I once wrote a column for Sidekick about how every show I liked to watch on TV was on Wednesdays, and like four of them were on Wednesdays at 9. This year I’ve dropped almost all of the shows I was watching last year, but there are four new shows I wanted to try out, and naturally, two of them are on Wednesdays at 8, and two of them are on Sundays at 8. Why do the networks continue to force me to make such tough choices? We must get a PVR pronto!

Anyway, my real point here is that two of the new shows have already started and they are really good, so I thought I’d recommend them. The first (Sundays at 8pm) is Jack and Bobby, a drama about two brothers and their single mom. Jack, the older brother, is in high school, and Bobby is in grade 8. The show follows their exploits, but the cool thing is that we know, via cuts to a documentary being made 40 years in the future, that Bobby will eventually become President of the United States. Each episode shows you an event from Jack and Bobby’s life, and parallels it with a future event being discussed in the documentary. It’s really well done — cool storylines well-told, and excellent, interesting characters. I highly recommend it. In two weeks, it’ll be on opposite Desperate Housewives, which I think has real potential to become the ultimate guilty pleasure, so I’m not sure what I’ll do with the VCR.  Hopefully by the time Arrested Development debuts in the same time slot on November 7th, we’ll be in our new house with better recording facilities!

The other new show I’m already watching is Lost, which is one of the Wednesday at 8 shows (the other one, Veronica Mars, has also already debuted but it lost the VCR war). Lost is a little schlocky but I’m just loving it. It’s the story of about 50 people who survive a plane crash and find themselves stranded on a desert island. There’s the survival aspect, but almost as important, there’s something weird about their island — some enormous animal (or animals) are on the loose in the jungle. It’s totally addictive and even after just two episodes I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Other than Lost and Jack And Bobby, I’m only watching The Apprentice and The Amazing Race. Eventually I’ll add Arrested Development and The West Wing (although it’s on serious probation, especially because Jack and Bobby is similar and so much better), and hopefully Desperate Housewives if I can work out the taping.

Ah, TV, you are a good friend to the housebound nursing mother.

It bugs me when restaurants offer vegetarian options on their menu with crazy vegetables in them.  It’s like they assume that just because someone is a vegetarian, they automatically like vegetables that most meat eaters wouldn’t touch, like eggplant and lima beans and okra.   Heck, I don’t even particularly like carrots.

This rant is brought on by the fact that we recently went to the Baby Show here in Ottawa where several baby-related companies had displays, and one of them was this awesome catering service that comes to your home with bags of groceries, and either uses your kitchen to prepare a week’s worth of meals for your freezer, or they leave the groceries with recipes for you to prepare yourself.  I got pretty excited because and I are terrible cooks and totally uninterested in using our kitchen under normal circumstances, let alone when we’ve each had 5 hours of sleep in 1-hour intervals.  But sadly, the company’s selection of vegetarian dishes (which is actually quite extensive — at least 10 main courses) all involve crazy vegetables that I wouldn’t touch unless, possibly, smothered in high-fat ice cream.  I don’t want an eggplant and lima bean casserole.  I just want some gnocchi and tomato sauce.

Is it too much for a picky vegetarian to ask?

I thought that I ate a lot when I was pregnant, but the nursing woman’s hunger really does know no bounds. Here’s what I’ve been having for breakfast this past week, since The First Lady was born:

• two waffles
• bowl of instant oatmeal
• cup of yogurt
• banana
• glass of milk
• glass of apple juice

And then I’m usually ready for a snack by mid-morning. Sheesh!

For the past few months on CBC’s radio two, Jian Ghomeshi has been doing this cool show called “50 Essential Tracks.” He went decade by decade through the 1900s, and with a “panel of experts,” chose five “essential” musical tracks from each decade. 

After the 50 tracks were nominated, listeners were invited to call in and either nominate their own selections, or vote on the existing list. Last weekend they did a “countdown” where they took the 50 tracks (including some nominated by callers) and put them in order from, I guess, least-essential-essential-track to most-essential-essential track.

The most interesting part about the list was listening to the shows where they picked the tracks for each decade. The experts talked about each selection and why it was important to the history of music in the past century, and what it was about the song that made and impact on other musicians. It definitely helped to have some of the stranger selections put into context.

In any case, I thought you might be interested in seeing the final list and commenting on what you think is missing. Here’s the nomination/panel-of-experts list, and here is the ordered countdown list.

Some of the phone calls they got regarding the list were quite hilarious. My personal favourite was a guy who called in to say that his track list would never include a “totally unheard of, bogus band” like Joy Division. Hee! The host, Jian, said that women in general called in to say stuff like, “interesting list, here’s another idea,” while men called in to say stuff like, “if you don’t put Bruce Springsteen on the list RIGHT NOW, I will THROW MY RADIO IN THE LAKE.”

Anyway, enjoy the list and make your own nominations!

