For six years I always looked forward to circling a
certain week in August on my calendar; the week Cindy and her girlfriends made
their annual pilgrimage to the beach.
For that was the week I made my annual pilgrimage to my living room
where I would catch up on the latest season of the HBO series Dexter. I called the week ‘Dexfest’ and enjoyed it immensely
for the first six years of the show.
However, things changed during seasons seven and
eight. Cindy opened her first oil and
vinegar store during season seven and her second store during season
eight. The girls’ pilgrimages to the
beach--and Dexfest both came to a screeching halt: To this day I still don’t
know how things turned out for Dexter Morgan, America’s favorite serial killer.
Which is why I was looking forward to this past
Saturday: Cindy would be spending the day preparing for a party she was hosting
at her store that evening, leaving the entire day for me to do what I wanted to
do. Since I had never watched an entire
season of any television show in a single day, I thought this presented the
opportune time to try binge watching (translation: rendering myself useless for
an entire day). I was all set to catch
up on season seven of Dexter when a
friend of mine told me Friday afternoon she was going to watch House of Cards over the weekend as she
had heard really good things about it. I
had heard similar reviews of the show and decided House of Cards would be the main course on my Saturday menu.
Doing a little research I discovered season one of House of Cards was 675 minutes long, or
11 hours and 15 minutes. Knowing I could
fast-forward through the theme song of episodes 2 through 13 (Note: I always
listen to the them song during episode 1 of any show just in case it’s a really
catchy tune—the theme song for Cinemax’ Banshee
being a prime example), that left approximately 11 hours of viewing to
squeeze into a typical Saturday. You may
be wondering ‘How can a Saturday be typical?’
I wake up every Saturday at 3:45 a.m.
I drink coffee and take care of minor household chores (dirty dishes,
laundry, litter box) until 5:15 at which time I drive to Al’s house for our
weekly 10-mile run. I’m home by 7:35 and
take care of errands (grocery shopping, banking business, filling up the gas
tank) that normally take me until 10 a.m.
Then the rest of the day is mine until I hit the sack around 10
p.m. In other words, after my run with
Al that left me with enough time to watch 11 hours of television if I didn’t
stray too far from the living room. The
stage was set for the ultimate waste of a day.
Here’s how things played out.
The day got off to a fast start, as I started watching
Kevin Spacey (magnificent in the lead role, by the way) take Washington D.C. by
storm while I was having my morning coffee, literally seconds after I woke up. By the time I met up with Al I already had
the first episode under my belt. (I
might add I was already totally absorbed in the show.)
I went for my every-fourth-Saturday-morning haircut at
8:35 a.m., about 25 minutes before the salon opened. I’ve known one of the stylists for many years
and she always cuts my hair before opening the salon at its official opening
time of 9:00 a.m. When I arrived a man
and his son were standing outside—in 30-degree temperatures, no less—and the
father said to me ‘They don’t open until 9:00’ at the exact moment the front
door opened just far enough to let me inside. My haircut took six minutes (as always) that
left another 15 minutes or so before the store was open to business. I volunteered to go out the back door since
the father and son were still standing outside, thus sparing her from any
embarrassing questions when they saw I had gotten a haircut. The stylist took me up on my offer, so I went
around the back of the building only to realize I couldn’t get in my truck and
leave because it was parked about 15 yards from where the father and son were
standing and I didn’t want them to see I had not only entered the salon 25
minutes before it was open but that I had gotten a haircut as well. So guess who else was now standing outside in 30-degree temperature wasting
valuable seconds he could be plopped down in front of a television set watching
House of Cards?
I stopped on the way home to pick up a couple grocery
items as well as a bottle of rum Cindy needed for her party, my internal clock
ticking all the while as I knew I still only had one episode under my
belt. Once I got home I watched the
second episode when I decided to take my truck in for an oil change at the
garage located about 2 ½ miles from the house.
As Cindy was busy preparing for her party I opted to run back home after
dropping off my truck, getting home just in time to turn on the television to
watch…
The Florida Gators play the Ole Miss Rebels in college
basketball. Although they struggled periodically throughout the game the Gators
ultimately came out on top. Since the game lasted slightly longer than two
hours, I sacrificed watching at least two episodes of House of Cards during that window of time but I figured it was
worth it: Florida will be ranked # 1 in the country when the next poll is
released.
It was now just past 2:00 p.m. and time for me to get
down to business. I squeezed in four
more episodes before Cindy packed up and left for her store. During this time I only hit the ‘pause’ button
when she was running something through the blender in the kitchen and drowning
out the sound of the television. The
noise coming from the kitchen was so loud that if I didn’t know any better I
would have sworn she was making granite milk shakes. I caught a ride to the garage with Cindy so I
could pick up my truck and drive it back home: One more errand complete.
It was now 5:30 p.m. and I still had seven more
episodes left. It was time to get
serious.
As soon as I fed the cats, that is.
Feeding the cats didn’t take too much time. However, trying to determine which room one
of the cats vomited in afterwards did.
So after finishing cat vomit mop up duty it’s now 5:45
p.m. and I still didn’t even have my finger on the fast forward button of the
remote ready to bypass the theme song of episode seven. Times-a-wastin’! It was around 6:30 p.m. when I decided I
would also fast forward through the credits at the end of each episode to gain
another couple of minutes every hour: Finding out who played the role of
‘Hooker # 3’ or whom the gaffer (whatever that is) was would have to wait for
another day.
From now it was just you and I, House of Cards. For the rest
of the evening know this: Your a** is
MINE!
The final six episodes were easy to digest because
they were absolutely delicious. Sure, I had to battle back several 90-second
naps during the course of the night—the result of a combination of being awake
since 3:45 a.m., a busy day of running as well as running errands, lying back
in a recliner for five straight hours and two or three (OK, three) glasses of Bailey’s Irish Cream—but
just a few minutes before midnight I was able to claim victory: I successfully binge watched an entire
13-episode season of a television show in one day.
Now I figure I can move on to a double-header some
weekend in the future: The 7th season of Dexter on Saturday and the 8th season on Sunday. It shouldn’t that difficult: One season of Dexter only consists of 12 episodes, not
13.
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