I am about to turn 55 in a few weeks, but I already feel like a bewildered and confused old man in many ways. I am starting to understand some of the odd things my parents used to say or do. Hell, I get it so much, I say and do some of them.

This is all being brought on by Time Warner Cable. Today they changed the line up. Shows that were in the hundreds are now in the thousands. They seem to be all over the place. I am having trouble figuring out how to find my shows. Rachel doesn't seem to have any issues with it. She was teasing me and telling me I'm turning into a grumpy old man. Not the best thing to tell someone who is panicking because he feels like he is turning into a grumpy old man!

What other things are bugging me? Driving at night. My parents hated to drive after dark. They said it was hard for them to see and made them nervous. I always thought that was nuts. In the dark, you can see all the headlights coming from a distance. It made it easier for me. Not anymore. Driving back from Austin in the dark last Saturday was awful! I was distracted by the lights of other vehicles, had difficulty seeing the road, and nearly hit a kid who was jogging across the street while I was at a stop sign. I didn't see him at all!

Then there is the concept of leaving the house in bad weather. I always figured that I was fine in the car. Now I just don't like getting out in it. Rainy weather can stop me from going just about anywhere but work. I don't like driving in it. I don't like running from the car to get inside. I don't like getting wet. What's next- staying at home to wait on packages? (Yes, my parents used to stay home for days until the package was finaly delivered!)

Construction drives me crazy. They are building things so fast in my area that I sometimes don't recognize where I am. I'll stop at a traffic light and look around. For a few seconds I am not sure where it is. All the intersections are starting to look the same in San Antonio. They seem to have the same stores on the corners. There are duplicate shopping centers all over the place. There are six WalMarts within five miles of my house. There are CVS and Walgreen's drug stores on every corner. Give it a few years, and I'll be Henry Fonda getting lost gathering berries. I already have the anxiety!

Here are a few more things that are bugging me now:

1) Phones for the house aren't really even necessary any more. Just the same, they are stupid. They look more like walky talkies. They sit in a charging base and communicate with each other and the home base. If the power goes off, it's hard as hell to reset the voicemail, etc. That's why mine actually says, "Time and date not set" every time I check the messages.

2) Televisions are not just higher definition. They are also flat and complicated as hell to use. The 50" one in our den had to be computer programed by a specialist to have correct color. There's the whole thousands of channels thing that drives me nuts, You also have to program the channels every time you move these new TVs in a camper. That is a pain in the rear. I have to turn the antenna, program the channels, look to see what I get, and then do it all again until I have the antenna pointing in the right spot.

3) My Silverado is computerized. It has an owner's manual the size of a phone book. I don't know, and won't know, how to do half of the things it is capable of. On the way to the Grand Canyon, N2S had to look through it to find how to climb mountains. I thought I understood the gears. I didn't!

4) We went to see a play the other day. I had to print my own tickets. We showed up at the theater and everyone was carrying these huge sheets of paper. That's just weird. Why can't they just send me real tickets in the mail. Same complaint with airlines!

I just hope that I can function okay for the rest of my days. I am tired of learning new ways to do old things. I'm tired of everything becoming computerized. Let me do things the way I have always done them. If it works don't fix it!