button on the remote that says "tv/video".

Now...to figure out how to set the alarm clock!