What TiVo gets me: Annoyed

I've had a TiVo box in my living room for the past two months, positioned nicely on my console under the TV and alongside the DVD player.

"Just plug it in!" my friends encouraged me. "That's all it takes!" they swore. One had kindly given me her TiVo box when she moved apartments and upgraded to her new cable company's DVR service. They couldn't understand how I had functioned for so long without it; no one can, really, which is something I kind of get but honestly don't miss. I really don't watch that much TV. "But you would," they assured, "if you can forward through commercials and watch what you want, when you want."

I guess, I thought, but should I really be aiming to watch more TV? Probably not, but I've started to think that maybe I'm spending too much time online these days, and getting lost in a series of bad programming might relax me. And really, I've just gotten tired of having to explain myself to people who don't understand why I don't have TiVo. You'd think I was telling them I don't own a television. Or shower.

So in the interest of peer pressure, I came home tonight, plugged the damn thing in, logged online to set up an account, and found myself staring at pages of set-up instructions that promptly told me what no one else had mentioned: I needed a home phone line to install it. I'm calling to cancel the service tomorrow.

Maybe by September I will get around looking into DVR. In the meantime, I happily skipped current episodes of Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters to read Apprentice updates on Tim's blog. Which, in my eyes, was time better spent.