he’s taking away my tv!

*sobs and throws her arms around her beloved television*

Despite my best intentions, my fast from television has not been going so well.  Sure, when I get home I turn on the computer, pull up a lecture and putter around the kitchen for awhile.  But come 7:00, it calls me.  *jen…jennnnnn…*   House, Bones, Ugly Betty, the Closer, even re-runs of my beloved Law and Order, the pull is too strong!

My name is Jen and I’m a television addict.

This morning, the husband pulled an intervention.  He announced, no ifs ands or buts, that there will be no television during the last 10 days of Ramadan.  But but but, the Heroes Premiere is the 22 *sobs*

Get ahold of yourself girl!  You’ve been trying to kick the habit for a year.  Vowing to watch less isn’t helping!  You’ve got to go cold turkey.  What good is it to fast all day, only to break your fast while watching the boob tube?  You have an addictive personality.  You’re apparently not capable of moderation, so the only solution is to cut it out entirely.

Ya Rabb!  Help me make You my only true Beloved!

not my cooking academy!

I think what I’ll miss most when I finally give up television (inshaAllah) is the PBS cooking academy. Saturday morning, I plop down for a good 2 to 3 hours, and watch show after show, attempting to gleen recipes and techniques. Almost every weekend, I come away with something new to cook.

Yesterday, I found it on Sara’s Weeknight Meals - Quick Asparagus Lasagna. As always, I futzed with the recipe. I made the dish twice as big as called for - 12 square wantons rather than 6 per layer, doubled the veggies, but didn’t double the cheese. This was mainly a result of the fact that the only pan I had available would fit 12, and that I had frozen broccoli in the freezer to add for the unplanned expansion. The first layer I laid down the broccoli, and the second was the asparagus and the onions. Tasty tasty tasty. Definitely in the “will make again” pile. Next time, I think I may add a light tomato sauce to give it a little more flavor.

If anyone is looking for a quick and easy iftar recipe, this is definitely one for the books.

On a related note, went to the Saint Paul Farmer’s market on Saturday to get veggies for the iftars I’ll be making this week.

You really can’t get a good sense of size from this picture. Everything but the tomatoes and eggplants are massive. The cauliflower is seriously bigger than my head. The tomatoes, peppers and green peppers are for the Huevos Rancheros (another cooking academy find) I’m going to make for the first suhoor Monday inshaAllah, if Ramadan really is Monday that is. If it’s Tuesday, I doubt we really want a bunch of beans before we go to work.

Finally, my dear beloved dates. I went to Holy Land last weekend to stock up on grape leaves and other ME cooking essentials. The date section was well stocked, but what was this?? No majdool dates???? Oh, I nearly had a heart attack. It just isn’t ramadan without these dates. Nothing else tastes good to me. Luckily, I tracked down an employee and pleaded with her, where are the majdool dates? Apparently, they weren’t done boxing them up yet, but she went in the back and got me some. Alhamdulilah, now ramadan can start!

Quit it

Alhamdulilah, I’ve never had addiction issues with alcohol.   I made shahada and that was it - no more booze -except for the occasional slip up with some sneaky vanilla extract or wine used to cook food that I wasn’t aware of.  I converted early in my college career, before I could legally drink.  I went to school in Madison, regularly ranked the Number 1 Party School in the country for the amount of alcohol that flows freely among the student population, so temptation was everywhere.  Alhamduililah, I stayed strong.  By not drinking, I saved a ton of money and didn’t do anything stupid like falling off a balcony.

If I can withstand the temptation of alcohol, why can’t I do the same with television?  I’ve had brief flirtations with quitting the television.  I don’t sit down and watch it for 5 hours at a time on Saturday and Sunday anymore.  But it’s still there, taunting me, calling me, and inevitably, I succumb.

Last night was the House season finale.  Highlight for spoiler *Wilson is lying next to Amber in the last few hours of her life.  She tells him she’d like to go to sleep now, he kisses her, and then he leans over and turns off the bypass machine*  I’m snuggling up next to my husband, sniffling away and trying to hold back tears.  

