As I have watched obsessed over Katrina’s devastation this last week, through my media center computer, I have really thought about the hobbies that I have in my life. The winds and the water came into these people’s lives and wiped away all investments that they had. Months and years of acquiring “things” was wiped away in the matter of hours, in turn, the victims will get a piece of paper–at best. While watching the finely tuned news channels, I realize that countless days and hours went into creating my truly all-in-one media center. I watch all my movies, listen to all my MP3s, watch and record live TV, download dynamic content, and even read blogs on this media masterpiece, but it did not come cheap. I paid 2 hours of reading to my daughter, 1 hour of teaching her how to ride her bike, 30 minutes of watching her gently drift into sleep, 4 hours of dinner conversations with my wife, 8 hours of pool time with the family etc. My innocent hobbies look like a real waste. Of course, today I can point to the media center and say, “yeah but come on this thing really rocks (which it really does).” But that is so hard to quantify when filing a claim with the insurance company. Even worse, the insurance companies don’t offer riders for “time lost with family” or loss of consortium. Don’t get me wrong, I am a material man from way back, and I am not formally renouncing my materialism or my hobbies. I am, however, noting that there may be some calculus that I should apply to my hobbies. For example, brewing beer should override updating the caller id function of the media center. Why? Because beer brings people together, and because it is evidence that God truly loves us. Hobbies are pastimes when time is surplus, but when time becomes a commodity, hobbies become investments. The idle time that we once were able to spend frying ants with magnifying glasses transforms into invaluable seconds. Later in life, people would stake fortunes to recreate those misspent and forever vanished seconds.