So we’re moving in about eight weeks to a brand new house on a brand new street, and I’ve been thinking about filling out our mail forwarding information (which has to be done at least two weeks in advance of moving). But to fill out your forwarding form, you need the full address of your new place, and I don’t know our new postal code. I looked it up online at Canada Post but the street does not exist in their online database. However, three families moved in on the street this week, so I’m sure it must have an assigned postal code by now.

So today I went to the post office outlet at the mall and asked them how I could find out my postal code. And the lady behind the counter said, “We can’t help you find your postal code; we don’t do that sort of thing.” And I said, “Um, you are the post office, if you don’t know my postal code, who does?” And she said, “I wouldn’t have any idea who you would ask. If it isn’t in our book, then I can’t help you.” I asked her who, if not the post office, assigns postal codes, and she didn’t know. I asked her if it would be our builder, or maybe the city, but she couldn’t help me.

Can you believe that? Man, I love it when I find someone who loves their job, and goes the extra mile to help out the customer. Good job, lady.

This Saturday morning I was on the phone with and looking casually out my back window when I actually saw a deer in our backyard. A deer! It turned out there were two of them, casually roaming around and eating the flowers out of our neighbour’s flower bed. There’s something you don’t see every day.

Sir Monkeypants was smart enough to run and get the camera. It’s amazing how a little wildlife can still dazzle us.

I try hard not to gush too much about Captain Jelly Belly in this journal. I never wanted to be one of those people who has a kid, then tries to tell everyone else how awesome it is and how they just have to have one too, because I wasn’t sure myself for years that I wanted kids, and I totally understand people who decide that it’s not for them, and that’s a-okay with me. But the truth is, having the Captain around really is awesome. He’s changed our lives in dozens of ways and so far, it’s all been for the better. Sure, we can’t see movies in the theatre any more and there’s a constant haze of worry going on all the time. But the life changes were worth it for us.

This weekend I went to get my haircut, and just as my hairdresser was starting his cell phone rang and he answered it because it was his 7-year-old son. His son was calling because his dad had removed a necklace from around his neck in the night, and the son was totally amazed that he didn’t feel a thing, and also wanted to tell his dad that he rocked because he wouldn’t have wanted the necklace to be broken. I could hear the boy exclaiming over the phone and it was so adorable, and I thought how nice it was that he wanted to call his dad in the first place, and how nice that his dad took his call and listened patiently. And then I was amazed to think that just a few years ago, I would have been thinking something more along the lines of, “Hey, dude, put down the phone and do your job, I’m not paying you to take calls from some kid.” Now, I think things more like, “I can’t wait until the Captain is old enough to call at work and tell him about the cool rock he found on the playground.”

Now that we only have three weeks to go until George Foreman Jatania II is born, I’m feeling a little less scared about how it’s all going to work, and a little more excited to think that we’ll actually get to have another one of these cool things they call babies at our place. It’s going to be great.

Last night on CBC’s Olympic coverage, Brian Williams was complaining about the lack of audience in the stands at the women’s gymnastics, traditionally a big draw sport. He said that some people think that the problem with attendence at these games is the fact that Greece is a small country, but he feels that the problem is that the Summer Olympics are bloated — they have way too many sports and need to be pruned. I must admit that after a few days of watching stuff like synchronized diving and archery, it seems like there are quite a few obscure sports that no one really cares about. On the other hand, some kids out there might really adore archery, and there’s no other time in any other year when stuff like that gets TV coverage. I think the publicity for the lesser sports during the Olympics is invaluable for keeping those sports alive.

Although, I guess you could argue that if they got dropped from the Olympics, they could just die out and no one would care, anyway.

I think if they want to do some pruning, maybe they could elminate some swimming events. If one guy (that American swimmer) can swim in 8 freakin’ events, then I say, the physical talents required to excel in those 8 different events aren’t different enough to require a whole separate event. Every time they cut to the pool there’s some other slightly different variation on length, stroke, or relay — it’s endless.

What do you think — too many sports at the Olympics?

I read an interesting article in the paper this weekend about re-reading books. It said that re-reading a favourite is worth it, because you’re a different person now than when you first read it (due to being older and having more experience), and so you’re likely to see new things in it. I heartily agree with this position and I’ve re-read many of my books. Each time I’m surprised at how differently I react to the material. Sometimes it’s for the worse — I re-read Catcher In The Rye a couple of years ago, and while I thought it was pure genius in high school, this time around I found it pompous and annoying. A result of no longer being a teenager, I think.

Anyway, my point here is that I don’t have the same reaction to music. When I listen to music I’ve heard many times before, it takes me back to that era. I remember when I first heard it, what I was doing, what age I was. Rather than re-interpreting the songs, I find I re-live the same reaction again. That’s good too, but I find it interesting that my reactions to music are totally different than to books.

With movies, it’s about 50-50. Some films (like Star Wars) I like to watch for the nostalgia factor — they remind me of a specific time and place. Other films, like Casablanca, I’ve seen many times and each time I think something different or new about it.

What do you get out of re-watching/re-reading/re-listening?