Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Those people who live with me have heard me say “It the little victories like that that get you through the day.” I believe that we all have those little things (victories, if you will) that help up move through the hum drum everyday activities of work, school, and other obligations of the like. For example: When you are trying to find something in a book and you just so happen to flip it open to the page with the exact information you are looking for- Victory. When you have to use a public restroom and you walking (ladies) and the toilet seat is up and the water is blue signaling that you are the first person to use it since it had been cleaned- Victory. When you are just having a crappy day and you knock in to a chair revealing that TV remote you lost weeks ago- Victory.
But every so often you happen upon something just so random and crazy it outshines all your little victories and makes you laugh for the rest of the day. This happened to me today.

The story:
I have been have a good albeit unremarkable day when my boss asked me to run something over to the Rose administration building. I had already made the trip over there once today but I was happy to go again because it is such a pretty day outside and I always welcome the chance to stretch my legs (as long as it is not raining or cold). ANYWAY… I was meandering back to work thinking about the beautiful weather and the all but deserted campus when I see and elderly woman a few dozen yards ahead of me. She was easily 200 years old and upon closer examination was clearly some sort of gypsy, but the reason I notice this woman at all (I tend exhibit an extreme lack of situational awareness when I walk) because there is a strange screeching sound coming from the tree above her. I slow my pace a little so I wont bump into her or be a creepy “close walker”, and am completely content to walk at her osteoporosis-induced-slightly-hunch-back pace seeing as I am not in a huge hurry. All of the sudden she stops turns around and holds out her had saying, “Bird! Baby Bird!”. That’s right folks; this gypsy lady had somehow caught herself a bird and is only too proud to show it to me.
I was always taught that it was rude to stare, also to be nice and polite to adults (especially the elderly) but all my southern charm training clearly went out the window as I found that all I could do was stare at this woman… I mean come on, what do you say to that? I thought about telling her she does not need to touch baby birds because the mom won’t come back to it, but it was too late for that. I also heard my mother’s voice prompting me to tell her to put it down and immediately wash her hands before touching her face or handling food, but I could not do that either because my mouth had entered a state of temporary paralysis. By the time it wore of she was, fortunately, out of ear shot because the only thing I remembered how to do was laugh—Huge Victory.

Man I love the summer.

Where have to been all my life?

I don’t watch that much television. Not that I don’t want to or am morally opposed to it, I just am never home and when I am, I am usually sleeping. Well, school ended for me a couple of weeks ago so a came home for a mini summer break. I had nothing to do so in addition to being a drain on society I watched a lot of TV. I was shocked/amazed/disgusted/enthralled/excited (pretty much any extreme emotion) at what I saw. You go about 5 months without watching TV regularly and all hell breaks loose. The following are my favorites
1. Tough Love- Now I could not bring myself to watch an entire episode (mostly because every time it was on so was a movie, mom and dad got fancy cable with HBO, what are you going to do?) but from what I gather, this is a reality show about women who want to fall in love but for some reason can’t. So they do the only logical thing, move into a house full of cameras, pool tables, hot tubs, and booze. You might be, asking yourself, as was I, “how can these things help these women find love?” Well they can’t but they man that lives there can. The whole point of the show is for this man to watch these women and be brutally honest in telling them what is wrong with them, and why men won’t date them…. What I want to know is how they determine the winner? Is it the woman who does not try to slit her wrist after receiving all the criticism? “Congratulations lady, you did not commit suicide during this process. You’ve won an all inclusive, extensive stay at therapy!”
2. 18 Kids and Counting- I LOVE this show, but I could not tell you exactly why. Premise of the show: Crazy Christians have 18 kids because they have decided that birth control is not biblical and they want as many kids as the Lord will bless them with…humm now far be it for me to judge them, this could very well be what God is calling them to do, but count me out. In my opinion that is like saying, “Alarm clocks are not biblical so I will not use one. When ever God sees fit to wake me up, He will.” I think the real reason I watch the show is because of the mother. She had this voice that is, for lack of a better word, mesmerizing. She has a very soothing kindergarten teacher type voice, and when she speaks those kids just stop slack- jawed and listen, as do I. There are only 2 possible explanations for the mother’s hypnotic powers.
1. Having that many kids has made her body release a calming hormone to protect her mind from the stress induced stroke that is inevitably hers.
2. She is a witch… not a bad witch like on “The Craft”, but a good witch like on “Charmed” or “Sabrina the teenaged witch”
3. Paris Hilton’s My New BFF- I have no words nor will I dignify this show by trying to come up with anything amusing about it (however it has potential for and excellent critic blog ala Ihategreenbeans blog, I’m just saying)
4. New Real World/Road Rules (but not really road rules) Challenge- I am not even embarrassed to say that I want to start watching this show… I will always love it and I think that is a result of being a child of the 90’s. However, it makes me sad that I don’t recognize some of the people, and what is a RW/RR challenge with out Coral and Mike aka “the miz”? On a similar note I want to write a letter to MTV requesting, nay, demanding, the return of Road Rules.

I am kind of worried that reality TV is the beginning of the end of the world, but the more reality shows I hear about, the more convinced I become that I need my own.