I gotta tell you, it feels good to write a blog. After my one work-week hiatus, I was starting to get a little twitchy. At various points during the week, I thought "oooh, I gotta remember that, so I can write about it on Saturday." Sadly, I remember very few of those things.
Not watching TV for the week wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I read three books during the week. Actually, the hardest night was last night, when I finished my third book and Rachel was gone to a conference in Medford. Sitting all by myself at 11:00 pm last night, I finally cracked, one hour before the official end of my "week."
I know, I know, you're probably thinking "You had one hour to go man! How could you give up then?" Easy. It was too quiet. I wasn't tired. And I missed SportsCenter.
At work, this week turned into a big ordeal. As soon as people found out that Kristi and I were shutting down our televisions for the week, the first question was "why?" The answer: we both felt we watch too much tv. Every day when we get to work, the first thing we do is recap the previous night's television shows. It got to the point where I even thought maybe the only reason we were friends is because we both watched Heroes and The Office.
Turns out we still had plenty to talk about this week.
What I wasn't expecting was the number of people at work who almost seemed to want us to fail. When I told people I wasn't watching TV Monday thru Friday, they said "That's cheating! That's not even a full week!" I explained that a majority of the tv watching I do is in the evenings, and that on weekends I'm usually doing stuff most of the time. When I told people that I was recording a few shows, they howled "So you're going to watch twice as much TV next week! You're cheating again!" No, I figured I typically watch about 4-5 hours of TV a day during the week. I get home from work around 6, and the TV is typically on until 10 or 11, depending on what night it is. That's 20-25 hours during a normal work week. I recorded 6 hours of television. For the week. That's almost 75% of my normal viewing time that I cut out. Plus, the whole goal of this week for me was to cut back on my TV watching. I think I did this. And besides, Kristi and I set the rules, so how did we exactly cheat?
It really felt like people wanted us to fail, or thought we were weird for even trying such a thing. It was a very strange feeling.
I have to admit, sitting at the table for dinner without the news or Jeopardy! on in the background was actually pretty nice. I didn't miss anything, I was able to keep updated on world happenings by reading websites. I really didn't miss much on Myspace either apparently, though I did check it periodically for emails, just in case anyone had questions about our upcoming class reunion.
I read that 90% of the people who participate in unplug your tv week are still watching less tv a year later. I believe it. I think I'm going to stick to watching my shows, but I'm going to eliminate a lot of the crap that I watch just to fill time.
In other news, Rachel's last checkup went fine, the baby's fine, and she's actually started to not feel nauseous all the time, a sign she's entered her second trimester. The packet we received from the doctor's office says that the baby will be able to hear our voices in about 3 weeks.
What the heck do you say?
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