Two weeks ago my parents came for a visit. Just a few days ago they left. I'm still finding random objects left behind. Whether to call them gifts or not varies depending on the object. Today's gift: two umbrellas in my closet! Awesome, I've been needing an umbrella for oh... about four months now? The black and white checkered dress shirt distinctly suggestive of a picnic table cloth on the other hand I thought I had disposed of before they left.
Their visit though somewhat lengthy by the standard of most visits to small town, middle of nowhere, went surprisingly well. There was the requisite major family argument about whether or not the October Nor'easter was going to end life as we knew it on the Eastern seaboard or not, but that aside it was a remarkably pleasant two weeks. Much of it was spent watching a great if not eventually disappointing World Series or making trips back and forth from Price Chopper with various things to stick in my fridge. Such as a six pack of Romaine lettuce heads which I will hold onto until the gigantic-salad-composed-of-nothing-but-lettuce craving kicks in. And when it does I will have two different flavors of salad dressing to chose from. Or A1 steak sauce. Or Worcestershire sauce.Or an industrial sized bottle of ketchup.
The rest of the trip was divided amongst road trips to Woodstock, VT; Burlington, VT; and Seacoast, NH. The only one of these worthy of note was the last as it was both scenic and complete with a trip to Markey's Lobster Pound where my parents reminisced about their prior visit some twenty years before by eating the largest lobsters they could find. My dad even somehow managed to come away with some vintage postcards from the time of their visit and a coastal New England restaurant guide all complements of Mr Markey who they chatted up as they are want to do. Woodstock and Burlington on the other hand, are worthy places to visit only if you have no other places worthy to visit.
Other highlights of the trip include my mom cleaning my apartment to a level of cleanliness it will likely never see again; my dad bumping, kicking, and karate chopping my coffee table sufficiently till one of the wooden rails broke off; and an early Christmas present consisting of a huge, new, flat screen television complete with swanky new stand which I am still not entirely sure what to make of. I think overall they had a pretty good time; I know for the most part I did. And I hope to eventually one day stop finding new bath towels in my cupboards, closets, and washing machine. Until then I gotta find a way to dispose of a dozen bagels and a half dozen apples before they go bad. Someone may be getting a pretty unique gift basket in the next few days here.
Showing posts with label gigantic TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gigantic TV. Show all posts
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The Amazing Race for the Amazing Race
This week the Amazing Race started, one of the few television programs I've ever cared to remember to watch. Although never truly as good as the one, single season of Amazing Race: Family Edition, the Amazing Race: Vanilla is still a pretty good time. Especially if you enjoy strangers yelling at each other in taxi cabs. This series' first episode was relatively unremarkable, but I imagine it achieved what it meant to -- that being to identify the snowboarding dudes as dudes, the cocktail waitresses as bimbos, the grandparents as slightly senile grandparents, the Survivor couple as scheming soon to be scoundrels, the male flight attendants as the token gay couple, and the twins, apparently, as not having memories that can last longer than thirty seconds. I imagine the climax of the season will be when either of the brother-sister duo runs the other over in their brand new, special edition 2012 Ford Focus.
The episode reminded me, however, of a friend and I's amazing race last spring in an attempt to have the most amazing movie marathon ever: an Amazing Race amazing movie marathon. What could be better than spending a whole day watching a whole season of Amazing Race? The answer is a whole lot of things, but in San Antonio not much. Being the master planner of this party I was assigned the task of obtaining the videos, and so I devised a plan.
Plan A: Go to Blockbuster and rent it.
Genius in its simplicity. Unfortunately no Blockbuster admitted on their website to owning any Amazing Race DVDs in the entire San Antonio area, and sure enough none of them actually owned them when I visited their stores and demand they show me where they kept them. Blockbuster does own a surprisingly large number of Firefly copies, however, which is why I imagine they went into bankruptcy.
Plan B: Go to another movie rental chain and rent it.
Very similar to Plan A, Plan B was different in that it involved going to other movie rental chains. Not surprisingly it too failed. People do not want to watch Amazing Race in South Texas. Not when there's sweet Tejano music weekly at El Mercado at least! Seriously, what can compete with an accordion?
Plan C: Go to any other store I can think of and buy it.
This plan was admittedly devised on the fly while driving about in my fruitless pursuits of Plans A and B. I visited two separate Best Buys, a Walmart, a Target, and even a used booked store which for whatever reason also sold movies. The end result was no Amazing Race, but a decent book on the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan and, somehow, a 2000 piece puzzle of a castle in Germany.
Plan D: Use NetFlix to rent the series.
Brilliant idea in that NetFlix has multiple seasons of Amazing Race for rental. Terrible idea in that you can only rent one of 3 or 4 DVDs in a season at a time. Not ideal for a one day marathon. Aborted.
Plan E: Use NetFlix streaming video via Laura's giant television.
