Today is Ash Wednesday. I thought I should remind you because, if you're like me, you forget every year and inevitably tell someone they've got something on their face. It happens to me every single year, I see all these old ladies with smudges on their foreheads, and eventually I always run into someone I know and try to do them a favor (as I hope they would do for me) by telling them "you've got a..." rub forehead "thing..." Then they remind me that it's Ash Wednesday and we both feel like ass holes: me for being insensitive, them for walking around all day with crap on their face.Anyway, my point: Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. Traditionally during Lent Catholics (and Episcopalians like my mom, the renegade Catholics) show their love for Jesus by suffering and giving up meat and generally being chaste and moral. I'm not Catholic, or religious, or even very spiritual in any way, but I like the idea of taking 40 days and giving up an indulgence or a vice in order to appreciate the things I take for granted, or to break a bad habit. The whole giving up meat thing is kind of redundant for a vegetarian, so every year I try to give up something else. Things that I've given up in the past: drinking (that lasted about 3 days), smoking (that lasted about 3 hours), dairy (lasted about a week), sugar (I made it through a month that year), and lent (I made it all 40 days without observing lent the year I gave it up).
This year I wanted to give up something that was having a negative impact on my life. But since
I've given up smoking, drinking, and even coffee (except in great moderation), I don't really have any addicting vices anymore. I thought of giving up rest days, but that just seemed like a great way to get injured. I thought of giving up food groups, but that seemed like a great way to get my parents to stop buying my food (I know, I'm spoiled!). And then I hit on it, my greatest vice: I stay up nights just to do it, and it has me lying lifeless on the couch for hours at a time. RERUNS! I spend hours a week watching CSI and Law & Order reruns. House is also a huge time suck, but I've just seen the last missed episode (and I feel like I've just gone through a break-up). So for 40 days and 40 nights I am going to give up re-runs, which probably means all TV what with the writers' strike and all.Luckily, the Catholics have left a caveat for me. Sundays don't count as lent (that's why Catholics are allowed to eat meat on Sundays). That means that I can watch the CSI marathons on Sunday afternoons!!! That's 5 hours of dead bodies! Stay tuned to find out what I find to fill my buckets of free time from Monday to Saturday...
