ARK LIFE: BINGE WATCHING IS WHERE IT'S AT!

WHEN Life gives you lemons or: making chicken salad out of chicken shit...

The Fabulous Feathermaye and Yours Truly have a lot of life lessons we've collected over the past two years.  In that time, a sudden unemployment tuned us in to life in a bad economy, and just how drastically America has changed from the wonderful land of opportunity we were raised to believe in, to a more dependable truth: we needed to downsize and start living as if it can all change tomorrow!


This new philosophy is not the big disappointment one might think it is; rather, it opens up the eyes to new ways of living, and pursuing the American Dream.  Very simply put: we've learned that we don't need the standard "fixed fortifications" we'd been lead to believe we had to have: house, cars, toys etc. 



Instead, we've boiled it down to the essence of "What we really enjoy" and "What we actually need".


We call it "ARK LIFE"... Living with mobility in mind.Let's face it: Moving is a bitch, so make it easy on yourself.  Only take the essentials with you, so you can set up camp quickly, without feeling as if you're missing or lacking anything important.  


*A good rule of thumb: if you haven't used it in the last three months, you don't need it*


One important essential component question is: "how will you entertain yourself in downtime?'' 


Since today's technology has become more mobile, we discovered a little device call

"ROKU" that we carry with us everywhere.  Through it, and a decent WiFi signal, we can stream videos, movies and TV shows.  Which leads me to the current topic: Binge Watching.


Have any of you tried this?  Seems to be catching on with many of us Baby Boomers.  We saw a report just a couple of days ago from one of our favorite actors, Sir Anthony Hopkins, in which he told of how he caught up on the fantastic AMC Drama: Breaking Bad.  In two days, Hopkins watched every episode of Brian

Cranston's characterization of a High School Chemistry teacher who began to produce high grade Methamphetamine, and ended up destroying his family, and himself as his efforts lead from a "little extra cash for cancer treatments" to becoming the infamous Heisenberg, Drug Lord of New Mexico.



We did the same here in our portable ARK; only we did it in stages; the first two seasons (which my buddy Bill Keith recommended) and then waited with baited breath as each new season was offered on our favorite stream providers: NetFlix and Amazon Prime.  

Personally, I've always hated the distraction of commercial TV.  I can't stand the constant bombardment of "over-run" commercials--Super Bowl ads being the lone exception, but that's once a year, right?


With streaming TV, you catch it all in succinct episodes.  This has allowed us to keep up with all

our favorites, and we tend to do so in "Binge" periods, taking in the whole show in that period of time, be it a few episodes a night, or a weekend Binge from beginning to end!



Sure, there are other ways with which we spend our spare time: Exploring the different cities we find ourselves in, or the surrounding country side.  Feathermaye's photography comes from these excursions, and often my own impressionist paintings are inspired from those very same captures.
  


However, being "homebodies" by nature, not to mention the simple fact that we just enjoy each other's company so very much, streaming video together has become a routine we look forward to every day.



For more information on ROKU, Netflix, Amazon, and all the other streaming sources available today, you might try these links.


And, I'm curious to know how many of you already Binge Watch?  Feel free to leave a comment below, and include your favorites!