Cookies and TiVo

Today I present to you a simple strategy that could make your life a lot better, as well as an idea that TiVo should adapt before the generic, poorly designed cable DVRs do.

Girl Scout Cookies

Every year I struggle to buy Girl Scout Cookies. I mean that literally—Girl Scouts simply don’t come to my door and ask me to buy cookies, and I’ve never had a coworker with a child selling cookies. After completely missing the sales period two years in a row, I looked around last year and found the daughter of a friend of a friend who would sell me cookies. I think I bought 10 boxes…and yet the girl didn’t come back to me this year to ask me to buy more cookies. I guess someone’s lil’ princess doesn’t have a future in fundraising.

Just in the nick of time, I found someone to sell me cookies this year as well. But I don’t want to focus on that. I want to talk about making my cookies last all year. The truth is, the cookies aren’t even that good…and yet I crave them. Any homemade cookie will lack that stale crunch of the Girl Scout Cookies. The key is the limited supply (see entry on Pepsi Iced Cucumber).

Anyone who likes Thin Mints knows how easy it is to eat an entire roll in one sitting. Thus, the danger of buying a big batch of Girl Scout Cookies is eating them within a few weeks of obtaining them. Hence my strategy:

I hide them from myself.

This may sound too simple to write about, but Velcro was a pretty simple invention that no one thought of for a long time either. Think about it—buy a bunch of cookies, and then hide them in your freezer and fridge. Hide them behind the giant bottle of lemon juice extract in the back of your fridge. Squeeze them under the lima beans in your freezer. If you like the cookies without chocolate, stash a box or two in your pantry.

You’d think that you’re smart enough to remember that the cookies are there. But you’re not. None of us are. Our brains aren’t built for remembering where we stashed colored boxes—they’re built for forgetting that information. I can’t express to you the delight I felt last week when I found a box of thin mints behind a jar of pickles in my fridge. It was glorious.

TiVo Clips

I was watching soccer on TiVo the other day when one of the players—Cole of West Ham, I believe—scored one of the sweetest goals I’ve ever seen. I can’t find it on YouTube (update: an alert reader found it on YouTube here), but basically, someone crossed the ball to him on the ground, and with his back to the goal, he flicked the ball up with one foot and smacked it into the back of the net with a perfect bicycle kick a fraction of a second later.

I immediately knew that I wanted to save this clip and show it to people. However, unless I’m ill-informed, TiVo has no such capability. Sure, I could save the whole game, but that’s 2 hours of “best” quality soccer filling my TiVo for eternity when that space could be otherwise occupied by 30-Minute Meals (see: Caroline). The same goes for movies with particularly funny scenes that you might want to keep and watch on a rainy day, even if you don’t want to save the whole movie.

TiVo, let me make clips!

Tomorrow:

New Year’s Resolution Check-In

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