Photo from www.todaysparent.com

I love TV. TV is my friend. I get excited just thinking about it. When I’m at work and it’s the end of a long day, I rush home for no other reason than to sit on my couch and watch the stupidest shows imaginable. I swear I can feel the pleasure centers in my brain lighting up when I start a new Housewives episode.

TV keeps me company. Lots of times I’ll have it on without the sound when I’m doing things like writing or cleaning even if I’m not watching it. I never understand when people tell me they don’t have a TV. I’m always like “Why not? You should get one. They’re awesome.”

However, there are times when I think my TV habit gets in the way of me actually leaving my apartment and living a life. I can easily spend twelve hours in a day watching a marathon of a show I’ve seen eight times already. That can’t be good for me. There’s so much other stuff I could be experiencing. So I decided that for one whole month, I was going to shut it down. No TV for thirty days! There was no telling what I could accomplish without my friendly companion.

But then I went for like seven hours without Pat Keirnan and realized there was no way I was going to make it. So I basically spread my experiment out over a number of hours on a couple of Sundays. Lots of stuff happened though! Here’s what I did:

Learned A New Skill

About a month ago I got one of those fancy cameras you always see slung around the necks of people who look like they know what the hell they’re doing when it comes to taking a photograph, even though I would wager to say that the majority of those people are as clueless as I am and are mostly just taking pics of artisanal pizza for Instagram. Why? Because you basically need a PHD in engineering in order to operate one of these things.

I used to think photography was bullshit. Like who can’t take a picture? But after spending hours trying to figure out how aperture and ISO and shutter speed affect an image, I realized that photography is hard! There is a LOT that goes into taking a picture without using the manual setting, and reading the instruction booklet was like watching Prometheus all over again. So I enlisted the help of my friend Dr. Dan who was the photo editor of his high school yearbook (and took all the pics for my first Eye Spy) and got a crash course in digital gadgetry. Check out some of my photos.

All of these were taken at Five Pointz in Queens. This one of my brother is my favorite. Today is his birthday. Happy birthday Jefe!

Now if I could only get comfortable being one of those douchebags that you see walking around with professional looking cameras taking pictures of hipster shit like graffiti.

Finished A Project

I took an art class three years ago with my friends Jackie and Vanna. We made mosaics to decorate our apartments with, however there was a step to be completed at home. The grouting. For three years I’ve been hanging onto this thing, transferring it from one storage space to another, placing it out in plain sight as a constant reminder to “Finish me!” but to no avail. Finally the other day I pulled it out of the closet, rolled up my sleeves and sealed it once and for all.

It took fifteen minutes.

And now I have extra space in my jewelry drawer! Not to mention one more thing in my room that makes it look like an eleven year old lives here.

Made This Funky Water

Water is gross. But up until six weeks ago I had a diet coke habit so bad that I had migraines for two days after coming off it. Now I drink water all day and my skin looks lots better and I can sleep at night and all sorts of good stuff but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like it. So I thought maybe if I spruced it up a bit, drinking water wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass.

I took two big mason jars that I had sitting around and made blackberry/sage and watermelon/rosemary agua. I think I should have mashed up the blackberries because all I can taste are the leaves in that one but the watermelon is pretty good. Not so good I’d take it over a soda, but good enough to not make me go blech! after every sip which I do because I’m somewhat dramatic.

Did a DIY for my wall

Photo from www.etsy.com

A while back in one of my Slackers posts I linked to a bunch of easy DIY projects for your walls. Making something interesting and personal to add to the decor in my living room sounded like fun, so I decided to take my own advice and try the string art.

What a holy nightmare this was. I didn’t want to make something like a stupid heart. My sting art had to be super complicated and impressive so that everyone who saw it would say “Oh my god, you MADE that?!”

I spent forty minutes trying to draw the silhouette of a giraffe to use as an outline and then another forty murdering my fingers while pressing in all the nails around it.

Then the fun part. Stringing!

Yeah right. My nails were so close together that it was impossible to weave the string around one without it popping off of another. I made it past the ankle on one leg and gave up. So what did I make instead?

A stupid heart.

This is obviously a piece of junk but I thought if I took an arty photo of it, all half in focus and half out like everyone’s doing on those crafty websites now, that it would distract people from how awful it is.

I mean, I don’t know. Is it working?

At the very least I have a homemade gift to give to one lucky family member at Christmas and I think Aunt Nicole, this has your name written all over it. Get excited!

Read A Book

You can’t do a post on not watching TV without including how you read a book, because every asshole who has ever argued against you watching television has at one point said to you “Read a book!” so that’s exactly what I did.

I loved this one and I don’t usually love books. Usually I think they’re OK. It’s about a kidnapping and involves lots of lies and twists and turns and surprises and I should really become a book reviewer if this whole blogging thing doesn’t work out.

ANYWAY. That’s what I did instead of watching TV. And I managed to wrap it all up just in time for Game Of Thrones which I don’t understand in the slightest, yet I watch every week anyway.

Peace! I’m out!