Potpourri No. 24

And now it’s time for more of my thoughts and happenings, in brief.

Knock on Wood
Thursday, September 10th marked the five-year anniversary of my blog. (Here’s the post that started it all.) Melanie introduced me to blogging, and therefore is responsible for the fact that pretty much my entire family blogs now. I’m very grateful for that. It’s been a wonderful way to keep in touch with people and to feel somewhat involved in their lives, especially now that I live so far away from everyone. It’s pretty wild to me to think that five years of my life has been documented on here (more fully at some times than others). Looking back on some of those early posts, it’s hard to believe it’s only been five years. They seem like memories from a decade ago. I wonder how long this will last. Well, at least until 2012, I guess. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering, wood is the traditional fifth-anniversary gift material.)

Water Works
Out of curiosity, I’ve decided to (try to) keep track of how much water I drink versus how much soda I drink. It’s not so easy to do that. On school days, it’s actually not too bad. We own some refillable plastic bottles that have markers on the side indicating how many ounces of fluid are contained inside. If I drink the whole thing, it’s easy enough to do the math, but even if I only drink a partial bottle, I can quickly deduce how many ounces I’ve drunk. When it comes to soda, if I have a can of Mountain Dew, that’s easy. If I get a 32-ounce fountain drink, that’s easy. If I go to a restaurant and am brought a glass of Coke, drink some of it, get topped off, drink the whole thing, get a refill, drink most of it … not so easy. I guess my results will have to be taken lightly. But we’ll see what comes of it. I’ll report on it in within another two or three weeks, I’m sure.

Must See? We’ll See.
Over the next week or so, a barrage of television programs are debuting and/or having their season premiers. I’m kind of excited about that. I watch a decent amount of stuff on DVD, but it’s been a while since I’ve had a weekly TV show to tune into. It sounds kind of fun for a change. On Monday, I’ll be checking out Jay Leno’s new show, out of curiosity. I always liked Leno myself, and I think he’s immensely better than either Letterman or Conan. We’ll see how it goes. On Thursday, The Office has its season premier, and I admit to being one of the incredibly many who think this is (or at least has been, at certain times) one of the funniest shows to have been on television. We’ll see if it can keep up with itself. (It hasn’t always.) And, I’m super excited that I get free HBO at my apartment because, come Sunday, September 20th, I can for the first time watch Curb Your Enthusiasm while it’s actually on TV! That too is one of the funniest television series I’ve ever watched. How cool to have that to look forward to! In slightly sad news, I just learned that The Amazing Race, another long-time favorite (though I don’t believe it’s one of the best shows ever), is not premiering its new season until Sunday the 27th. Up until five minutes ago, I had thought it was debuting tomorrow. What a bummer!

Who’s Bad?
One singer, some nice overdubbing, trick photography, and an awesome medley arrangement of Michael Jackson songs makes the following video pretty darn cool.