The Glory of the DVD Season

This is my favorite time of year. Not because of leaves changing colors, not because of the temperature, and certainly not because of the freaky orange ladybugs that swarm everywhere without fail.

Every year, starting in September, all the television series that I love release their previous seasons on DVD. Fringe, Criminal Minds, House, and Chuck, all the shows I watch, all out on DVD at once.

So often, on days when I'm too tired to run around all over the place, I end up sitting and knitting. I love it. It's the best way to spend a weeknight. Most evenings, though, I only get PBS's South Bend Parks and Recreation program for hours on end (or Dinner and a Book) and it's awful. So I end up watching DVDs. Ages ago, before I started on my DVD season kick (House, season one, during my senior year of college), I would watch A&E's Pride and Prejudice (the 6+ hour one) over and over because I could stop and start at any point because I knew the story so well. It allowed me to watch TV for the short bursts my attention span allows.

Television, for the most part, is boring for me. I can't usually sit all the way through a movie because it means I sit still, staring at a television screen, for too long. I watch those at the movies or at a friend's house. I know this makes me sound ADD, but television turns off your brain and mine likes to keep going. I have about an hour time limit to my TV attentiveness. So if I watch movies, I have to be doing something else at the same time to keep myself from falling asleep or talking to the person next to me.

There are rare exceptions.

But for the most part, I like to turn on something, eat my dinner, and turn it off. Or, I'll knit for an hour or so, watching TV. Then I go and read.

There is nothing on my television at home worth watching except for the previously mentioned series. So once a year, I get to buy them all, go home, and have a little party.

I get those fancy milk chocolate chip cookies and I sit down and watch the best of the year. Then I go back through the series a little at a time until I have caught up with the new episodes, and that's when the fun stops.

Right now, the fun has just started.