Day 1

Thursday night, in preparation for the “deprivation,” I played as much my online video game distraction of choice, Counter-Strike, as I could stand until bedtime. I had to get my fix in because I was going to have 3 days off and no games allowed. I was going to be okay though. I’d just pretend that my electricity or cable was turned off. That was the plan. I went to bed my normal time, but knowing it was going to snow, I was eager to wake up early and enjoy the brisk day waiting on the snow to arrive. So I woke up around 8am, tried to act normal, sans TV and internet browsing. By 8:30am I was already pacing. No snow and bored. So I did the dishes, started on laundry. I looked and paced around the house trying not to notice all the other cleaning and packing that needed to be done. But all of that in complete silence! “Yeah, right,” I sarcastically thought to myself. I’ll do that after Monday. I literally found myself getting in a negative mood. So I got under the covers and went back to sleep. My only thought was that it was still early and I had a long time to go until bedtime.

Needing to have some sort of stimulation, I figured my parents would be the best bet. That turned out to be the best decision because I was able to use the rest of my day helping them with household projects and normal family conversation. And I got a free meal out of it! Grandpa needed the cows fed and my parents needed the living room rearranged in preparation for the holiday gatherings. My family was conscientious of the lack of TV-watching, so we were able to basically spend the day as a normal family and talked about things like a normal family does. It was actually fun. As for the drive to and from their house, not having radio would make some people go insane, but every now and then, I do enjoy the silence. The only problem was that I had this one song in my head all day—and I only really know a few words—so I kept humming the darn chorus over and over. Overall, the experience hasn’t been so bad. I did use the phone, but kept the conversations to a minimum, but that's how I normally use it anyway. I’m already planning to use the loophole for the Longhorns’ game Saturday night.