EVERYTHING looks better on a 40" flat screen. Everything. Including Season 8 of the Biggest Loser. But before I get to that...I can't help but wonder if buying a large piece of electronic equipment is the equivalent of being single and having three or more cats. Seriously...I am 35 and single. I'll be 36 next week. And I am beginning to wonder if I'm settling in to my single lifestyle with this generation's equivalent to feline companionship...flat screen companionship. PS...I've passed the point of ever sharing possession of the remote control. I sure hope Jim Dear loves watching House Hunters, Flipping Out, Biggest Loser and Texas Tech football. Or comes with his own flat screen. We'll just shout sweet nothings from one room to the next during commercial breaks, I guess.

Back to the Biggest Loser...I forgot how much I love watching it. I haven't watched it since Season 1. It was just too painful. That show is the reason I am in Los Angeles, actually. A few years ago, I was living and teaching in Fort Worth, Texas. I wish I could put into words how charming a city Fort Worth is. I lived a block from the cultural district and the second largest modern art museum in the country - which just happened to be located on an old but still very functional cobblestone street. Blissfully happy in a 1940's walk-up with loads of charm and character, 1100 square feet, and a balcony that overlooked the downtown lights. But I was miserable at my high school teaching job. Sometimes, between gang fights and a Home Ec teacher in the room next to mine who loved to open her can of crazy and toss it in my direction, I would break into an aria from Les Miserables. PS...I was fat. 

About this time, the first season of Biggest Loser hit the airwaves. I'd never seen anything like it. There was blood, tears and lots of sweat. Puddles o' sweat. It was a sweatbox. I wondered about the camera operators. Did they have to drape themselves with a plastic tarp to keep from getting sprayed like the front row of a Gallagher show? 

But I loved it. All that sweat translated into the most dramatic transformations I've ever seen. The contestants were losing massive amounts of weight and looked h-o-t. I wanted to be one of those people. So, I went online and, wouldn't you know it, there was an open casting call for Season 2. A couple of weeks away at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Dallas.

~Part 2 to follow...please stay tuned.    

Sitting on the floor in the self-help section of Borders the other day, I picked up a book titled Addicted to Unhappiness. I picked it up, mind you, because I thought it would be the perfect thing to pass along to someone else...a family member who is obviously addicted to a marriage she herself would describe as m-i-s-e-r-a-b-l-e and who talks about it for hours on end to anyone and everyone who will listen without doing a thing about it. It's always other people who need help, you know, from the self-help section...not myself. Except that while smugly flipping through the pages, I spotted a chapter called Conquering Your Resistance to Achieving Physical Well-Being. And there it was in black and white. A checklist of excuses that sounded like they came from my mouth. Excuses people (i.e. me) use when they're knee deep in Entenmann's boxes and Blue Bell ice cream cartons. Excuses like "I don't have time to exercise," "I eat to alleviate stress," and "This one little fill-in-the-blank won't hurt me any." How did they know?!? These genius authors. Who read my mind and busted me on every excuse I've ever used. 

While I won't go so far as to say I'm addicted to unhappiness, I will confess that I'm addicted to the lifestyle. Not the lifestyle of the rich and famous. But the lifestyle of the fat and comfy. 

Intrigued and a little unsettled by the word "addicted," I looked it up on Thesaurus.com.  Here's what T.com had to offer for synonyms: attached, disciplined, familiar with, grooved, habituated, habituated in, in the habit, settled in, trained, unhealthy confidence and wedded to. Interesting, very interesting. Discipline? That's a word I would never have associated with addiction. Maybe I'm uber disciplined and never realized it! I mean, I've disciplined myself to jump in the car every night for the last how-many-ever years for a nightly road trip to the grocery store to pick up just enough sinful sustenance to last 24 hours, only to do it again the next night. Second verse, same as the first. I've got the Shih Tzu convinced there is nothing sweeter than the sound of my car keys. He's taking his driving test next week.

I've also disciplined myself to watch hours of tv a day, to take up napping as a favorite hobby, to keep a seriously clean bachelorette pad, and to stress enough to fuel an entire planet.

