Our TV is making us smarter!

This is the new TV that Brandon got for his birthday. It's a Vizio 37" LCD TV. He's been talking about buying a TV like this for years. (What is it with men and TVs?) He doesn't really even like watching TV that much. But, I guess if he is going to invest and hour or so to watch it, it better be an awesome TV. I gotta say, I never thought he'd actually do it. But, with birthday money coming in, he couldn't resist a kickin deal he found online. My husband is the single most amazing online deal finder that I know, and that all the people I know know. I don't know how he does it. I, personally, did not think that we needed this huge TV. But, I have to admit- it is pretty awesome. And the thing that is the most awesome about it is something that is brand new to us...High Definition.

Our High Definition TV is making us smarter. This TV has some sort of built in antenna that receives a High Definition signal on some stations sometimes, even though we don't have HD cable. (Brandon could explain it better, I'm sure.) The station that is in High Def 24 hours a day is PBS HD. That's right, there is an entire PBS station that is only broadcast in HD. And so...we watched PBS all weekend long. We set up the TV on Friday night and since then I think we've watched 6 PBS documentaries. That's way more TV than we would normally watch on a weekend. But, just like when we first got our TiVO and constantly thought "I wonder what TiVO is recording for us now", we think "I wonder what PBS is showing in High Def right now."

We watched a very dramatic documentary about a Boston fire chief named Damrell, and how he saved Boston from being completely demolished way back in the 1800s. We saw another one about a guy who is single-handedly trying to save several species of turtles from extinction. And finally, our favorite documentary of the weekend was "Ferrets". You may think this was another wildlife show, but no- this was a one hour documentary about people who own Ferrets as pets. If you have never seen the Christopher Guest mockumentary "Best in Show", you should see the real PBS documentary "Ferrets" first. Then, when you watch "Best in Show" you will laugh harder than ever. You might think that ferret owners have one or two ferrets at a time...you'd be wrong. Ferret people usually have up to 10 ferrets at a time. For these particular people, Ferrets are their entire lives. They take their ferrets to shows and have them judged. They display their ferrets ribbons and trophies in their special ferret rooms. And my personal favorite part of the documentary was when they dressed their ferrets up in tiny ferret costumes and took pictures of them. That's right, read it again if you want.



All in all, I think we learned from our documentary filled weekend that there are some people out there with some pretty intense feelings about ferrets.