This morning, I was listening to my NPR podcasts as usual when this story came up.  In it, a Chinese couple desperately clings to the hope that their son is alive, only to have those hopes shattered.  You hear real grief, real anguish, real pain.  The NPR reporter is struggling to control her emotions throughout the entire report.

Then it hit me BAM!  There is so much suffering in this world, why on earth am I getting weepy over some fictional television characters?  Why on earth would I want to spend the precious few minutes I have here on earth entertaining myself with the idiot box?  Aren’t there better things to do with my time?

Granted, I probably won’t be able to give TV up cold turkey.  But I’m going to keep this incident in mind.  The next time I feel myself getting weepy over someone who doesn’t even exisit, I’ll check myself and go do something else inshaAllah.

La TV update

It’s been awhile since I’ve started my La TV drive, and I’ve realized that I haven’t given an update, well, since the start.  So, in case you’re curious, here it is.  And if you’re not, tough cookies, I’m writing it anyways.

I haven’t actually made it to 0 tv yet, although I’m down considerably.  I was doing relatively well, but the all day Law & Order marathon on TNT on new years day destroyed any possibility of saying I watched no tv.  Going cold turkey doesn’t seem to be working, so I’ve reviewed the television I’ve watched and cut out all the excess fluff.  From here on out:

Weekends:  only Stargate and Stargate Atlantis.  We dropped everything beyond basic cable a few years ago and loss the Sci Fi Channel and my favorite shows in the process.  Luckily, the most recent seasons are being shown on one of the basic channels we still get.  It’s kind of hit and miss though - they’re not always on, and the times switch around.  So, on the weekends it could be up to 2 hours of tv, but sometimes there’s none.

I’m struggling with not watching my cooking shows.  I *heart* the cooking academy on PBS, aka their line up of cooking shows on Saturday morning.  I may have to subscribe to a few cooking magazines to make up for it.

Weekdays:  Only new episodes, no reruns.  Heroes, House, Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy.  Can’t get into anymore new shows.  Maybe an occasional law & order to take the edge off.

Strategies that are working:

• Get lots of books from the library.  Read said books.  Always have a novel or 2 handy in case religiously oriented books overload brain.  
• Eat dinner with the husband and talk, no tv.
• Go for walks with the husband.  This works especially well on the weekend when there’s lots of time and not much to do.
• Observe the 15/5 minute rule - 15 minutes before salat, turn off the tv and focus on Allah (swt).   Spend at least 5 minutes after salat in dhikr and dua.
• Don’t watch any shows where the male awrah isn’t covered.  This eliminates Friday Night Smackdown, my secret vice that I’ve started since the husband watches it every Friday.

(free!) Online Education

Via Seeker’s Digest:

 How spiffy is this?   Definately something that would be more worthwhile than television, don’t ya think?  Islam related courses include:

• Anthropology of the Middle East
• The Architecture of Cairo
• Religious Architecture and Islamic Culture
• A Passage to India: Introduction to Modern Indian Culture and Society
• Topics in South Asian Literature and Culture
• The Making of Modern South Aisa
• Islam, the Middle East, and the West
• The Middle East in the 20th Century
• Politics and Religion
• Issues in Foreign Policy since 911
• Islam, Global Politics and US Foreign Policy
• Democracy and Global Islam
• Kashmir and Afghanistan: Religion, Ethnicity and the Strategic Balance in South Asia
• Tariq Ali: War, Empire, and Resistance
• Conversations with Berkeley Faculty: Ira Lapidus

La TV

I watch too much TV.  It’s all TNT’s fault, with their Law & Order marathons and whatnot.  The husband and I have fallen into a mind numbing routine.  I come home from work, he’s on the computer, I turn on TV and watch a rerun of Law & Order for the 13th time.  Eventually, I’ll reheat leftovers for dinner, and then return to the Law & Order, or, if it’s Monday, turn on Heroes.  How much of my life has been spent on Law & Order?