Maybe...just maybe, I've got the discipline of G.I. Jane and never knew it. And now I've just got to harness my powers for good instead of evil. Wonder Twins...activate! Well, a little less evil, at least...I'm not ready to go cold turkey on the naps and I just bought a 40" flat screen. It would be a shame to just let it sit there. 

Season 8 of the Biggest Loser is all I hoped and more. Of course, Jillian is her usual melodramatic self. And this season, there is a contestant named Tracey...a Southern belle from North Carolina who may prove to be the next reality show villain with her Survivor-like approach and backstabbing ways. A pretty mother of two married to an ex-Marine, Tracey is someone I want to like and definitely find interesting to watch. But she has the crazy eye. Crazy, I tell you. Muy loco. Like Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride made famous for running away from her fiance in 2005. I have to say, I think her ex-fiance, now married to another woman, really dodged a bullet on that one. In any event, I'm just waiting for the episode where Tracey is pushed to her limit and goes postal on the Biggest Loser ranch. I imagine her kicking in the doors while her teammates exercise oblivious, Twinkie-filled Uzi in hand, and spraying down the whole place with snack cakes. I can hardly wait. 

It was Donut Day at school today. Guess who hosts Donut Day? Student Council...led by a big-hair-lovin'-Texas-turned-Los-Angeles-girl who is trying not to think about donuts. 12 dozen donuts were screaming out at me from their bright pink boxes. Anything that comes in a bright pink box has got to be good. And by 10:05, I was convinced that I loved cake donuts with white frosting and little colored sprinkles more than Jesus. By 10:08, after a stampede of 120 middle school wildabeasts, there were only a couple of boxes left. Unfortunately, one of the boxes included two cake donuts with their @#$%&* frosting and their *&%$#@ sprinkles. I carried the box lovingly across the parking lot, opening the lid a couple of times to make sure they were still sleeping peacefully. I'm convinced one of them smiled at me. I dropped them off in the teacher's lounge and ran away crying. I should have left a note.  It would have read "I've always loved you and I always will. Not a day will go by that you're not in my thoughts. Look me up in 18 years, ok?" 

It's the beginning of Fall. My favorite time of year. The air outside is beginning to get cool and crisp. I've just opened every window in the house and lit some candles. The window next to my "writing chair" is a Laverne and Shirley window...you know, where you can see everyone's feet walking by. Only I live in a gated community tucked in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains...there aren't a lot of feet walking by, unfortunately. Not many opportunities to people watch here (my favorite past time). But the Santa Anita mall is just a few minutes away. I like to go there, peruse the bookstore while sipping my green tea. And judge all the people walking by. Oh come on! Like everyone doesn't do that!

Which reminds me...Nancy, the prankster and partner-in-crime-o-mine at work, sent me this poem she found in an old dictionary, of all places.

"As a beauty I am not a star,

There are others more handsome by far;

But my face -- I don't mind it,

For I am behind it;

It's the people in front that I jar."

Speaking of jarring, the Tootsie Roll hair is starting to fade into a color that looks like it might actually grow out of my head. I'm actually beginning to like it. And can now resume normal activities, going out during daylight hours, and having my photo taken.

I ordered a new workout video. Actually not so new...it was first made in 1992. It was a video I worked out to religiously in college called Step Reebok: The Video with Gin Miller. The website I ordered from described it as having "MTV-style photography and great music plus a futuristic industrial set." I think a better description would be "a live bongo-playing band wondering what in the world they signed up for and nine perfect bodies working out in the dark, except for the light box they call a floor and the occasional strobing searchlight." Oh...and you can't forget Gin Miller's face on several strategically placed television sets as she intensely cues the next move. PS...Max Headroom called...he wants his TV set back.  If you want to see it with your very own eyes, here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zbRQpJ2wmQ

I can't help but love this video. Working out in the dark?!? With strobe lights?!? I want to live my life on a set like this! I'm looking into having the lightbox floor installed in my house tomorrow. Plus Gin has the best 90's hair. It's almost 80's hair...but classier and in much better condition. I can't help but wax sentimental when I watch it. It's like I'm back in my bedroom in Lubbock, Texas, huffing and puffing and doing A-Steps in a little workout area I've carved out between my daybed and dresser. Good times.