Laura has a gigantic television. Its size is measured in yards and the weight of it has ruined the foundation on that side of her house. Assuredly inside of all that plastic and hardware there would be a means of connecting directly to the Internet. There was not.
Plan F: Use NetFlix streaming video via Paul and Rachel's Nintendo Wii.
Easy to obtain. Easy to hook up. Already wasted a whole heck of a lot of time previously setting up a NetFlix account for Plans D and E. It seemed pretty flawless to me. It was at this time that we noticed NetFlix does not stream any of the Amazing Race series over its streaming video.
Plan G: Screw it. Let's watch The Pacific instead.
Around back up plans five or six is generally when I consider giving up, and so way gave up after Plan F. Clearly someone, divine or otherwise, did not want us to have an Amazing Race marathon. It likely would have been too amazing. There probably wouldn't have been anywhere to go after that and the rest of our lives would have been lived in listless boredom and indifference knowing our best day was already in our past. In either case we watched The Pacific instead and it was confusing. Too many guys with dark brown hair and average height. Thankfully most of the difficult to tell apart characters got killed off early in the series so by the end I had some idea what was going on. It turns out the war with Japan was rather wet. Or at least that's what I believe the take home message was.
Our amazing race ended in failure, but in the process I learned a lot about Laura and together we learned a lot about ourselves. We didn't win the grand prize, but what we lost we more than made up for in friendship. I wouldn't have run the race with anyone else. Mostly because no one else has a love for the show and a gigantic TV. But also because of the friendship. It is its own reward, especially when you don't have a real reward. Or a television movie marathon to watch.
The episode reminded me, however, of a friend and I's amazing race last spring in an attempt to have the most amazing movie marathon ever: an Amazing Race amazing movie marathon. What could be better than spending a whole day watching a whole season of Amazing Race? The answer is a whole lot of things, but in San Antonio not much. Being the master planner of this party I was assigned the task of obtaining the videos, and so I devised a plan.
Plan A: Go to Blockbuster and rent it.
Genius in its simplicity. Unfortunately no Blockbuster admitted on their website to owning any Amazing Race DVDs in the entire San Antonio area, and sure enough none of them actually owned them when I visited their stores and demand they show me where they kept them. Blockbuster does own a surprisingly large number of Firefly copies, however, which is why I imagine they went into bankruptcy.
Plan B: Go to another movie rental chain and rent it.
Very similar to Plan A, Plan B was different in that it involved going to other movie rental chains. Not surprisingly it too failed. People do not want to watch Amazing Race in South Texas. Not when there's sweet Tejano music weekly at El Mercado at least! Seriously, what can compete with an accordion?
Plan C: Go to any other store I can think of and buy it.
This plan was admittedly devised on the fly while driving about in my fruitless pursuits of Plans A and B. I visited two separate Best Buys, a Walmart, a Target, and even a used booked store which for whatever reason also sold movies. The end result was no Amazing Race, but a decent book on the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan and, somehow, a 2000 piece puzzle of a castle in Germany.
Plan D: Use NetFlix to rent the series.
Brilliant idea in that NetFlix has multiple seasons of Amazing Race for rental. Terrible idea in that you can only rent one of 3 or 4 DVDs in a season at a time. Not ideal for a one day marathon. Aborted.
Plan E: Use NetFlix streaming video via Laura's giant television.
Laura has a gigantic television. Its size is measured in yards and the weight of it has ruined the foundation on that side of her house. Assuredly inside of all that plastic and hardware there would be a means of connecting directly to the Internet. There was not.
Plan F: Use NetFlix streaming video via Paul and Rachel's Nintendo Wii.
Easy to obtain. Easy to hook up. Already wasted a whole heck of a lot of time previously setting up a NetFlix account for Plans D and E. It seemed pretty flawless to me. It was at this time that we noticed NetFlix does not stream any of the Amazing Race series over its streaming video.
Plan G: Screw it. Let's watch The Pacific instead.
Around back up plans five or six is generally when I consider giving up, and so way gave up after Plan F. Clearly someone, divine or otherwise, did not want us to have an Amazing Race marathon. It likely would have been too amazing. There probably wouldn't have been anywhere to go after that and the rest of our lives would have been lived in listless boredom and indifference knowing our best day was already in our past. In either case we watched The Pacific instead and it was confusing. Too many guys with dark brown hair and average height. Thankfully most of the difficult to tell apart characters got killed off early in the series so by the end I had some idea what was going on. It turns out the war with Japan was rather wet. Or at least that's what I believe the take home message was.
Our amazing race ended in failure, but in the process I learned a lot about Laura and together we learned a lot about ourselves. We didn't win the grand prize, but what we lost we more than made up for in friendship. I wouldn't have run the race with anyone else. Mostly because no one else has a love for the show and a gigantic TV. But also because of the friendship. It is its own reward, especially when you don't have a real reward. Or a television movie marathon to watch.
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