Today marks the start of the first official no TV week in our household.  The only TV I’m allowing myself is the morning news to see the weather and road conditions, which is kind of a necessity (I’m telling myself), as we’re in the midst of a week long snow storm here in Minne-snow-da.  It’s going to be hard.  There are 12 step programs for alcoholics, gamblers, smokers, etc.  Where’s the program for the TVaholic?  Ah, here’s one.  Here’s my islamicized version of the plan:

1. Give your extra TVs to charity.  - ok we only have one tv, so no problem there

2. Only turn on the TV to watch a particular show. - the only show I’ll allow is the morning news, channel 24.  No flipping around if it’s on commercial.  No flipping to TNT to watch a rerun of Angel for the nth time.

3. Then, when you sit down to watch a particular show, set a timer - ok, so no timer for the morning news, but only one round of the weather/road reports.  After that, the TV gets turned off.

4. Throw out the remote control - I can’t quite do that, although I’ll have my husband hide them.

5. Rearrange the furniture - good idea.  I’ll have to brainstorm with the husband to see how we can do this

6. Hide the television - Can’t quite afford to get a TV cabinet, but I do have a bunch of islamic art that I don’t have hung up yet.  inshaAllah I’ll stick some on the TV :)

7. Eat meals, especially dinner, with the television OFF. - ah yes, this would help me with my (failing) diet as well.  Unfortunately our kitchen table is taken up with a computer, so we naturally gravitate towards the table in the living room (near the tv).  inshaAllah we can sit there, with the TV off, and listen to lectures or something instead.  Or maybe, *gasp* we could just talk.  Now that’s scary.

8. Set a rule that you can’t watch TV if the sun is shining. - That really doesn’t work well when you live freakin up north and the sun is only shining when you’re at work.  It will be good in the summer though.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve put off going for a run because there was a rerun of Law & Order on that I had only seen like 3 times.

9. Make a TV-watching plan each week. - I don’t think I’m quite ready to go completely no tv, so this will work once Heroes comes back on.  Heroes on Monday, House on Tuesday, and then that’s it.

10. Set a rule that you must read 30 pages of a book or magazine before you can turn on the TV - excellent idea.  I pulled an old college textbook off the shelf yesterday - A History of Islamic Societies - a mamoth 1000 page tome that I only had to read half of in my Islamic History class, and even then, I kinda skimmed it.  Well now I can buckle down and read it.  I was trying to reduce my TV time over the long break, and read On the Side of my People: A religious history of Malcolm X, and it was quite good.  Just think of all the books out there I could get through.

11. Create a list of one-hour evening projects. - Maybe a half an hour instead.  30 minutes of reading Qur’an every night at 9.  30 minutes of listening to a set of Islamic lectures together.  30 minutes of reading a book related to Islam.  30 minutes of dhikr.  Yeah, I could get into that.

12. Switch to games. - We do have a bunch of games sitting and gathering dust.  I think too, saying that we’ll go for a walk each night would be a good bit of physical activity we both need.

13. Develop a fast-moving news routine. - meh, don’t really need to worry about this.  I do all my news via NPR podcasts and reading the BBC.  However, I should limit the time I spend surfing news websites.  Will definately have to set a time limit there, maybe turn on the timer.

14. Say no to Jaws for the 15th time. - ah the rerun, my nemisis.  I’m just saying la to you.  I’m sorry Jack, sorry Lenny, sniff, it was nice seeing you again and again and again…

15. Get outdoors every night. - yes to 30 minute walks, unless it’s below zero.  I’m resolved, but I’m not crazy.

16. Change your TV-viewing chairs.  - will pull the kitchen chairs out into the living room if we do want to watch tv.  Good idea.

17. Say no to… - Crime shows.  I watch too many of them.  One Law & Order per week, max.

Books to get and read, recommended by Sh. Nuh and Sh. Hamza:

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Amusing Ourselves to Death

The Plug in - Television, Computers and Family Life