Possibly the greatest invention of all time?

I've spent the last week moaning and groaning about all this adoption nightmare, so today I'm shifting gears and writing about what might be the greatest invention of all time - or at least this year in the life of the Storys.

Since we may as well live in a cave for all our technological expertise, the connection this past Sunday of our Slingbox is a real marvel. We learned about the Slingbox on a flight out of SC last November. I sat next to an ESPN producer living in SC whose biggest concern when he found out we lived overseas was how we live without American television. I didn't bother to tell him that we watched non-cable Brazilian television on a black-and-white set. He would've been horrified.

As soon as the plane's wheels touched down, he whipped out his cell phone, which was probably worth more than Jimmy's little VW in Brazil, and we started watching live-from-Mt Pleasant, SC cable television on it. I could not believe such a thing existed.

So this guy told me what I needed to know about buying a Slingbox and - in typical fashion - here we are 9 months later with our Slingbox set up.

We have it connected to cable at Jimmy's mom's house because they have what seems like 496 channels. It runs through their Internet and we can watch on our computer in Sao Paulo. There's a remote control on the computer screen and you can control the remote and change channels just as if you were sitting in your La-Z-Boy in Moncks Corner, SC. We actually can run it to a television from the computer, but our computer and our tv are both older - go figure - so we can't get that to work right now.

If you live in the US or have an aversion to television in general, you probably don't realize how wonderful American cable television can be. Do you know the pleasure you get from watching a US-Brazil men's volleyball final with commentating in English and not Portuguese? Do you appreciate how nice it is to watch Meredith Vieira do a segment on her family roots in the Azores? Do you know the value of watching HGTV? After one day, I'm ready to renovate our apartment singlehandedly. And don't even get me started on how excited Jimmy is about watching college football. The SC Gamecocks are really 99% responsible for us having the Slingbox. (Otherwise he will spend hours reading line-by-line plays on the Internet - BORING- or listening to radio commentary - ALMOST AS BORING.)

As I sit here drinking my green tea, waiting for 15 more minutes until The Today Show starts, I'm thinking by the time we see some people next, I may be 40 pounds heavier from turning into an office-chair-potato (the Slingbox version of a couch potato). But I will be all caught up on current events, improving curb appeal, and college football!