My name is First Mate and I'm a TV-holic, also a readaholic.
It's getting close to hunker-down time here in San Carlos as the hordes descend for Semana Santa, Mexico's Easter Week. I made a brief foray for provisions and the streets already remind me of an anthill when you stir it up with a stick. By this time next week, the swarms will have taken over until Easter when they'll all disappear again. Normally I would just forsake the car and bicycle, and walk anywhere I needed to go. But that's out, as long as I'm on crutches.
The red flag went up on the TV issue when I turned on the idiot box to catch my favorite show last night, "Weeds." After two months cruising, I was far behind the story line, and found that it had been shifted from Tuesday to Wednesday night. Then I found that the schedule had it all wrong, and it actually started an hour earlier than expected. Darn! I'll never figure out what all these characters are about.
If you want a hint of what has hooked me about "Weeds," here's just a sample clip, on the hazards of single motherhood. View at your own risk, I won't be responsible if you get hooked, too.
While I'm confessing, I must add that I also watched two movies all the way through. Granted, these were movies I'd been wanting to see for a few years, but still... One, "Love Field," about the day Kennedy was shot. Another was "Isn't She Great," a bio of Jacqueline Susanne. Tote it all up, and I must have spent nearly six hours sprawled on the couch (foot elevated, of course) glued to the tube.
This is what happens when I become a hermit, which I do every now and then. I don't even have to go out for my fix: the TV's always there waiting to zone me out, and I have a huge supply of books, mostly unread. I've also consumed two Greg Iles mysteries (extra-long at 500+ pages) and a couple of other novels in the past week. Reading is good, but after a while, when you gobble books the way I do, they all become a blur.
Time to think of all the constructive things I can accomplish sitting down. Step one: turn on some music!