Cable TV Is Bad for the Brain

"How was the beach?"

It was so boring.

And I don't mean that the way my 16-year-old brother told my mom their last weeklong beach stay with his girlfriend was "boring" or not that much fun or whatever (hi, Paul, "being honest" is not the same thing as "being rude and ungrateful"). I just didn't plan for the trip as it happened and was therefore bored out of my skull.

For one, Seaside is not an exciting town. For another, it doesn't have any exciting places to eat. I was alone, and cooking for myself without the help of my usual kitchen assortment isn't that great. The weather wasn't nice, either, so I spent all of an hour and a half on the beach itself, which was nice enough.

I brought a few magazines to read and demolished them all. I went to the outlet mall and decided everything in the one store that had anything I could remotely picture myself wearing was too much. That killed an hour. I went to find takeout one night and walked downtown, got a crappy vegetarian pizza, and walked home with it. I was pretty bored and suffering from hunger and low blood sugar, so the hot rods that were "happening" in town weren't much more than idle amusement. It was very foggy and chilly the whole time.

I rode a bike for the first time since probably before I got my driver's license. Still don't like it. I'd rather walk. Or even drive, and I'm not a big fan of driving.

See, I hadn't planned to be alone. It just turned out that way. Even being with other people counts as doing *something,* typically. At least talking. And I did call when the minutes were plentiful. I just miscommunicated with Rachel so we ended up meeting Saturday evening way down in Pacific City, a drive-time compromise for us both.

That part was nice, though. It was good to spend time with her. The beach there was cool, too, even though the weather was not cooperative. There is a big red cliff with caves and tidepools jutting out of a gigantic sand dune. We had dinner at a place called Grateful Bread, which was quite tasty.

But mostly, I sat on my ass, either because I was driving somewhere or watching that sweet, sweet opiate of the masses, cable television. I spent a large chunk of Friday watching I Love the '70s on VH1. I watched several episodes of Trading Spaces to lull myself to sleep on Saturday. And there was more, much more. I was so bored. I cannot even tell you how boring it is to have nothing more appealing than television for me.

Also, for what it's worth, a movie that an ex once told me to see happened to be on HBO while I was watching VH1, so I flipped back and forth for awhile. PCU? Is a terrible, unfunny film. It tread all the same ground as Revenge of the Nerds but with less character and not even starting with the underdogs. Anyway.

I drove back to Olympia on Sunday. I was leaving the car at mom's house because it is due for routine maintenance, so Kevin was supposed to come pick me up. I'd figured he'd get his ass out of bed mid-afternoon and come get me. I called at 4:45 and woke him up. He arrived around 7 and brought an armload of networking stuff to play with on their computers--something he's supposed to do anyway, but I didn't realize he was planning to start that night.

All I wanted to do was go home. Not that I don't enjoy seeing my mom, but I was very tired and bored and cranky and probably not the best company in the world, but she fed me and we watched more bad TV anyway. Yay. I didn't get home until about 1 a.m., which sucked because I didn't sleep until probably closer to 2 and I wake up by 8 a.m. no matter what because my body is stupid. So I'm nearing the end of a 7-hour shift at work--oh, yes, I was relieved of jury duty, yippy--the first of five days straight and very tired. And hungry. I need to go grocery shopping when I get home.

On the upside, I picked up a few CDs and magazines before I left, and they were all pretty good. The Long Winters' When I Pretend to Fall received heavy rotation in my car this trip due to its infectious poppiness; Kinski's Airs Above Your Station is beauuuutiful, of course, though paling in comparison to the show; Slint's Spiderland got me to the end of my initial nighttime drive to Olympia in style. Of course, I wasn't snobby enough to buy it in its proper vinyl form, but whatever. I enjoyed an issue of Seed magazine and read Giant Robot and Utne Reader for the first time, but was not quite as intrigued by those.

So, hurrah, it's the beginning of a long and boring week of work! We'll be doing a lot of actual work because the new machines are to be placed in classrooms and a new image must be installed on everything and tweaked for appropriateness. There is a lot of new in the lab this week. Exciting, rah. I must now go eat my Clif bar before my stomach caves in on itself.