How do you keep up?

Apparently, conservation wasn't big on my mind today. A gaggle of women friends are coming over tonight.  We call it a sleep over, but they don't sleep and they don't stay over.  It just lets them know to come dressed  comfy, and enjoy a good movie and good company for several hours. And no men invited. 

We wanted to see "Water for Elephants", since some of us had read the book and others just wanted a good story and to see Brad Pitt.  So I drove to a Red Box at Winn-Dixie to rent the movie, brought it home and put it into our DVD player.  It read "no disc" on the screen. I tried wiping it down and trying again, with the same results. Once again, I drove back to a Red Box and tried another time, different box same movie, went back home put it in and had the same result.

I was smart enough to copy the phone number of the Red Box Co. down, so I called to see if they could give me any ideas of what was going on. After answering some general questions, the very pleasant girl on the line told me that, because our DVD player was over a year old, we couldn't run a recent release. I told her it hadn't been used more that a dozen times tops, but she said they have changed the format of new DVDs now to prevent duplicating issues.

So I had a choice of renting an older film or buying a new DVD player.  Since conservation wasn't  on my agenda today, I drove out to Walmart and bought a new one, 15 miles each way. This only makes sense if you really had your heart set on seeing a particular movie and you didn't want to let your friends down.

I can't keep up with how quickly technology becomes obsolete.  In the old days we would brag about how long something lasted and just never wore out.  Today, the gadget may still run, but it needs to be replaced because it hasn't kept up with the rapid developments in the technology. So there we are with all of these perfectly good things that are totally obsolete. So frustrating to me, yet I know the younger generation just eats up all the newest and latest things coming out each year.

So bring on the pizza and popcorn!  I'm ready! This time.