A weekend in (almost) paradise

On the drive to Richmond Friday afternoon, we lucked out. The clouds parted and the sun came out. And the hotel had a pool, which was closed since it's after Labor Day, but that apparently meant they no longer skim off the bugs, so we sat on the edge and dangled our legs when we got too warm, lounged on the chaises, drank (Starbucks or water, as the case may be), read, and talked. Saturday was wonderful. Hot, in the 90s, which felt so good after the cool, dreary week we'd been through.

Our room was beautiful. It actually had a partition dividing the bedroom from the living room, and in the middle, on a swivel, was a 42" high-def tv. Now, we'd never seen HDTV before, as one of us didn't want to pay the extra $5 a month for it although she HAS an HDTV and the other two of us don't have them at all, and it was a revelation.

We all hate sports. We are blessed with a dad who never followed anything that involved throwing, catching, or hitting balls, so we grew up in a sports-free house. I'm fortunate enough to be married to a man who doesn't like sports.

But this past weekend, we only watched high-def channels. Outside of HBO, The Weather Channel, CNN, and something called Universal TV (I think), there wasn't much on that was high-def. So we watched a lot of CNN and, God help us, sports.

That doesn't mean I'll ever watch them again. But we could see every blade of grass. The colors were incredibly bright. Wrinkles on faces were unfortunately very visible. We decided that we'll never allow our photos to be shown on an HDTV, even though this weekend there was a hookup for a laptop (which I no longer have anymore) (but Joan does) and we could have looked at our pictures of Peter Cooper in high-def.

But that would have been just plain mean. And painful.