The End of an Era......

This is one of two VCR's we have in our house. I'm not even sure what VCR stands for but we have made great use out of them over the years.....before CD (I think that means 'compact disc', but could be wrong) players, that is. This is how we recorded T.V. shows, watched rented movies (yes, like Blockbuster) and played any videos that might have been made of certain special occassions in our family. I'm a great fan of my VCR's because they have made it possible for me to keep up with General Hospital for many years while I worked. Granted, it was hard to squeeze in watching five days of a soap opera on the weekend and there were times when I was backed up with two tapes to watch, but you do what you need to do when you are addicted to the people of Port Charles (or Port Chuck; as Luke likes to refer to it). I could program this little honey to record daily at the same time and fit the whole week of episodes on just one tape. It was tricky at times though. If the power went out for longer than a certain amount of time, it would mess up its clock and I would have to reset it......or, when daylight savings time switched over, I had to be on top of it which I wasn't a couple of times causing an utterance of some choice four-letter words. But, all-in-all our VCR's have served us well.

But, the "new age" is upon us and I discovered that I can watch episodes of General Hospital on my computer free of charge.....with limited commercial breaks. How cool is that? So our VCR's (one in the basement for recording and one upstairs for viewing) have been quiet for a couple of weeks now as I enjoy watching episodes of GH at my leisure. We don't have T-VO or T-BO or whatever they call it but this is just as good. And, actually I can now watch an entire episode quicker than I could on tape; fast-forwarding through commercials. It' made me a very happy camper! And, ask Grandpa.....if Grandma is not happy, NOBODY is happy.

However, we will be saving at least one of our VCR's because, like I said, we do have special events or occassions on tape that we would not part with like dance recitals, tapes that Shelly made of Trinity and Madison in their early years, and the tape of Grandpa and I renewing our wedding vows in Las Vegas. So, you see...we can't to totally VCR free.....how would we play those tapes? So at least one of our VCR's is on our list of things heading to Tennessee. Besides, I don't think I could quite grasp not having one; it's hard to imagine life without one. But, that's me. I'm also still using the first digital camera we bought. So it weights four pounds and records the photos on floppies......who cares, it takes great pictures!!