Well, it finally happened, the first snowfall of the season started Saturday evening and sprinkled its way into Sunday. Some of you already know that when it comes to snow, I am not a fan… and to those of you that didn’t know, now you do. Sunday started a bit late for me thanks to a fabulous evening with some friends, and a late night Castle marathon my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh and I started once we got home. See, we don’t have a lot of time… make that patience for television… commercials to be more exact.
So, when a new series comes out that is worth watching, our friends, who do enjoy a good series from time to time, will let us know about it. Then, once it comes out on DVD we’ll Netflix it. One thing I’ve noticed with this patter is Angela’s all-at-once commitment to a series when she finds one she likes. When she gets sucked in she wants to get caught up as soon as possible. Take Castle for example, I was interested in watching the show because of my affinity for Captain Mal of Firefly fame, and as I’ve watched the series I’ve been entertained enough to keep watching. Angela, on the other hand, is hooked.
Here’s how our television watching usually goes at the house, Angela will sit on the couch and work on her laptop while we watch something and I play with her hair. No it’s nothing like me trying to French braid it, or me using her hair to make me funny mustaches, while I look at myself in a hand mirror and giggle. No, it’s just me running my fingers through her hair while we watch. So when a show catches her attention she has to see what happens next, which is her phrase of acceptance and appreciation. Every time an episode ends, she says, “Next,” and I fast forward through the closing credits to the next episode on the DVD. Welcome to this past Saturday night.
When we got home and she checked the mail to discover we had received two new disks of season two, and of course we had to watch one episode before going to bed. Four episodes later with one DVD ready to be sent back, it was about 3:30 in the morning, and I was done… mainly because I was on the verge of passing out due to the cold medicine I had taken. The thing about her watching murder mysteries is that when I decide to call it a night, I know she won’t be staying downstairs and to watch any more episodes without me. Not because she doesn’t want to stop watching them, but because she gets scared from watching them and doesn’t want to be left alone. I know, I know, but I think it’s kind of cute.
So now with all that unnecessary exposition is out of the way, welcome to my snow day Sunday, and my noon o’clock wakeup call. Taking nighttime cold medicine at 2AM is a good way to ensure that sleeping in on a Sunday is going to happen whether you want it to or not. The thing about our snow day is that, and I’m not exactly sure how, but the storm managed to knock out our internet, until about 7PM that night. Sure it was an inconvenience, but, well, here are a few things I got from my internetless snow day Sunday:
- It’s nice to unplug every now and again. Even though there were some things I wanted to get done, which required the internet (specifically, getting a podcast hosting site set up), it could wait, and did.
- The importance of knowing how to shuffle. Yes, even though my PC still worked, I chose to kick it “old school” and pulled out a real live deck of playing cards for the sake of enjoying a few hands of Solitaire.
- I love books. Even though they are starting to diminish in number and populate like bunnies in the virtual world, what with electronic book readers becoming the next step in literary evolution and all, a book is permanent and there for you when all the power goes out, and the batteries go dead. There is something comforting about curling up in an oversized chair and reading from a book you are holding in your hands.
- I still enjoy listening to mixed tapes… I have so many that have been ignored for far too long. That’s right, not only do I still have cassettes, but I still have a piece of electronic equipment that actually plays them.
- It’s amazing all of the things you can do with tofu when you spend two hours in the kitchen playing Iron Chef… and you already know what the secret ingredient was.
It might not seem like much, but it really was a great snow day, and I didn’t have to go out into the snow once. Not to mention, out of everything I learned that day, I didn’t have to Google a single thing.
So, how did you spend your first snow day of the season? Or if you don’t get snow where you live, what did you do the last time you had an internetless day? I am curious to know.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: snow day, couple watching tv, yawning, shuffling cards, and Google it.
The wife and I did a marathon with Californication. Brilliant show. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest doing another snow day. The playing with the hair might be a fetish you are trying not to make out as one, but something tells me there was at least one hairstache. We all do the hairstache at some point with our gals. I was thinking about watching Castle, once upon a tv viewing, but I think we went with So You Think You Can Dance instead. Plus, someone needs to come up with some tv not related to crime or spin offs of CSI<NCS<SVU and other acronyms.
I will have to check that one out Scott. As for Castle, I’d recommend giving it a once over. I’ve been enjoying it so far.
What’s REALLY funny is watching small children panic when the electricity goes out. I have a 5.5 year old and a 4 year old, and on the rare occasions when our power goes out, you’d swear it was the absolute end of the world. I’ve tried to explain that no, we don’t need tv or computers to entertain us, yes, it is getting dark out, and no, we are not going to turn on the lights, because they need electricity and there is none right now. A few candles and a story later, and they are minimally content … until the power comes back on. At which point there is celebrating and rejoicing that rivals Christmas morning for at least a couple minutes there.
Oh man, our power went out because of an ice storm a few years back and my little one went dashing around the house frantically with a flashlight in hand. I asked her what she was doing and she said, “I’m trying to find batteries to fix the t.v.” Good to see she had her priorities straight. haha!
I remember when that would happen when I was a kid. The only difference is back then we had no texting, IMing, Facebooking, etc. to get back too. On more that one occasion we just opted to leave all the light out once the power came back on so we could continue our board games by candle light evening.