Part 2 of a Few of My Favorite Things!

I apologize for not having this up on Sunday night like I said, but HEY!!!  ♪♫It's MY blog and I'll lie if I want to, lie if I want to, lie if I want to, You would lie to if it happened to you.♪♫

What happened to me?  Well thanks for asking.  I just spent the weekend playing tour guide for my good friend from college Steve, his wife, his sister, and her grand kids.  We had a blast and I truly enjoyed showing them around my favorite place on earth, Universal Studios Orlando.  Where the problem came in was that it was a rather cold weekend with highs getting in the upper 60's, but to us Floridians, THAT'S COLD.  Well the two grand kids, Anna, 7 and Levi, 5 begged their grandma and Steve to take them on a water ride when they were at Disney on Friday, but because of the temperature, they told them no.  So fast forward to Sunday and when the kids saw the Jurassic Park River Adventure at Islands of Adventure they began pleading again to no avail.  Well Linda and I walked up to hear their little pleas and Steve told them to ask us.  So they turned, and with their sweet little voices, they said, "Will you take us on the water ride?"  What were we to do?  We just got asked by two adorable kids if we would be their heroes.  So instead of listening to reason and the fact that we really didn't want to get soaked in 60 degree weather, we said, "Sure.  Let's do it!"  The look on their faces were worth the price of admission right then.  We were the coolest people that had ever walked the planet at that moment.  I love seeing kids do the "happy dance" and Linda and me laughed the whole time in line as we awaited our doom.  Needless to say, we got soaked!!!  Everyone else had a nice dry jacket to slip on when they exited the ride except ME!  So I got to walk around the rest of the day and evening wet.  Got home Sunday night and I felt it coming on.  Woke up Monday morning and I was sick.  Small price to pay though for being the hero to two little kids that just wanted to ride a water ride during their vacation in Florida. 

I'm finally feeling a little bit more normal so I will try to finish up my favorite things list. Let's recap what I have on my list so far.

#10.  Digital Camera
#9.  Video Camera
#8.  Mp3 Player
#7.  GPS
#6.  Shower Puffy Thingy and Shower Gel

Okay.  Now for the top five of my favorite things. 

#5.  Kindle - I only just got this for Christmas this past year, but it has already jumped into my number five position.  I have been a reader since high school.  I had some time that I needed to kill and someone suggested a book, "Eyes of the Dragon" by Stephen King if I remember right.  I read that book and that was that, I was a reader.  The guy that HATED to read his textbooks was now reading for fun.  Stephen King became my go to guy in the beginning and I still remember actually being scared while reading "It" late at night.  Plus add my fear of clowns into the mix and you had all my horrors lined up in that book.

I still love to read.  I've usually stayed in the horror or fantasy realm, but I also get into biography's of people that interest me.  The only problem that I have is that I usually only like to read at night.  I will use it to help me go to sleep, but unfortunately, Linda goes to bed rather early and me being the night owl that I am, I wasn't able to read as much at I wanted to because I didn't want to wake her up.  There is nothing more frustrating than trying to be quiet while finding your book in the dark, trying to find the book light, clipping the book light on the book, turning the book light on and hoping that the light doesn't hit her in the face like a laser, then trying to be quiet as you turn the pages.  Of course, the batteries in the book lights tend to last only a couple days or so, so you usually turn it on only to get like 30 seconds of good light before it starts to dim.  Pretty soon, you are holding the book so close to your face, it isn't worth the grief.  But now. . . . .

BRING ON THE KINDLE!!!!!

Just download the book you want and, BAM!!!, there it is.  Didn't kill a tree, no pages to turn, and I have a case for it that makes it feel like a book and has a book light that runs off the battery of the Kindle so I don't have to worry about it going dim on me.  Just re-charge the Kindle once a week and it's good to go.  No Fuss, No Muss.  This thing is AWESOME!!!!  I'm a reader again!!!!

#4.  Cell Phone - I'm pretty sure that most everyone that is reading this could guess that this would appear on just about any ones list.  It has gotten to a point that I really can't imagine life without a cell phone.

