Tuesday, June 27, 2000

It was back to work today after a very enjoyable and relaxing weekend. I am still a little angry at myself over yesterday afternoon, though: I decided to watch afternoon cartoons, and ended up watching TV for a good seven hours. It’s amazing how easy it is to get sucked in by the television. Or the Great Glass Teat, as AICN‘s Moriarty likes to call it.

However, I used the opportunity to watch some of The 1900 House, a show about the three-month experiment that a family spent in a turn-of-the-century-era house. They had to dress and act as much like the times as possible; everything they bought had to have been available at the time. It’s a very interesting story as they learn to cope with the lack of modern conveniences, and the huge amounts of hard work. In this week’s episode, the mother explains that she gets a lot of visits from friends, who just adore Victoriana and talk about how much they love it. But now she’s realized that they’ve romanticized Victoriana; they really only want the pretty bits. Even if they coo over how much they’d love to live in a house like this, they don’t really want to live in it, and by that I mean clean it, walk up and down its ladder-like stairs, smell the bathroom, or stumble around in it after dark (no electricity, after all). Very interesting.

I hope to get some more work done on my garden this week, hopefully having the pond done by Sunday night.