Criminal Minds: how did I miss this?

I never watch television.  I mean never...until recently.  You see, my new roommate Jennifer introduced me to a show called Criminal Minds.  Holy Cow!  Last night, I watched 4 straight episodes of this show - now you must understand that my husband was conked out asleep on the couch (sitting up, quite impressive), Jennifer was at work, and I was holding Sarah and carefully monitoring her out-of-control fever outta nowhere that cropped up in the wee hours of the morning Friday.  But passing the time watching really smart sexy people use their cunning brain skills to catch the bad guy made for a whopping good time!
It isn't that I have anything against television, it's just that I don't like fiction.  I don't like sit-coms or reality shows or cartoons or infomercials.  I don't like re-runs of old-ass shows that weren't good the first time around either.  I used to like Days of Our Lives but then the plot got so slow I could keep up by watching a half dozen episodes a year so I just quit altogether.  I don't like to watch sports, save Georgia football, and I don't like MTV or VH1.  I certainly don't like wrestling or obscure documentaries about tools used thousands of years ago by early ape-like humans. 
However, I do PAY for television.  Odd as it may seem, my husband is a television addict (certified) and I've enabled his nasty habit for years now by shelling out the cash to subscribe.  It's too bad he hasn't taken the initiative to go on some t.v. trivia gameshow to win some money.  Anyway, in the last couple of weeks since I've starting watching this totally amazing show, I know he dreads seeing me come into the room with that "lemme have that remote mister" look on my face.  Too bad.  I'd say fifteen years of getting to watch whatever he wanted is enough.  It's time I finally felt like I was getting my money's worth on my cable bill!
If you haven't had the time or energy to catch this show, do yourself the favor.  It's pretty darn cool.  Also in it's 6th season, so I am embarrassed to have not caught on to this until now, however excited that I can now spend hours upon hours catching up on all the action!  I even checked out the online store for cool stuff but only found the DVDs and a t-shirt that I wouldn't wear.  I'm not buying the DVDs because while it would make sense to watch them in order to follow the storyline a bit better, I finally can justify spending mucho dollars on my cable service.  C'mon now.  Let's all breathe a big sigh of relief.  I know I feel better.
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/criminal_minds/

Halloween 2010

I've decided that Halloween is my favorite holiday.  Prior to today, and considering that yesterday - Halloween day - was actually somewhat miserable, I've never had a favorite holiday.  But there's a first time for everything!  Allow me to preface this by saying that I've been a TOTAL slacker lately.  But a couple of weeks ago Hal started working on weekends, so even though I work two 12 hour shifts back to back on Thursday & Friday each week, I've got to be ready to entertain our 6 year old at the butt crack of dawn on Saturday morning, just hours after I've gotten off work and maybe three or four (if I'm lucky) hours after I've passed out asleep.
The first thing Sarah asked me on Halloween morning this year was if she could have pink hair.  My cousin gave us a hand-me-down rock star costume that is pink, I purchased a little pink skull bucket for her to collect her treats in so I guess she figured her hair ought to be pink too.  All day long she begged me to carve the pumpkin.  Granted, I should have already had that done - but alas, I am a slacker.  So just before noon I gave in and we carved the pumpkin, which she immediately made me start calling the "jack-o-lantern."  Later I forced her to take a nap, which she whined about.  When she awoke we made her take a bath, which she also whined about.  Then Jennifer glittered and glammed her hair and face to make her a pretty rock star, and she whined some then too.  Then she whined about the sun not going down fast enough so she could go trick or treating.  When it finally was time, after nearly 12 hours of pure parental torture, we headed out the door and walked straight to the neighbors house.  Not only did Sarah refuse to ring the doorbell and say 'trick or treat,' I had to PUSH her to walk up the sidewalk to their door!  This continued for the next ten houses until she finally asked to go home.  She might have mustered an audible 'trick or treat' once or twice, and maybe a 'thank you' too amongst our threats of never ever taking her trick or treating again if she didn't.
When we arrived home, we grabbed our bucket of candy, turned on the porch light and lit the jack-o-lantern.  This is when the child came alive.  She had a blast giving out candy to all the trick-or-treaters that darted our door.  We still had to remind her to say "you're welcome" but at least she seemed like she was enjoying something after such a long day of begging and whining.  Tis better to give than to receive I suppose.  At least she gets it honest.

In my renewed enthusiasm, I scooped her up after work today and drove her to the day after Halloween sale at Target where we bought lots of candy and a spiffy new costume for her to wear next year.  Only 363 days left.  Let the whining begin!