It’s an unwritten rule that whoever has the remote control gets to decide what’s playing on the lounge TV. (Unless it’s the RA, who will just stretch a cable to his room TV, which I think is illegal, but as the RA he’s obviously not gonna enforce that rule.) In order to guarantee that you’ll watch what you want, you have to get there early enough to get at the remote first. (Sometimes that involves taking up permanent residence in the lounge, like some guys I know.)
In any case, I wanted to watch Alias tonight, which started at 8. So I stopped by the lounge around 7ish and managed to get the remote from the last TV-watcher, who was just leaving. I killed an hour watching something about submarines on the History Channel… then someone arrived who wanted to watch Smallville.
Apparently there were two other groups on campus planning to watch the season premieres of Smallville and The O.C. Ugh, teenage soap operas. I never could get into ’em. I admit, back when I was in junior high I used to watch one of the daytime soaps, but after two years I began to realize how the writers took a simple, basic little story and stretched it out to insane, unbelievable lengths—and it wasn’t even a good story, either—so I haven’t been able to watch soaps since.
Alias does get a little soap-like, but it makes up for it with a whole lot of ass-kicking, which I like… plus I can’t always guess the ending, which I also like. TV shows are too predictable these days.
The other guy was a little bummed about not watching his program, and went to join one of the viewing parties. But I don’t know of any viewing parties for Alias. (I certainly don’t think anyone was watching Joey.)
After the 8 o’clock shows, I killed some more time watching
Most summers I go camping. That consists of taking a tent, a sleeping bag, a lounge chair, books, and food, and getting the heck away from civilization. If it’s with family it’s more fun; if it’s surrounded by trees it keeps the temperature down.
But I didn’t get to do that this summer. ’Twas too short, what with summer school and all. So I brought my gear with me to school. At some point, dangit, I was gonna go camping.
This Saturday, when I usually have classes, my professors are off on their faculty retreat. Therefore I am gonna take my camping gear, and Friday night I am going into the woods, mountain lions or no mountain lions.