Desperate to cling to any positive thought about the upcoming Utah experience, I came up with this: cute botany grad students. But even though I was hardly planning on going out and collecting exotic cuttings, so to speak, this notion immediately came to mind to sour the whole thing: I will probably be the only person there with his parents. (Well, okay, my brother, too, but we're talking about me here.)

And today, I picked up my brand-new High Definition Digital Video Recorder from Cox Communications. No more for me, the tyranny of the videocassette! No more watching fuzzy recorded shows on the crappy TV in the bedroom, because VHS looks horrible on the HDTV! No more only recording one show at a time! No! Free at last!

(And, unlike TiVo, which will actually pick out shows for me, the Cox DVR just records what I tell it to. Because that's all I really wanted: something that would record in high definition, without tapes, but not be all in-my-face about it.)