Family Trip

been over a week since i've posted... got busy right before a six-day trip out of town to visit the in-laws in florida. had a great time, the wife's family is very nice and was very accommodating. but still, the trip begs some questions...

at what age do you no longer care whether or not you're getting the most out of your high-tech gear? i couldn't blog because they don't have their wireless router plugged in. no big deal. though one would think that it'd be easier to just leave it hooked up rather than undo it. i know i haven't touched my router in years. would've been more "online" if not for the fact that their computer is the absolute slowest i've ever used. as best we can tell, mom and dad in-law have close to a hundred different spyware and virus protection programs running all the time. good if you're surfing oodles of porn. bad if you, like them, just want to check some e-mail and download a crossword puzzle or twenty. anyway, when we weren't using the computer, we were watching a decent amount of tv on their nice, hi-def set. only they rarely ever had the screen on the correct setting. they would put on NBC or CBS in HD... but would leave it on the setting that stretches the non-HD channels to fill up the whole widescreen. therefore, everything's stretched to fit and nothing's actually in HD even though we're on the HD channel. i tried my best to fix it whenever they weren't nearby the remote... but it always went back to the wrong setting, leaving me unable to pay attention to the show or the cut-off ticker at the bottom of the screen. do they not even notice?! and lastly, there was some lag in the surround sound whenever a DVD was played... leaving a slight, but very noticeable, echo effect. very annoying. very unnoticed by anyone but me apparently.

other, less answerable questions:
at what age do you begin to panic if you're not leaving for the airport three hours in advance? ft. myers is no o'hare - security lines aren't gonna be draped down I-75. we'll make it okay.

at what age do you make the jump from an occasional crossword puzzle to many, making them the main activity of the day?

in the ft. myers/naples area, where does anyone under 60 live? their neighborhood is practically a retirement community without being billed as that. in five days, i saw exactly one person under the age of 40 besides myself, my wife, and my nieces.

what's more fun than watching other families do their "family thing"? my brother-in-law repeatedly ribbed his parents for thinking it was cold when it went below 55 degrees. my wife would scream at her dad when he fast-forwarded what he thought was a slow part of a movie. and everyone just went on their merry way. i know similar things occur in my family and it'd be funny to be new enough to notice them.

besides these funny annoyances, it was a great trip. i look forward to seeing them all again soon and noticing even more quirks and idiosyncrasies.