Like Mandi, I spent the last week with family, cruising around an area decidedly more "wooded" than NYC. But while she avoided the Internet in Vermont with one relative (click here for her report), I slurped my way through California wine country with three. This is just one way in which Annie Barrett is a little cooler than Mandi Bierly (WHOA: We should have an ongoing tug-of-war in this vein! But digitally, on PopWatch...ix-nay on any sort of physical effort, obviously.)

Anyway, on our flight back east, the noise level was so intense that my dad needed to use my mom's iPod Nano to avoid having a breakdown. But like a frazzled PopWatch editor trying to dissuade Slezak from writing another post about Fantasia, it just wasn't that easy. Enter...this:

HANDWRITTEN NOTE

It's the HANDWRITTEN NOTE my mom passed to my dad across the expansive, two-foot aisle of row 16. I just thought it was amazing and had to post it on my first day back.

What's the most basic technological instruction you've had to explain to the tragically unhip? Quick, scribble your story down on a scrap of looseleaf paper and pass it on!