The end of an era

When Matt and I were dating, we considered ourselves “cultured daters.” Cultured daters defined: two people who do other things besides watching TV and/or movies every night of their lives. We went to plays, operas (after La Boheme Matt dumped me and has been repenting ever since), museum exhibits, that one big mine off I-15 in Utah, concerts, we hiked around Provo, we flew kites, and we were generally what we considered to be a cool couple. We didn’t rely on a TV then, so when we got married and were TV-less, we didn’t mind.

I have incurred a lot of flack from not having a TV. Friends and students of mine alike think that we were completely crazy for not having a TV. “What do you do all day long?” This gave me the opportunity to really tell them what I did do all day long, but that never satisfied them.

Not having a TV, though, did not stop us from watching movies. In our apartment in DC, we had a pretty rad set up for watching movies, which involved dragging the monitor of the desktop computer to be in front of our couch – 7 feet away, with wires hooking into the stereo and the computer. In Chicago, we have had a free and old TV that was no larger than 15 inches and had to be turned on at least 7 minutes before you wanted a picture to show up. It had no access to any channels, though.

I did enjoy a little TV from time to time, though. I enjoyed Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and The Office all from the comforts of the elliptical or treadmill at my gym. Thank you, XSport Fitness, for providing personal TVs for all the cardio machines. I once famously worked out for three and a half hours – past midnight - during the 2008 Summer Olympics Women’s Gymnastics Finals. I maintained – and still do – that if you’re going to watch TV, you might as well get skinny doing it.

That era has ended. We bought a TV. It’s big-ish, flat screen, has an immediate picture when you turn it on, is high definition (I really didn’t know that TV could look like that!), and it gets channels. It makes watching my dance shows completely awesome and I can do it without going to the gym (which is also awesome in my recent post-partum state).

Getting a TV can only mean bad things, though. Last week I watch a little of Oprah when she was doing some American heroes show and I bawled! This morning I watched about 15 minutes of Oprah and bawled again when Mary J. Blige and Andrea Bocelli did a Christmas duet (by the way, did you know he’s blind??? I had no idea!). Perhaps my hormones need to normalize before I become a TV watcher!

A big welcome to our very newEST addition, Tina TV: