Friday, February 26, 2010

Lenten Fast is not passing fast enough.

This Lenten season, Steve and I decided to give up all TV and movie watching at home. Lent is F-O-R-T-Y DAYS people! We're hardly into the season and I WANT MY TV NOW. Partly why I chose this particular fast was to see how addicted we were to our down time, our hour or two of escapism. The answer is VERY! Would someone please kick me in the head the next time I have this crazy idea. We're seriously tempted to give up now and get one more fix in before starting again on Sunday. I then remind myself the fast is obviously working if we're feeling this way so my spine stiffens and I step away from that line of smack called instant play on Netflix. I REALLY do not want to go through with this fast, but I also don't want to be a quitter. I'm expecting some AMAZING spiritual results from this discipline (God, I'm talking to you).

Thus far, Steve and I have filled the time with endless games of Scrabble (and by endless I mean it feels like they never end). Despite my affinity for words and my spelling prowess, Steve beats me. He beats me with three and four letter words -words that belong in a first grader's vocabulary. The man has a knack for getting all the double /triple points for letters /words. As anyone who's ever played Scrabble knows, three or four letter words can kill the game. They don't stretch out far enough to allow for more than one or two new words. Steve likes to think he's making the game more challenging this way. I, on the other hand, am more magnanimous and will create longer words to keep the options open. My strategy is obviously failing.

Tonight we're list making what all we can do with the time not spent partaking of our drug of choice. If y'all have any good ideas, do pass them on.

6 comments:

christian said...

Go through a book together, upload your cute pics of Thorne into a book, and there are other games besides scrabble, by the way! ;)
can't think of any more...sorry!

Unknown said...

hows that list coming along!?
reading poetry aloud? um...

Unknown said...

wait... my bad. but i won't sign you out. instead it'll be like yousending you a reminder.

-m, thorne watcher 2010.

Gypmar said...

You two are brave to give up your down-time "vice". That sounds killer, especially with a wee one around the house.

Magazines are my TV equivalent, but that can get expensive. And it's not something you can do together very well.

Like you, Danica, I always get my butt kicked at Scrabble. Boggle too. Umm...we actually got out the dominoes last weekend when we were desperate for a family-friendly activity. I'm not necessarily recommending it, but it was better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Have you ever played the card game Spite and Malice? It takes a long time to play and there's a little strategy, but not enough to make you have to really think. My dad and step-mom used to play it for hours, and so did we when we visited.

Sorry I'm not much help. But I guess if it were easy to carry out your Lenten Fast then there wouldn't be any point in doing it :)

Unknown said...

channel the energy into something constructive...like scotch

eric O said...

OK, so you've got 28 days left of Lent. Let's push it and say that you have 2 hours of down time to kill every day. That's 56 hours. You can fly to Kyiv in about 15-20 hours. Let's average it at 17.5 hours, each way. That leaves you with 21 hours in Kyiv, with us. So, for the next 28 days, use those 2 hours a day to chip away at all of the little things that keep you from coming to Kyiv for a day (homework, course prep, etc.). Then, the day after Resurrection Day, fly to Kyiv! Sure, 21 hours isn't a long time, but it would be fun to see you on our side of the ocean.

(The thing that you'd probably have to do with the down time is make a little extra dough somehow to pay for the plane flight.)

Now THAT's a plan. See you in a month!