This week is spring break, which means one thing around my household: Road trip! Time to visit friends and family — anything to prevent this adult from imposing permanent damage on the family heir in a fit of parental insanity.

That includes time with my mom, who surprised me recently when she told me on the phone that she has wireless now. How did that transpire? “It was included with TiVo,” she told me. That’s right. TiVo sells a device — the TiVo AG0100 Wireless USB Network Adapter – that lets users connect their digital video recorder with their 802.11g or b wireless home network. I’m no TiVo user. What do I know? (Apparently, she didn’t know about it either until my brilliant brother – who always thinks up the greatest gifts — got a unit and installed it for her.)

My mom loves TiVo. She has two of the machines in her home, one on the big screen in her living room; the other in one of the guest rooms where she does a lot of hanging out and watching recorded shows from HDTV.

And now she can transfer shows from one to the other TV and surf at the same time while she kicks back in her giant black-leather massage chair.

Reviewers on PriceGrabber report how, although it costs a bit more than other options, they’re quite happy with how easy it is to install and how quickly shows transfer from one machine to another or from their TiVos to their desktops.

I may not watch much TV, but I am a great sucker-upper of wireless broadband. What this means is, I’ll have no excuse not to bring my notebook computer with me when we go to visit. Wonder if that chair is available.