We're Not in Kansas Anymore

So I stop in to my local video rental chain store to pick up Smallville Season Two Disc 4 (my wife and I have recently become followers of the show after she saw a few old episodes on Spanish TV) and they don't have it. Well, this is a bummer. If I was looking for a movie and it wasn't in, I'd just get another movie but I'm actually following this teenage soap opera. (oh the shame)

We even had a bit of confusion when we rented season 2 Disc 1 - we had seen the last episode of season 1 a couple nights before and now nothing was making any sense. My wife took it straight back to the video rental chain store and the teenagers behind the counter just feigned confusion. [This is the part where I really refrain from making tacky comments and just get on with the narrative] Anyway, my wife is bound and determined to see the episodes in order so, one day while I'm at work, she uses her new laptop to look up episode guides, plot synopsis, just all sorts of Smallville trivia and calls me at work to let me know. This kind of research is a bit out of character for her. Normally my wife just uses the net to look for recipes and decorating tips (not being sexist, just stating a fact) and I have to do all the "serious" research (yes, referring to Smallville as serious was tongue-in-cheek but let's not dwell on that).

So Smallville has effected us. (Not to mention that I could really become addicted to watching television shows with no commercials)

Apparently somebody else has also recently started following Smallville because I keep finding season 2 discs out. But not to fear. My resourceful wife picked up House instead (she knows I like medical TV shows) and each of these episodes is a stand alone so I don't have to watch them in sequence for everything to make sense! (I know you're so happy for me :-)

Burger Fink

For quite some time my wife has been telling me that she wants a laptop. Now don't get me wrong, she's not a "gimme, gimme girl" - she hardly asks for anything. And I know that a laptop is something that she really can use to help her prepare and organize things for her job and her volunteer activities. A while back I bought her a nice desktop from a friend at a "going out of business" sale. Its a nice machine, but not very portable. So we had decided that Tuesday she would go get a laptop computer.

This morning, we took the new laptop to a local burger joint with a Wi-Fi hotspot. (You see, there's this old line from the Wizard of Id comic strip "The King is a fink!"; and most everybody in my family has sort of a warped sense of humor so, for many years, "Burger Fink" has been sort of a running joke in my family.)

After a quick call to my IT guy, we were able to get the necessary download [did I mention that i HATE Windows Vista?] and now we're back in the land of wireless 'net and I can get my goodreads fix from home again.