I haven’t written too much about it, but I’m pretty nervous about what happens when Sophia returns. Living apart, we were able to live in limbo land. Now that I’m here at her place, it is closer to “make it or break it” time.
Sometimes I wonder if we had kids, whether it would all be easier. We would have some external force keeping us together besides just “love.” Or even if we had some beloved pet that we dote on. The closest we have to a “third party” that we share in is watching “All My Children.”
I’ve written about “All My Children” in the past — about how Sophia turned me onto it. One of our special rituals at home is to take off our clothes, jump into bed together — and watch that day’s AMC on the Tivo. Of course, as in most things, Sophia controls the remote control. (editor’s note: This does not mean sex — we started watching AMC in bed, so it became a tradition. And the taking off of the clothes is mostly for practical reasons. Who gets into bed in their dirty clothes?)
Even when we separated, we still spoke every day about the latest dumb plot twist, or just how bad Susan Lucci is as an actress.
While I’m stuck woman-less here in LA, Sophia has a bigger dilemma — how does she keep up with AMC? Her TV has bad reception and she has no access to a VCR.
At first, I tried to describe each episode over the phone, even doing dramatic reenactments of Tad and Dixie.
Tad: Tell me, Dixie, do you kill Doctor Madden?
Dixie: How can you ask me that, Tad? Don’t all the years we were married mean anything to you?
Tad: What about your affair with David Hayward?
Dixie: You drove me into his arms. If only you would have trusted me.
Tad: Blah blah blah (as we see David Hayward standing in the doorway, listening in as every soap opera character always does)
Obviously, my reenactment just wasn’t good enough for Sophia, especially with my New Yawk accent. So, I tried something new to please my demanding wife, much as I used to do in the bedroom a long long time ago. This time, I transferred each episode to my computer then uploaded them to Sophia via the internet. It was a OK idea, but the daily four hour process was not very efficient, and wrecked havoc on my blog reading.
Luckily, modern technology came to the rescue!
Sophia convinced me to get a Hava ($249 online). As they say on their website:
“HAVA is the New Wireless solution for high quality home viewing, multicasting and remote viewing. Watch your TV on a PC anywhere in your house up to 300 feet from your HAVA Box or transmit and watch video anywhere in the world via the internet.”
Basically, you take this small box and plug it it into your TV or Tivo. It then wirelessly sends your TV signal to the internet. The only other thing I had to buy was a faster “G” routers for forty dollars, because my older “B” router couldn’t handle the streaming.
Once it was set-up, Sophia could watch her TV at Redondo Beach on her laptop in Manhattan. All she needed was a password to get access. Even better, she has a virtual “remote control” to do everything she can do here — pause, delete, record, etc. I can actually sit in Redondo Beach and watch her change the channels from NY!
Sophia must have been so excited playing with the TV because this morning I suddenly saw it jumping by itself from channel to channel, I saw every button on Tivo pressed. For a second, I forgot about the Hava and thought that a ghost had taken over!
Pretty cool. Does this mean we’re all soon going to be watching “American Idol” in our local Starbucks? Or watching that Yankees game on our TV in Brookyn while in Paris?
After I returned home last night, I called Sophia and was happy to hear that she hadn’t watched “All My Children” yet. Sophia put on her Hava, then we both took off our clothes, got into our respective beds in different cities, and watched yesterday’s “All My Children” at the exact same time. It was just like being together. Sophia even controlled the remote control.
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