My first memories with a cell phone were the bag phones.  If you are old enough to remember those, they were like carrying a separate purse that just had a phone attached to it.  My mother was in real estate back then so having a cell phone was a necessity.  I would watch her carry that thing and all I could think about was that one green army man that had the radio.  You remember, the useless one.  You had the rifle guy, the bazooka guy, the laying down guy, and the RADIO GUY!!!!   Really????  He was the first to get the firecracker treatment!!!   "Charlie, Breaker, Breake.. . . . . BOOM!!!!"  (oops, bunny trail)

So anyways, after the bag phone came the brick phone.  I call it that because it was like carrying a brick both in size and in weight.  I never could understand who was THAT important that they needed to lug that thing around with them.  Maybe the president, but that's about the only one I could justify.

Then they started to get smaller, that's when I jumped in.  I think it was the mid 90's when I finally owned one.  It was still the equvalent of carrying your home cordless phone around with you, but at least you could put it on your belt without your pants falling down.  The rates were like 35 cents a minute and it only worked in about 5 locations in my city and that was only if I had my leg raised at a 90 degree angle and my torso pointed west.  But . . . . .I WAS NOW COOL!!!!!

So now today, you can pretty much do anything with them.  Browse the internet, check your e-mail, set http://www.scottsweitzer.blogspot.com/ as your home page, plus they are the size of your palm.  All that plus they pretty much work everywhere without any limbs having to do anything.  It's a two edged sword though.  Sometimes you just don't want to be found but thanks to the cell phone, you will be found and bothered whenever and wherever you are. Granted though, it's a small price to pay for all the convenience.  Ordering pizza has never been so easy!!!!

#3.  DVR - For those of you that DON'T know what this is, it stands for Digital Video Recorder.  It's the modern day version of the Beta max and VCR without all the hassle and grief that those two devices could give you from trying to tape one episode of Alf. 

First off, there are no tapes to buy.  No more having those huge VCR tapes laying around that you had NO IDEA what was on them because you were too lazy to write on the labels.  There was nothing more frustrating than to know that you had Star Wars taped, but you didn't mark it.  So you had to pop in tape after tape from the 56 tapes you had and sift through 23 episodes of "Magnum P.I.", 16 episodes of "Charles in Charge", and the mini series "Roots",  just to find out that your mom accidentally taped half of "Murder She Wrote" over it. There was nothing worse than watching Luke Skywalker fighting off the Storm troopers, and the next thing you know, Angela Lansbury is staring at you.  Talk about childhood scarring.  I'm still in therapy over that.  And Heaven forbid you had one of the video cameras that also took those tapes.  You NEVER knew what you were going to get when you popped that tape in the ol' VCR.  "Look!  Billy's birth and Dad getting nailed in the testies by a baseball all in under 30 seconds of tape!" 

Plus cutting out the commercials on those tapes meant that you ACTUALLY HAD TO WATCH THE EPISODE!!!!   Kind of killed the whole reason for taping it didn't it?  Now with the DVR. You just tell the thing what you want to tape and how often and that's that!!!  Hate to steal this line but, "Just set it and forget it."  Then when you feel like watching it, go right ahead.  No more watching commercials, just fast forward through them in like 10 seconds and your are back to the show.  I now find myself doing other things while the show is taping just so I won't have to ever watch commercials ever again.

Then the greatest thing about it is being able to pause live TV.  That's right, I'm like a time traveler BABY!!!  I can tell the little people in the box to stop for a second while I go get a bag of popcorn.  Or, I might not be paying attention and miss out on what was just said and I can tell them to repeat it for me just by a touch of the rewind button.  TALK ABOUT POWER!!!!  Can a man have anymore control than that?  I think not!!!   "No YOU, shut up for a minute Gordon Ramsey!!!  I need to go to the bathroom."  Power I tell you.  It's mine. . . .all mine. . . . .I will rule the world!!!!  (insert maniacal laughter here)

Well being that my head is now hurting and it's getting hard to think, I think I will end this list for now.  So if you are counting at home, that leaves two things left on my list of favorite things.  I should be able to finish this puppy up tomorrow with the right medication.  I'm sorry if some of this doesn't make sense, I think it does, but my head feels like a bowling ball moving through mud so thoughts were hard.  I hope I did these three justice and excuse any mistakes.  Oh right. . . . .

SMILE!!!