Naked and Afraid

Weekly Update - August 19, 2022

Greetings all. I hope you have had a good week.

For me, this week has been all about adjustment. We are adjusting to school mode. Classes start in a little over a week. So we are adjusting to late summer, school supply shopping, first day jitters and - for Elizabeth at least - ALL the things that go with being a senior in high school. 

For me, the biggest adjustment has been coming home from our annual family “beach week.” 

We try to go to the beach every year. Last year, it was Carolina Beach. 2020 was Covid. In 2019, we went to Atlantic Beach. This year, we returned to Atlantic Beach, and it was awesome. We had lots of beach time. We ate fried shrimp. We swam in the pool, walked on the pier, played putt putt, went to the 4 Corners Diner, Fort Macon and the aquarium. We had a full on beach experience. Best of all, we stayed in a hotel (normally we AirBnB). Staying in a hotel meant we got the greatest of all vacation experiences… 

Hotel TV.

Hotel TV just hits different. It may be the same channels, but there are fewer of them. And unlike at home (where we have YouTube TV), you can’t pause it, or watch a recording from the DVR, or have access to streaming services. In the hotel there are 23 channels and you get what you get. 

When I was a kid, I would have marveled at 23 channels. Where I grew up we had 4. At my grandmother’s house even farther in the country we had like 2 ½. And that was on a clear day if the antenna cooperated. Now, though, when I have literally more content available through the internet than I could reasonably consume in 1000 lifetimes, 23 channels feels like the dark ages. I mean, there were only 2 ESPNs. 

We found ourselves gravitating toward cheesy reality TV. Like the HGTV shows where people are looking for a house. She is a grad student studying art history. He is the assistant manager of a boutique that sells essential oil diffusers for dog houses. Their budget is $4.7 million. Or the Food Network shows where everyone is angry at Bobby Flay for some reason and wants to have a competition with him where they see who can cook the best goat tripe.

My favorite show to watch in a hotel (and I confess, at home now too) is Naked and Afraid.