Friday, January 18, 2013

How to Have a Downton Abbey Marathon on a Snow Day in Fourteen Easy Steps

1) Find the Downton Abbey DVDs you received for Christmas.
2) Figure out which machine is the DVD player.
3) Insert disc 1 into the DVD player.
4) Attempt to make DVD player communicate with television.  Mess with 3 different remotes.  Succeed in making television screen turn different colors. 
5) Call teenage son, interrupting his "snow football" game.  Son explains basic concept of DVD players and televisions; also explains that a fourth remote is required.
6) Following son's explicit directions, succeed in making Downton Abbey disc 1 menu appear on TV screen, along with snippet of audio that becomes annoying by its fifteenth repetition, as you try unsuccessfully, for several minutes, using all 4 remotes plus the face of the DVD player itself, to select "play."
7) Call teenage daughter, interrupting her building of a snowman.
8) Teenage daughter demonstrates the pressing of a button on the 4th remote which is not the button marked 'Play' nor any of the arrow buttons, but which does indeed make the DVD play.
9) Answer ringing telephone.  Press 'pause.' Discover that this does make the DVD pause. Spend 30 seconds discussing new book with editor, then ten minutes dishing with editor on Downton Abbey.  Editor reveals how she once ordered a man to get out of her lane at a NYC pool where she was swimming laps, only to discover that he was a highly attractive Downton Abbey cast member.
10) Ponder how those sorts of encounters never seem to happen in Bristol ,Tennessee.
11) Resume DVD.  Pick up knitting.  Fail to find pattern needed in any of several knitting bags.
12) Press 'pause.' Ransack office, remaining knitting bags, but fail to find pattern.  Go online and reprint necessary pages of pattern.  Attempt to resume DVD.  Having forgotten which is the magic unmarked 'play' button, hit each button on 4th remote in succession until succeeding.  Wonder why the internet is so simple to use, DVD players so impossibly hard.
13) Resume DVD.  Get text from friend suggesting that the only thing that would improve an afternoon of Downton Abbey and knitting would be a glass of wine.
14) Wholeheartedly agree.

1 comment:

  1. This is too funny - and exactly what would happen to me. I was very happy when I had a little tv with an attached vcr - put the tape in and it started itself. (-:

    ReplyDelete

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