Remote Control

Something that one has to model in our day of technological advances is agility. And with that, I have to be agile enough to now give up television.

My roommate has a device called a Slingbox. If you don't know what a Slingbox is, I'll wait while you check it out on Wikipedia. I'm sure it's a wonderful device if you have access to it and are bored in mass transit somewhere, but I don't have access to ours and I'm not sure I would watch it if I did--what if someone else is already watching the tv and I change the channel?

I experienced the other end of this possibility yesterday when I was watching a movie and the channel changed. My assumption was that my roommate was on vacation to Mexico, and if I were on vacation in Mexico I think the last need on my mind would be "The Family Guy," but I have to give this situation the benefit of the doubt. Since I do pay for half the cable bill I switched the channel back, but then powered off the tv after that movie was done. About an hour after I did that the channel changed again. So I need to rethink my television habits.

At first, admittedly, I was annoyed. I pay half of a bill so that I can't watch? But it is a wake-up call too...where are my priorities, exactly? About the only thing that I'm really devoted to on television at this time is baseball--everything else is just noise to unwind with, and couldn't I unwind with noise that is a little more productive, like the 26 podcasts I'm still trying to whittle down? And baseball can be listened to on the radio, or I could go to a game, or go to a bar and watch a game (usually Pacific Catch plays them in my neighborhood). It's frustrating about the baseball thing, but for everything else, isn't it a lifesaver? I have so much that I want to do and just end up rotting in front of the tv most of the time to combat it--wouldn't it be better to combat it with working toward my goals of reading, writing, and fitness?

So change the channel to your heart's content, Family Guy. Read/write/run on, dear reader.

Chemistry Set

Suffering a renewed passion in cooking lately, due to a whole list of enablers:

• My father sent me a NuWave for Christmas. I know that no one in the Food Network cooks with this thing, but it makes me far less scared of large cuts or whole parts of meat
• Julie & Julia--the movie, the book, the phenomenon. As a thank you gift for cat-sitting I am receiving Julia's two-volume cookbook--and while I'm not so ambitious as Julie Powell to squeeze all of the recipes into one year, I'm daring enough to make them a regular appearance
• The meat department at Andronico's. The one in the Inner Sunset has RABBIT, for Pete's sake. Time to go wild...
• Food Network--while I can't watch it all day like I used to, I can watch with acute interest when they cook some strange and wonderful blends, and then get the recipes on-line.

With all of these things in my chemistry set and a desire to eat healthier, is it any wonder that I should look forward to this year?