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"You're going to have to watch something. We're down to 2 percent memory," my wife said.
My response was a big sigh. I had intended to do work on the computer this evening, not watch a DVR'd ice hockey match or baseball game so it can be deleted to free up memory on the DVR.
"There's three Penguins games and two Pirates. Do you want me to tell you which games they won?" Honey asked.
There's something wrong about watching only the games that my teams won, but it does save a lot of time. . . especially with the Pirates this season. I usually don't even know whether or not they won, but Honey does, because her phone believes she is intensely interested in sports outcomes. She isn't, but her phone thinks she is because she clicks on update links when it offers them.
"You should watch the second game against the Padres," she said.
"We won?" I asked. It was a rhetorical question. She wouldn't have advised me to watch it if we hadn't.
So I watched it. It was a crazy game, with Pirates pitchers walking a record 13 and hitting three batters. Unbelievably, in the first inning Pirates hitters chased the Padres starter, Blake Snell, last year's Cy Young Award winner, and won the game 8-4.
I hated to erase such an interesting game, but I did.
"Good job," Honey said. "We're up to 3 percent."
I'VE GOTTEN SO USED to watching recorded games that I can hardly stand to watch sports live. I keep trying to fast-forward through the commercials.
It's not only sports that get the DVR treatment. Honey has the DVR programmed to record a few current TV series - "The Rookie," "The Good Doctor" and our recent favorite, "Resident Alien" - along with Hallmark Channel mysteries for her, and any Hallmark romance starring Lacey Chabert for our powerlifting strength coach son Worshrag.
Worshrag is infatuated with Lacey, a petite brunette actress. He will watch any movie she's in. His girlfriend Busy Bee tolerates his starlet crush with grace. It shows that underneath those bulging muscles beats the heart of a squishy romantic.
Then there are the movies, mostly old movies. Honey has DVR'd a ton of them. We just have to find time to watch them.
We just finished "Ben-Hur," the sweeping 1959 epic film starring Charlton Heston. I remember my parents took me to Pittsburgh to see it in wide screen Cinemascope at the Stanley Theater downtown. It was a big deal. We dressed up and sat in the balcony. The film was great then and it's great now.
Honey recorded "Ivanhoe" with Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor (no relation) for me because I loved the book in my youth. Taylor (he) was wooden, Taylor (she) was young and radiant, and the fighting scenes were poorly done. Some old movies hold up, many don't.
"Dr. Zhivago," another classic and epic, has been sitting in DVR limbo for months. I want to watch it; Honey does too, but she doesn't want to invest the time.
There are other programs waiting to be watched, like 16 episodes of "Mystery Science Theater." A clever show, but you need three people with the same sense of humor to watch it together, and that ain't happening. Other people have their own backlog to watch.
I SHOULD MENTION the weather forecast. Yes, Honey records WTOV-9 local news and weather so she can buzz through to see if the forecast has changed in the past four hours. What's funny is that the entire family knows she does it and calls her to find out what the weather is going to be.
So that's our TV life these days: DVR it, watch it, delete it.
When I was a boy, life felt solid, permanent, while TV shows seemed ephemeral, gone forever if you missed them.
Turned out to be the other way around.
(Fred Miller's new book of 100 stories, "Falling Under Honey's Spell," is $10, available locally at Connie's Kitchen, Davis Bros. Pharmacies, Frank's Pastry, Giant Eagle Calcutta, Green Marble Coffee, Museum of Ceramics, Pottery City Antique Mall, and at fredmilleratlarge.com.)