Family

Time to get a TiVo?

I took a break from Christmas card writing and studying Korean to do a little channel surfing on cable TV.  I do that sometimes when I take a study break.  My wife thinks I’m great at finding interesting things to watch on the “stupid box.”  (“Stupid box” is the North Korean word for television; it is such a fitting word!)  There wasn’t much on at 1 p.m. on a weekday before Christmas.  I surfed until I came upon the classic movie “Tremors,” the Kevin Bacon featuring oversized worms that eat anything that moves (literally).  It’s probably the umpteenth time it’s been broadcast on cable.  I think the cable movie stations have it on permanent rotation.  It’s one of those movies cable features over and over.  Other films that are cable standards include Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s “Kindergarden Cop” and “Predator”, “National Lampoon’s Vacation” featuring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo and “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” starring Steve Martin and John Candy.  Although I don’t watch TV that often, I’ve probably seen parts of “Vacation” dozens of times.  I always seem to stumble upon “Tremors” and “Vacation” halfway through the movie.  Whenever I turn on the TV and find  Kevin Bacon, Reba McIntyre, and Michael Gross talking in cheesy southwestern accents perched atop buildings or vehicles and fighting off grotesque earthworms with tentacle tongues.  I almost always stumble upon “Vacation” when the Griswold family is driving through Kansas en route to the Grand Canyon.  I usually turn it off after they drop dear old Aunt Edna off at their cousin’s home in Arizona.  Although I’ve seen these movies’ endings dozens of times, I rarely have a chance to catch the beginning.  Take the movie “The Ring” for example.  HBO aired the show ad nauseum a couple months ago, and I always found it on TV mid-way through the movie.  I’ve seen the ending about 4 times, but I’ve never seen the beginning.  I even thought about renting it so I could see the beginning of this intriguing flick, but why would I when I’ve seen the ending so many times?  I’ll wait until it cable airs it again, and maybe I’ll go see the next installment of “The Ring” due out next spring.  Maybe it’s time to get a TiVo and a TV guide so I can pre-record these shows and watch them in their entirety.  Until then I guess I’ll have to be content with watching half reruns.

Power Outage

A freakish storm came through here last night, knocking out power in our area.  It also dropped the temperature down to about 14 degrees F.  The wind was harsh, and the windows in our apartment are ill-fitted to stop the cold from seeping in.  The power went off temporarily at about 10 p.m. and then came back on for about an hour before going off again for another 10 hours.  Before the power went off I found a battery-powered clock my sister had given me for my birthday, and I set it up so that it would wake me up just in case the power failed again (which it did).  I didn’t know whether the power would fail again, but sure enough this morning we had no power.  The apartment hall lights and elevators were working, backed up by a backup power generator.  However, the rest of the building was dark and cold.

I still went to work today.  I decided to leave our car with my wife in case she needed to evacuate the family to a warmer place–like a nearby mall.  Thus I had to use mass transportation to get to work.  I caught the apartment shuttle to the Metro station, then took the Metro to another shuttle that then took me to work.  Easy enough, but unfortunately a train had stalled on the Blue/Yellow line, causing significant delays.  I was absolutely freezing waiting on the platform for the train to arrive.  14 degrees isn’t extremely cold, but after Saturday’s balmy weather it was a shock to my system.  Everyone waited in huddled masses for the train, and once it arrived we crammed into it Tokyo-style.  I’ve never been on such a crowded Metro train before.  I held my breath and finally made it to my destination, catching the shuttle to work.  After that I was fine until the power went off at work.  I thought, “Oh no, here we go again!”  Fortunately, the power came back on about an hour later.

My wife picked me up after work, and we ran Christmas errands.  I missed that car!  We shopped for presents, delivered a Christmas gift to someone, and waited an hour at the post office to mail our Christmas presents to loved ones.  Christmas is the one time of the year when everyone waits at the post office in pressure-cooker fashion and yet manages to be polite and cordial to one another.  Waiting at the post office to mail packages made me wonder whether e-tailing would really do away with in-store shopping.  I talked to a store clerk last weekend who mentioned that Christmas sales were down because more people were shopping online.  I still saw a lot of people shopping for Christmas the old fashioned way.  As for me, I bought one gift online this Christmas, but for the most part I went the traditional route and went to the mall and factory outlet stores.  I limited my gift card purchases to two.  It just hasn’t been a good year this year for me to exercise creativity (too busy).

D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and Council Chair Linda Cropp met today to discuss stadium financing options for the Washington National baseball club.  It sounds promising; hopefully they can broker a deal before Christmas that will bring the club to Washington, D.C.  The next time I return to D.C. I hope to watch baseball in their new ballpark.

Sharing a vehicle

This is my first day going solo since I started Korean in July.  My wife has been going with me to Korean class from the very beginning, but today I’m on my own now that she has finished her language course.  She finished early so that she can take care of our son.  Until now her parents had been taking care of our son, but now they’re returning home in anticipation of our departure.  My wife will stay home with our son full time until at least mid-February when we head to Seoul.  After we get to Korea she may work part-time or full-time if she can find a good job there that does not require fluent Korean.  In the meantime she’ll be a stay-at-home mom.

We only have one car now.  We got rid of our other vehicles before we moved to the D.C. area, and now we’re down to one vehicle.  That was fine when we both had the same schedule, but now that we’re on different schedules we will have to time-share the car.  It takes a bit of creativity.  The weather is cold now and it won’t be fun walking outside for extended periods of time or waiting at a bus stop.  The Metro isn’t as convenient as it could be.  She will drive me in and pick me up while her parents are here, but after that I’ll be on my own if she needs to keep the car.  Having a second vehicle is so convenient.  I wish mass transit were convenient, but unfortunately not.  Perhaps when we return to the D.C. area in the future mass transit will be a more viable option for us.  In the meantime we’ll have to do some fancy schedule coordinating, and I’ll have to spend more time getting to and from school on my own.  It’s just two months–that’s not too bad.  I just hope that I won’t get caught in a big snowstorm between now and when we leave for Seoul.  We won’t always have a car around the world, but in most parts of America it’s such a necessity.