Can’t live with it, Can’t live without it

I’ll be the first to admit that I am 100% addicted and obsessed with my Mac, cell phone, i-Pod, brand new plasma TV (that I’m still geeking out over), and the new DVR that DirectTV just so kindly installed after making us wait for almost 3 months. When studying abroad in Florence, Italy in the Spring of 2005, I lived a life that totally stripped me from my comfort zone and took away every piece of technology except a cell phone that looked like one I had 4 years prior. Living in Italy really made me realize that 90% of everything Americans have and take advantage of is excessive and really not as important as I had once thought.

Until I moved back. And how quickly we forget the lessons learned…

I realized I could live without many things, but after returning stateside, I began to ask myself, “But why live without them when I don’t have to?” I quickly began building my gadget collection post-Italy with many of the items listed above. As mentioned, our new TV and DVR has been the most recent addition. The more gadget-y I become, the less patience I have for my technology when it doesn’t work.

I didn’t have to DVR Heroes on Monday, but since my brother was watching a DVD, and I wanted to watch it in HD, I decided against taking the long, excruciating trip downstairs to the basement to view it on our old-school, straight-out-of-1985 TV. Later that night as I was watching, the recording skipped from 33 minutes in all the way up to 52 minutes. Instead of chopping off the end, it simply didn’t record the middle.

Many curses and swears followed as I devastatingly admitted defeat. Yes, I could watch it on nbc.com tomorrow, but it’s not the same. As I thought of the huge suck-factor of not being able to see the segments I missed, I thought about Florence and how my life was without any TV, i-Pods, computers, and every small life-facilitating device I own now. And though I lived a much more stress-free life living in Florence, and respected everything I had learned there…I was still pissed about missing part of my favorite comic book TV show about flying superheroes.