Priorities

Hey y'all. Long time no blog. This post is the first in a series I'll be making over the next few months, highlighting my experiences as I move across the country on a new adventure.

Yep, that's right. I'm moving. To Washington state.

I've been "trapped" here in Maryland for a little over six years now. Originally, I moved here for what I thought would be a long term career move. That didn't work out. Then I found another potential long term career move, right here again. And well, that didn't work out either. Since then, I've been doing my own thing and enjoying it. But that thing is not tied to any specific geography, and laziness, intertia, ennui, and absolute HATRED of moving has kept me from going anywhere other than here. I'm in an overpriced apartment and most of my nice furniture is still, six years later, in storage in Georgia. Other than one dear friend, the only things I really like about the region are the crabcakes and the new Wegman's. Is that enough reason to stay in a state you don't really care for? No, didn't think so. And even though The Wire was filmed here, I also love Buffy and Star Trek, but I'm not moving to Sunnydale or Space anytime soon. (Although I'd probably move to Risa, if it existed).

So, why Washington? That's a post for another day, but suffice to day, it's a new adventure. My choices were between going back to Georgia and moving out to Washington, and after sampling the Pacific Northwest during the holidays, I thought it would be a place I could really love. I made pro/con lists. I got moving estimates. I scoured real estate sites. I looked at tax implications. I considered the ramifications for my UGA season tickets (that's also another story, but I will definitely be going back for at least six of the seven 2014 home games). After all the analysis, I went with more of the "why the fuck not?" and less of the "been there, done that."

Once the decision was made, my first priority was to look through my "TV Spreadsheet." (Of course my first priority was TV). I originally made this spreadsheet way back when I upgraded from an SD DVR to a new HD DVR. I couldn't "move" or "transfer" my season passes to a new box, so I made a spreadsheet to help me keep track of them. There were also two other reasons to keep things so tightly documented: Even with a two-tuner box, there were countless conflicts that had to be managed, especially on high volume of good show nights like Thursdays or Sundays. What should you set a season pass for? What should you seek out on Hulu? What could you find on a later airing or west coast feed? Second, DirecTV's DVRs had a limit of 50 on the number of season passes you could set. That may seem like a lot, but when you have (at last count) twenty shows to season pass on Sunday alone, well, you run out of space fast. So I had to delete some season passes in the off season and add the new ones in, and manage those precious spots like a post-season pitching rotation. A spreadsheet made this easy to track.

I've since upgraded to the Genie, and this splendid motherfucker with 5 tuners and an abundance of storage space has eliminated many of these problems. But now that I'm moving, I'm glad I kept the spreadsheet because once I get out to the land of coffee and hippies, I'll have to reprogram (at least) all my season passes for new west coast network feeds.

Yeah, yeah. I'll get a new drivers license and health insurance and a place to live. BUT I CAN'T MISS MY STORIES, Y'ALL. PRIORITIES.