So, I'm 35 but I swear I'm turning in to an old man. Everytime I go into a store or see a new product on TV I'm left thinking "How do they do that?"

This weekend we bought a water cooler. It's got three temperature settings. You can have room temperature, cold, or hot water. And it's instantaneous. No waiting. Whenever I want a hot drink, there's no need to boil the kettle. The water is there and it's ready. I find this amazing! It used to be, on a commercial break, we'd run upstairs to plug in the kettle and then return on the next commercial break to make the tea. Now, I can run up, pour the water and be back before one commercial is done. For someone who likes his TV, this is pretty good!

On Boxing Day we bought new phones. They're two handsets that only require one phone jack. I have no idea how they work but they do. One sits upstairs plugged into the phone jack. One sits down in the basement, no phone jack, but it rings. I know it's getting a signal from the upstairs phone (just like a cordless can be away from the cradle) but, still, it's amazing.

Any day now I expect to start using the phrase 'new fangled' to describe everything I don't understand.