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Monday Miscellany

1. Remember how I was mentioning that there was no snow here in Northern Ohio in December? Yeah, um, whoops, because this weekend I shoveled my driveway five times. FIVE. I'm a good Wisconsin girl, and I'm not above a little shoveling, but five times? RIDIC.

2. When I was in Wisconsin over the holidays, I went on a walk one night and was reminded how nice it was that there was a city ordinance that requires everyone to shovel their sidewalks. Seriously, it was great to be able to walk around the neighborhood without tromping through two feet of snow. So now I'm shoveling my own walk, even though there's no ordinance in my city that requires it and no one else does.* Thanks, Wisconsin; you make me want to be a better person.

3. I may be going roller skating this coming week. While I used to be good at roller skating, I'm pretty sure that skill has abandoned me. If I don't post for a while after that, you'll know that I fell down and broke something vital for typing. This is such a bad idea.

4. In honor of the third season premiere on January 16th, I've moved on from The Wire and am re-watching the first and second season of Friday Night Lights, another show that I seriously cannot recommend enough. I didn't think I would like it, because (a) it's about football and (b) I didn't like the movie based on the same book, but, boy, I was wrong. The show is about so much more than football, and it's incredibly well-acted and well-written. And, although the adults (especially the football coach, obvs) play key roles in almost every episode, it's by far the best teen drama on television. Unlike Gossip Girls, or One Tree Hill, or the execrable new version of 90210, FNL understands that real drama and scandal are character driven. It's not "scandalous" if the head cheerleader cheats on her quarterback boyfriend with his best friend--that's just base line fodder for drama in the television world. It is scandalous when cheerleader Lyla Garrity cheats on quarterback Jason Street with his best Tim Riggins, because Lyla is truly not that type of person and really loves Jason, so something awful must have driven her into the arms of ne'er-do-well (but Super Hot) Tim Riggins, and both she and Tim probably feel pretty horrible about the fact that it even happened, let alone more than once.

All right, this just got way too long for miscellany, so long story short, Friday Night Lights: WATCH IT.

5. I haven't watched The Real World since San Francisco, but I get the impression from the snippets I've seen here and there that I'm not missming much. What started as an interesting social experiment turned into stupid kids getting wasted on Mtv's dime. That said, I'm totally charmed by the first episode of this new season, which has a bunch of interesting characters in it. Highlight thus far: the Iraq war veteran and the Mormon guy who may or may not be gay make up some songs about the other roommates, and Mormon guy says that one of the other (male) members of the house is cute and Iraq veteran starts singing about "I knew my roommate was gay all along," and Mormon guy sings back "I may be Metrosexual, but that's not a sin. Not a sin." Also, it's totally catchy.

~~~

* Seriously, there's an ordinance here that I cannot put my trash out in trash cans, and that my recycling has to be in blue -- BLUE -- plastic bags, and that if I want to paint my house I have to get the color pre-approved, but there's no requirement that I shovel my sidewalk. ::shrugs::

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