Okay, so my dad died and gone with him is the knowledge of how to use three different remotes to make the Dish TV work. To be fair, my brother, Chris, got it up and running last week and it only took him about fifteen minutes. I felt bad turning it off ten minutes later but there was nothing on. Now I'm afraid to ask him again.

ITunes, however, let me download the last episode of 30 Rock. It was $1.99. Whatever. Am I supposed to forgive Alec Baldwin for something? Being a dick to his daughter? Has he had his public flaying yet? Am I free to like his show again? Merciful Tina, let it be so.

Wednesday my mom tried to introduce me to my brother, Tim, like we were meeting for the first time to change her sheets. She was so polite about it.

Then, today, as Tim and I were wading through the sea of useless crap that covers the floor of my dad's office, Tim found a box of chocolate Christmas cookies that my dad had either forgotten or chosen not to open. "Who sends cookies to a diabetic?" asked Tim, chuckling. I thought they still looked pretty good, but Tim said not to eat them.

So I went out and bought some chocolate cookies.

Anyway, I'm interested in the thought process of the iTunes movie downloads chooser. Both Capote and Breakfast at Tiffany's are there; all eleventy-hundred Star Trek movies; some Wes Anderson; a chunk of fifties Westerns; and I was this close to downloading Chinatown, it's only $9.99 and it's perfect, I am never not in the mood to watch that movie -- but I already own it on DVD back in California. So I ended up buying Stick It. Seriously, I spent $14.99 on a gymnastics movie that took three hours to download onto my laptop.

Another thing I did today was spend $10 on one of those eye shade things that you strap onto your face when you're trying to nap. I forgot how the sun blasts right into my old room at 7:00 a.m., which is brutal, seeing as how I can't seem to get to sleep in this place before 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. I stay up late reading old Doonesbury comics.

I also bought some drugstore reading glasses. Those Doonesbury strips are tiny.

My new thing after dinner is to drag a chair up next to my mom's hospital bed and goof off with the Internet while she reads library books.

She's using an old valentine from my father as a bookmark.

My brother, Chris, who's been living here full-time for years taking care of my parents, now spends entire days in chat rooms thanks to his new best friend, DSL. So just to warn you, if you're on Match.com, you might run into him, but I don't think he's using his real name, and I'm pretty sure he's pretending to be a woman.