Friday+Friday 365

Finale cry quotient*:

Buffy: ugly cry tears of sadness that it was over and that I would never see the Scooby Gang ever again (except for when I rewatched the whole series three more times). And. Spike. That’s all I can say.
BSG: ugly cry tears of sadness because of. well. have you SEEN the finale? Adama on the hill. That’s all I can say.
Lost: ugly cry tears of joy. Redemption. That’s all I can say.
Chuck: happy ugly cry that comes back at random moments even days after watching the finale. Ellie, Awesome, Clara, Chuck, Sarah, Casey, Morgan, Jeffster!, Alex, General Beckman, Big Mike. That’s all I can say.

This show will always have a huge piece of my heart.

To those of you not gluten-challenged: go to Subway for me this week. Spend a lot of money in honor of the Nerd Herd.

*I don’t include in this list shows that ended tragically early, because I don’t consider cancellation a finale. Like: Joan of Arcadia, Firefly, Pushing Daisies, and Veronica Mars. Arrested Development doesn’t count, either. Because they’ll be back soon!

So I sold my iPod touch last week and went back to my old school classic. It has 4 games on it: music quiz, parachute, pong, and solitaire.

I sold the touch because I’d been sucked into TowerTown, a game where you have to keep coming back to build your town after your energy recharges every 2 hours or so.

Now I play solitaire on my classic. Casey mentioned at first that I was playing it as much as I did TowerTown, but that’s actually not true.

I don’t play it while we watch TV shows. I’m back to knitting or just watching one screen at a time.

I don’t play it secretly in our bedroom in the middle of the day.

I don’t wake up in the middle of the night to play it (it got to be every two hours).

I don’t constantly check in to see if the energy’s reloaded.

I don’t have it filling up my mind every waking moment.

I play solitarie at night before I go to bed, a round or two or three. But it’s more of a meditation than an obsession. I don’t feel compelled to play solitaire. Plus moving the click wheel fatigues my fingers so I play less. How freaking sad is that?

On our vacation, I didn’t even use my iPod but once before bed on one night. I just fell asleep. That would have never happened with my touch. I would have kept myself up to play/refresh/answer email/check blogs/google random facts. The longer I have the classic, the less I play even solitaire.

It’s also one less device that reminds me that I have new email. It’s one less device that lets me escape from the moment by clicking through blogs. Do I miss it? I get pangs of withdrawal still. But no. I don’t miss it. What I was giving up to have the iPod touch was far worse than giving up playing silly games. And now? I am $145 richer. Plus all the apps I’ll no longer be buying.

Amazing how these tech devices encourage you to spend more and more and more time and money. Time to play. Time to make the money to spend to play. And on and on.

Casey and I just returned from a week-long vacation to DisneyWorld for our one year anniversary. It was our best vacation yet.

On all of our trips that involve hotel stays, we always treat ourselves to a bit of cable television (usually HGTV). We don’t have cable TV by choice. This doesn’t mean we don’t watch TV, we do. A lot of it. Amazon Prime streaming provides us with full seasons of commercial-free television. So since we’ve been married, we’ve seen all of House, three full seasons of 24, kept up with Chuck, White Collar, Revenge, Modern Family, and PanAm week-to-week. It’s our alternative to movie-watching (we probably watch 2 movies a month).

Last month I started thinking that maybe I couldn’t rail against having cable TV and a big, shiny, screen box TV when we watch so much TV online. Maybe it wasn’t that different.

I stand corrected.

On our trip this past week, we got sucked into the vortex on two different nights. HGTV, Bravo, even Lifetime, and of course, E! where we got to see the ending of Kim and Kris’ marriage. Blech.

I can now say that cable TV is POISON. It sucks you in. It distracts. It provides nothing of value. At least online, you can intentionally choose what you want to see. There are no channels to flip through. There usually aren’t commercials. The show doesn’t continue immediately at the end of the hour, keeping you hooked in. I’ll say this categorically: No one needs cable TV. In fact, I think it’s killing our country and keeping us fat, sedentary, and stupid. I felt awful after watching several hours of TV. Crabby. Gross. Grumpy. Sluggish. Need I go on?

You can give me all the reasons you can control yourself. I don’t want to hear it. Are you paying more for cable than you are for your electric bill? I’d rather you keep your iPhone than have cable. I’d rather have you be on the internet for 24 hours a day than have cable (at least the internet requires interaction with something). I’d rather have you eat at restaurants or McDonald’s six times a week than have cable.

Cancel cable. Sell your TV. Take your life and your relationships back. Take the 40-150 dollars each month and put it toward debt, retirement, booze, fireworks, iPads-I don’t care.

Stop making excuses. It’s time to turn off your TV.

am I the only one completely OVER the instagram photos everywhere?

please can we return to the awesome days of clear, crisp, non-pixelated, regular color digital photography?

like over here (shameless self-promotion).