Pain and Misery: Having to DVR Boise State's Season Opener

From the Annals of Who-Gives-A-Care

Hello, I'm Russ, and I am a college football junkie.

It's pretty serious. I've made a pact with my wife that I would do all the laundry in the house on Saturdays, just to give myself a valid excuse to feed my addiction in front of a television while trying to find the mates to individual socks. (They're not there. Wormholes, I tell you.)

I feed the need by following not only Boise State, but every team that may potentially impact the ranking of my them. If Michigan State has a towel boy that transferred from a team that Boise State beat earlier in the season, then I want that towel boy to succeed. Squirting a player in the eye with gatorade might hurt our ranking!

I try to keep up with every player's jersey numbers, but then realize, "math," and only remember the ones I care about. Or, I just read their names on the jerseys. (Speaking of which, anyone else notice that Air Force has a lot of guys named "Freedom"?)

I'm still waiting for Underoos to reveal their Kellen Moore line.

At the same time I curse the BCS and the current iteration of Keeping-Power-In-The-Hands-Of-The-Big-Brothers-Of-The-Rich, I praise them for making football watching a full-time job in the fall. If only my boss understood that.

So yeah, I have a problem.

This problem can only be compounded by suffering from withdrawals. Let me explain:

Every year on Labor Day weekend, I travel to Butte-Fork, Nowhere and attend a family reunion. Mind you, this is not an average reunion where I sit around and tolerate a bunch of familiar-looking strangers while eating potluck; this reunion is special to me. I actually love the people, love the setting and serenity of Butte-Fork, to the point where I look forward to this more than Christmas. Here, I made a video to capture my feelings:

Looks pretty fun, right?

The problem is, normally, this reunion coincides with the start of football season. I've avoided missing games by going up a day later, and was planning on doing that again this weekend, and then I was hit with this news:

Hi Stucki Family! We are announcing the GRAND FINALE OF THE FRED & LOUIE ANN STUCKI REUNION this year at West Piney. We hope you are all planning on coming! We have the lodge Friday - Monday of Labor Day Weekend, September 4-7th.

WHAT??? The last one? Oh, man! And I just got this sweet writing gig for OBNUG!

To make a long story medium-sized, I won't be watching the game live.

But I've got a plan!

Because I'm so cheap, I normally would just stream the games on the internet and have a good gamethread chuckle with my other Nuggies who are too cheap or Norwegian to watch the game on TV. But this year that won't work, since the aforementioned Butte-Fork, Nowhere is miles away from any internet service. So I splurged and upgraded my Dish Network plan to the one just over all the shopping and Spanish networks, just so I could DVR the game.

Therein lies another problem: I have to wait until Monday to watch it.

I have cousins who are college football fans, and who also have phone service slightly better than my Tracfone has. So there will be conversations. Conversations I want nothing to do with. As soon as anyone approaches me and starts to mention Boise State, the fingers will go in my ears and I will start singing "I Don't Want No Scrub" so loudly that they just walk away embarrassed.

I have one cousin who's a hater that I'm just going to punch in the throat when I first see him. He can spoil the score for other people after the doctors equip him with a cancer kazoo.

I had this dilemma once before, during the 2013 season opener, but when the score was accidentally spoiled, I saved myself the despair of watching that game, and pretend to this day that it never happened. (This actually worked in my favor, thankyouidiotcousin!) But for some reason, I believe this year won't be like 2013. I believe we're going to win, and I want the excitement of seeing it as if it were live. I might even create a sock puppet profile, hop onto the gamethread, and banter back-and-forth to myself as I watch! (Oh, wait, score spoilers. BW!)

So no internet, no TV, no newspapers, no conversations; nothing for four days!

I wonder how much it costs to rent a bubble until Monday? Also, how hard is it to get potluck in there?