Posts Tagged ‘singletons

08
Jan

I Heart Tivo

By Deb 1 Comment
Categories: Pennsylvania
Tags: , , , ,

It finally happened.  I broke down and got a Tivo.  I was waiting (albeit not very patiently) for the Comcast/Tivo partnership deal to make its way down to the greater Philadelphia area.  But it’s been a few months and the outlook was less than promising.

The final proverbial straw that landed on this camel’s back was that my Windows Media Center PC (which has been acting as my DVR) does not support HD.  I have an HD television and therefore would like to be able to record HD.  As we are nearing the start of a new season of LOST, the last thing I wanted was to not be able to watch it in HD if I happen to not be home some evening when it’s on.

To remedy this, I temporarily switched over to the Comcast HD-DVR by Motorola to see if that would be enough to tide me over, but alas.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the Motorola DVR, that is when it’s working.  However, if (or rather when) it stops working, that’s it.  You and all of your shows that you’ve recorded are toast.  Comcast will come and replace it, but you’re out everything that was on the hard drive.  This happened to me a couple of times with the Motorola DVR I had in NYC through Time Warner and it had already happened to me once in only 3 months with Comcast.  Someone I work with said it’d happened to them 3 times in the past year.

Tivo seemed like the best solution by far.  Plus they were having a $200 rebate by mail deal going on, so the timing seemed perfect.  So just before Christmas I bit the bullet and ordered my Tivo and I may never look back.

It has been a little under a month now, and as stated in the title of this entry, I do indeed “heart” Tivo.  My Tivo is smart, fun, and a quick study.  I love navigating him.  I love checking out the “Tivo Suggestions” folder to see what new things he may have found for me to watch.  I love creating Wish Lists that get automatically recorded so that I am pleasantly surprised by movies that show up under ”Now Playing” that I didn’t even know where going to be on.  I love that he is connected to my wireless network so that I can give him instructions from anywhere. 

Tivo has so completely changed the way I view television that I may never watch it live again.  Just as an example, I was home with migraine-wannabe headache on Sunday.  My head felt like someone was using a jackhammer or wrecking ball or some other heavy machinery to try and break out of my skull.  So I spent the bulk of the day sitting on the couch, popping Advil, and watching TV…or rather, Tivo.  I began by perusing my “Now Playing” list to see if there was anything I had intentionally recorded but had not yet watched.  There wasn’t, so I moved onto the “Tivo Suggestions” folder where I found all sorts of treats that Tivo thought I might like including an old Marilyn Monroe film called Niagara, Bonfire of the Vanities, a Hitchcock film I hadn’t seen called The Paradine Case, and a few others.  Tivo was right - I enjoyed them all.  Bonfire of the Vanities surprised me in the beginning as I watched Bruce Willis in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center (for those who don’t know, that is where I used to work).  I didn’t flip to live TV once.

Let me close by saying that, with Valentine’s Day fast approaching, I feel fairly confident that if Mr. Right-For-Me has not appeared in my life by then, I will most likely be spending the evening with Tivo instead.

03
Jan

Young At Heart

By Deb 0 Comments
Categories: Pennsylvania
Tags: , , ,

First off, I’m not that old.  33 is definitely older than, say, 18 but not so much older that I can tell tales of having to walk uphill both ways to school without shoes or anything.  Granted, I’m not married yet but I do still have 75% of the American dream accounted for:  a house and a dog - I’m just missing the 2.5 kids, but I’m good with that.

What has brought on these thoughts?  My 23-year-old roommate.  In some ways having her around makes me feel younger…but then in other ways having her around makes me feel incredibly old.  I wouldn’t have necessarily thought that would be the case because she’s only a year younger than my sister Kristin, and yet it seems that there are things that come out in our conversations that make me take a step back and go “wow.”

Just so we’re clear, this isn’t about me feeling “old” and wishing I was younger.  I don’t.  Really.  I love being in my 30’s.  In fact, so far I think my 30’s are waaaaay better than my 20’s.  Even with as much fun as I had in my 20’s (moving to Alaska, living in NYC, traveling around Europe, getting the lowest salary known to man and learning how to live happily on it, etc.) I would never want to go back and repeat my 20’s.  No way.  Not in a million.  You couldn’t pay me.

