So I still haven’t gone to see the new Harry Potter movie. I read all of the books and have seen all of the other films. I was a little disappointed with the last one actually. I hated that they cute the last book in half and made two movies out of it. I’ve heard great reviews about this new movie and am excited to see it. I’m thinking we might go next week once the crazy buzz dies down a bit. I don’t feel like dealing with hundreds of Potter fans all dressed up and shouting at the screen while I try to enjoy the show in peace. I guess I’m just not in the mood right now.
Snowbirds and Retirees
So many people work all theirs lives with dreams of retiring someplace like Florida or Arizona. For many, they spend half of each year in their cold northern home states and the other half in a sunny warmer state. Those people are called “Snowbirds” because they come to Miami or Orlando or Phoenix to escape the cold weather and spend their winters someplace warm.
My grandparents have dreamed of retiring and moving to Arizona and are trying to make that happen now. They picked Sun City and have found a home. Just to be safe, they are have an alarm system installed in their new house before they move in. They wanted to stay with ADT, who they used back in Michigan. So they searched home security suncity to find someone locally.
Next, they want to get Direct TV hooked up so my Grampa can watch all of his sports shows.He says the best part of retirement will be watching all the games he used to miss when he had to work second shift at the plant. I think that is great – he deserves to watch whatever he wants to after all these years of working hard and missing out on his favorite games.
He loves the Lions and all the Detroit teams, bless his heart! At least his beloved Red Wings have been playing well these past years, but its 3 or 4 months to go before hockey starts back up. And Gramps will be watching!
Summer Reruns
Television has always been a part of my life. I watched cartoons on Saturday mornings as a kid, I was allowed to watch some comedy shows at night after my homework was completed, and then I watched movies and some drama shows as I got older. I realize that TV is a relatively new medium. I read somewhere that is was created in the 1940’s but that most American households could not watch anything because there were no networks and no shows being broadcast because of the War. In the 1950’s, a lot of Americans bought their first TV sets and some shows, especially the evening news began broadcasting.
What a long way we’ve come from the 1950’s to today, with cable and satellite and movies being downloaded over the internet to be watched on laptops, tablets and even phones! And yet, we still have very short seasons of new shows to watch and then a long drought of reruns and nothing interesting to watch all summer. When does the programming department catch up with modern life and change the length of the season to something the viewers want?
TV Trivia
My generation has always had TV and cable, but my parents did not. I found some interesting trivia on a web site about TV. For example, did you know that although the television set was built and sold as early as 1939, that there were almost no television broadcasting stations because of World War II? Most Americans did not have access to local programming until the 1950’s, so the affluent and middle class did not start buying them for home use until the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Another interesting fact is that in the year 2006, the number of television sets in American homes outnumbered the number of human occupants for the first time. The average American home had 2.73 TV sets but only 2.55 people, and that number of TV sets per home continues to increase.