Sometimes It's the Simple Things that Trip Us Up. Like, Say, the Sun.

My poor dad. He has tried faithfully every week this semester to record CSI for me, since I teach on Thursday nights and am usually not home until well after ten. (For those of you wondering, yes he does record The Closer and Saving Grace when I teach on Monday nights.)

Almost every week, this results in Epic Failure.

What's interesting is that the Epic Failure is of a different variety nearly every week. My father is both wise in his advancing years, and an educated man. He learns from his mistakes. Setting up to tape the season premiere last month, he forgot to hit "enter" after entering all the information. By the time I got home, Warrick had already bled to death all over Grissom, and Sara was in the latter's office consoling him. (Fortunately this was not a plot twist that had gone unexpected, since Gary Dourdan was leaving the show).

The following week he got everything right, I think; either that or I cancelled class, because I distinctly remember the episode. We were starting to settle into a routine. Date, time begin, time end, ENTER, insert DVD that is actually of recordable quality, turn TV off but leave box set to CBS (not Spike, which shows some Smackdown shit Thursday nights that I couldn't be less interested in) rinse out wine glass, retire to bed. Awake in morning to grateful daughter brimming with anecdotes from last night's episode.

Then George Bush went and fucked with Daylight Savings Time.

That's right, folks, our DVD/VCR automatically set itself back an hour on Saturday night, and no one noticed until I came home and squinted at the LED display to make sure it was recording properly. It wasn't. But it will be in, oh, about eight minutes.