While my 20’s were fun, they were also full of self-discovery and struggling to find answers to questions about my place in the world.  On the other hand, my 30’s have so far been more about having figured out a lot of that stuff and relaxing into life.  My 30’s have (so far) seen great leaps in my career including a job I really enjoy and a salary which allowed me to purchase a home as well as a puppy.  They have also brought with them the best trips I have taken to date and I have no doubt there are greater things yet to come… 

Just to give you a taste, some of my pre-40 goals include:

  • Become completely debt-free
  • Move to another part of the country (or perhaps another country altogether…I’m flexible)
  • Travel to Antarctica, Africa, Australia & New Zealand, the Arctic, China, and Patagonia

It’s crazy to me that I can look at that list and know that there’s nothing unobtainable there.  I could never have imagined being able to say that about a list like this in my 20’s - for most of my 20’s, it was all I could do to pay for food!

I still have my moments (as do we all) where I’m frustrated at being unclear in my purpose or lonely (for instance, I was in tears the other night fearing that I might not find someone to share my life with while I still look good naked).  But at the end of [most] days, I rest secure in knowing that God has a purpose for me whether I can readily recognize it or not.  When I look at how He’s provided for me so far, how can I doubt that He won’t continue to blow my mind with His plans and provisioning for my future?

28
Aug

When Good Dates Go Bad

By Deb 2 Comments
Categories: Pennsylvania
Tags: , , , , , ,

Wanted to share a quick story because I was so annoyed by it, it has once again led me to the brink of swearing off all online dating sites completely.

As many of you know, I have been on eHarmony off and on (more on than off) for the past 5 years. Since the site has yielded no more than a few decent dates and absolutely zero long-term relationships in that period of time, I decided about 2 months ago to call it quits on eHarmony altogether. I steered clear of anything date-related (online or otherwise) for about a month before signing up with Match.com in a fit of optimism.

And why not? You might say. Just because eHarmony was a pit with no possibilities, Match might be different. And hey, anything that Dr. Phil attaches his name to can’t be all bad, right? Hm.

It didn’t take long for me to start receiving messages and getting notifications from Match whenever I was “winked” at…and can someone tell me, what the heck is “winking” about anyway? What is the point of sending a virtual “wink” when hardly anyone even does that in real life anymore? Who are these winkers, and why do they feel compelled to “wink” instead of sending a real message?

Anyway, a couple of weeks and dozens of winks later, I had come across a guy who didn’t seem half-bad. He was from Philly, a Christian, and intelligent. We spoke on the phone a couple of times and arranged that we would get together for coffee and then see where the day would lead.

Saturday I got to the Starbucks a little early and waited for him to show. He was right on time so therefore off to a good start in my book. He was a little shorter than myself, but I tried not to let that bother me. I also had to make a point not to concern myself with physical characteristics that I might not find so appealing, per se. This is a danger I often find with meeting people in person who I’ve previously only “met” online - it’s difficult sometimes to reconcile the real thing with the image you’ve designed in your head. Photos don’t even help with this sometimes - people might be incredibly photogenic and so the real thing doesn’t live up to the picture… And on the other side of that spectrum live people who are not photogenic at all, but are gorgeous in real life. In any case, I’m typically able to overcome this upon meeting an online-originating date within the first few minutes.

As for him, I’m not sure what the problem was. I don’t know if he found my nail polish color offensive, or maybe the style shirt I had on bothered him in some way, or perhaps I had something grotesque sticking out of my teeth that sneered at him when I spoke, but whatever it was, he lasted for about an hour before announcing that he had a “headache” and felt that he needed to “just go home”.

A headache?! Was this guy serious?! I mean c’mon! The LEAST he could do was be a little more creative and say he had a brain tumor or something, but a headache? You’ve got to be kidding me. “It’s just as well,” I felt like saying to him, “I’ve gotta get home and wash my hair anyway.”

To be fair, I didn’t disbelieve him right away (although I did think it was kind of strange). Afterall, I myself suffer from the occasional migraine. If he really did have a bad headache that was interfering with his ability to have a good time, then by all means, he should have gone home and far be it from me to stand in his way. However, WERE that the case, I also would have expected that I would hear from him when his head was feeling better - or at least within the next day or so - to apologize and maybe set up some sort rain check since we had barely been out for 60 minutes. But my phone hasn’t rung once. Nor have I had anything come in through email. Nada.

And so I’m left to believe that this seemingly-nice guy was really anything but, and I am again questioning the purpose of continuing to subject myself to this kind of torture through places such as eHarmony & Match - I’m also now feeling like I just traded one hopeless site for another. What really gets me is the fact that not only do I have to endure pathetic guys in their 30’s or above who are quite clearly still single for a reason, but I’m actually PAYING to do this!

