Hello ferret guru's
 
Shelli Blair commented on the effort and preparation she made to see "Pet
News" on Fox that early Saturday mourning, only to be ridiculed by her boy
friend.
 
Well Shelli you stand not alone!  Not that your boy friend ridiculed me,
but the fact that we also suffer from "Ferret Insanity" and not from just
TV, but from ferret anything.
 
Our preparation started early Friday evening around 6:00 PM with the "great
tape search".  In most cases this happens five minutes before a show starts
and you are searching for a blank tape you know you just bought.  After
searching through all the "Barney the Dinosaur", "Thomas the Tank Engine,
"Power Rangers" and all the other preoccupation aids (For those of us with
kids).  You finally get to the tapes you can call your own, only to find out
that new tape you bought is not there.  And adding to the frustration is
four curious George ferrets, who feel it is their duty to tumble the neatly
stacked tapes and explore a cabinet cavity they have never seen before.  So
now that we have found some tapes (without labels) you can record to, at
least you think they are blank nobody would record to a tape and not label
it.  WRONG!!  And then you hear a voice from another room "You better check
those tapes".  Heaven forbid we would record over some Barney or Thomas
episode.  After fast forwarding through 8 tapes I finally found one with
sufficient enough blank space to record the momentous event.
 
Now I have everything in order, a blank tape, set the VCR timer and put all
the tapes back (No thanks to my four friends) all before 8:30 PM.  And what
do I hear!  "Dad did check and see if the VCR would record?  It didn't work
the last time I tried it." WHAT!!  I couldn't believe it.  He sat behind me
the whole time and didn't say word until now.  Sure enough the @(!^!@!#!
thing would not record.  That's OK we have two VCR's.  So I replaced it,
plugged it in and turned it on.  Guess what?  It wasn't working either.
What did I do to deserve this?  By this time a small panic was starting to
set in.  The possibility of not being able to record Fox's Pet News and the
ferret story was out of the question.  What was I going to do?  I was to
embarrassed to call any of our friends (Non ferret owners) they already
questioned our sanity.  So asking them to get up early and tape a show they
would never watch, would probably be a little unrealistic.  The obvious
choice was family.  I called every immediate family member on both mine and
my wife's side.  Only to find out nobody was home or the VCR virus had
struck them as well.
 
It was now close 9:30 PM and things were starting to get really desperate.
I was ready for just about any idea, except for the one my wife blurted out
"Lets go buy a new VCR" and she was serious.  While pondering for a possible
solution my five-year old son said "Dad are you going to fix the VCR".  Now
in his eyes I can fix anything, just ask him.  I 'm a systems engineer and
have a pretty keen mechanical aptitude but very little electronics
background.  So what was the worst thing that could happen?  By12:30 AM.  I
had successfully disassembled, cleaned and reassembled both VCRs to their
original but cleaner non-working conditions.
 
I couldn't imagine the disappointment on the faces of my wife and kids.  Not
having a taped copy of what was sure to be a glorious and educational ferret
experience.  My mind was racing.  Maybe I will have to drive to our 24 HR
Walmart or Myers and buy a new VCR.  Then like a divined intervention the
solution came to me.  THE CAMCORDER!.  I forgot the camcorder.  After
several trail and error steps I finally got it to record from the cable.
SALVATION!!  (At 1:45 am) The only bad thing was the camcorder had no
automatic recording timer, so it was necessary for me to be up and get it
started.
 
Fortunately for us Pet News did not come on here until 9:00 am so everybody
was already awake except for my wife.  I let her sleep until it was show
time (That's the kind of husband I am).  At 5 minutes before 9:00 AM I
started the morning preparation, I woke up my sleeping wife, got all the
fuzzies gathered in the living room, started the camcorder and sat down for
the eagerly anticipated event surely to be a revaluation to ferret owners
around the world.  Seven minutes later my wife was turning to me asking that
same question heard around the globe by those eagerly awaiting ferret owners
"Is that it??"  I have to wonder if they used a bulldozer to help Sally, her
table of goodies and the fuzzies off the stage just to save time and get to
their dog and cat stories, like there isn't enough of those.
 
God I love this FML
Jerry
[Posted in FML issue 2256]