So I guess if you look at it that way, maybe it is really I who is pathetic…? Something to consider.

16
Jun

Year of the Tazmanian Devil

By Deb 0 Comments
Categories: NYC
Tags: , , , ,

I’ve read a lot of books about being single – some good, some not so much. And what I have discovered (in the good ones, anyway) is that the overall gist is the same: singleness should be celebrated as much as being married. Like Ecclesiastes 3 tells us, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” For me, this is my season of being what Bridget Jones calls a “singleton.” I hope and pray that this will not be the final season of my life – that indeed I will find someone to journey through this life with and share the joys and trials and laughter and sorrows as they come. However, for the time that I am a singleton, I want to make sure I’m appreciating every moment of it for as long as it’s here. I do not want to find myself at some point looking back over my life from the other side of the alter regretting that I didn’t take better advantage of my singleness while I had the chance.

This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve thought about this, but this year is a real milestone year in many ways which have really been bringing my marital status to the forefront of my thinking.

The Chinese calendar says that 2004 is the “Year of the Monkey” but I think if I could choose, I would call it the “Year of the Tasmanian Devil”. This is shaping up to be a crazy and confusing year - I turn 30, my sister is getting married, and my best friend is having a baby. None of these things in and of themselves are enough to make me do serious evaluation of my current state, but lumped together, the three have had a profound affect on me.

To begin with, my 30th birthday came and went in March. Sigh. I had planned to be away for the big day itself – I was scheduled to go on a hiking trip in the Andes Mountains of Peru. Unfortunately, I had to undergo some unexpected surgery which prevented me from traveling so instead the day was spent at home with my roommate doing a 24 – Season 2 marathon which was its own brand of fun. Now my sister’s wedding and the birth of my best friend’s first baby are events that are both taking place this July. I’m happy for both of them – truly, but it has been a lot to handle all at once. Allow me to explain.

You must first understand that my sister is 23 years old – quite a bit younger than I – and while I don’t think I ever would have verbalized this before (because I don’t think I consciously thought it), I realized through my tears after hearing of her engagement, that I had just never in a million years thought that she would beat me to the alter. If she were only a year or two younger I probably wouldn’t have been so shocked, but here I sit on the cusp of what feels like my last season before spinsterhood while she’s now picking out china patterns, bridesmaid dresses, and flower arrangements.

Add onto that my best friend and the baby that’s on its way. Why should this be a difficult thing, you ask? Naturally I have many friends who already have kids – in fact, 3 of my closest friends have had babies already this year. But this one is different…this is the baby of my best friend in the whole world. We met when we were about five and have been closer than close throughout the majority of our days since. Married eight years ago, I knew they were going to wait to have kids – her husband was going to grad school and there were some additional things that they wanted to accomplish before beginning a family. Eight years ago as I stood in the bridal party for their wedding, I thought that surely this would work out perfectly – that by the time they got around to starting to have kids I would be married and probably ready to start a family as well. Our children would most likely be close in age and then wouldn’t that be just perfect?! But now, eight years later, and I’m no closer to getting married than I was at 22 and she’s starting without me. Happy as I am for them, and honestly cannot wait to meet that bundle of joy, I can’t help but feel a little left behind.

What these three things together have done is make me see how even though I never sat down and wrote out what I thought my “life plan” was, I had one nonetheless, even if it was subconscious. And since my life has not turned out the way I subconsciously planned, I have to deal with that fact and turn my unspoken plans over to God. His planning is surely far better than anything my finite human mind could come up with. After all, if someone had come up to me at my high school graduation and told me that by the time I was 30, I would have lived in Alaska, New York City, and England, I would have thought they were crazy. But God had plans for me that I hadn’t even imagined and I’d much rather be on His timetable.

So for now I’m heavily involved in my sister’s wedding (bridesmaid and all that) so I’m having to show her my joy, and save my tears for my nights when I cry to God. I’m seeing Him more and more as my great comforter (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). I also managed to pick up a wonderful book called “God’s Promises for Singles” which really could be for anyone. It lists specific promises God gives in His Word based on the needs you might have for the moment, so if you’re in need of comfort, see page 11. Feeling dissatisfied? Page 40. Want a reminder of how Jesus is our companion? Page 82. And the list goes on. It’s a great little book that I’ve yet to really use to its fullest capacity, but I plan to keep it out in easy reach – especially this year.