For many many years, I made fun of daytime television. Talks shows featuring trashy people? Bleh, it left me cold. And I never understood people who watched soap operas. Who cared about the silly stories and incestuous relationships between fake pretty people? Please. I was too busy during the day to get caughty up in their petty dalliances. And besides, my life, more often than not, is a soap.

But then last week was the drawn-out orientation from hell. And my daily schedule went something like this: Wake up early. Haul ass to whatever presentation I had to go to at 9AM. Return home around 10AM, change back into pajamas, turn on the TV, and pass out for three hours. Wake up just in time to see Days of our Lives start.

And because I would be too groggy to do anything else - like turn off the TV - I'd obviously have to watch the show while I got dressed to go to whatever presentation was that afternoon.

When I realised that I actually cared about their dramas, and ohmygod that chick dressed up as a nun was so mean to Shaun who obviously loved Belle and Belle didn't know that he was nearby and she almost slept with that guy with the AMAZING body, and as a matter of fact why do all the guys have AMAZING bodies and where can I get me some of that and why is Marlena on an island with that not-as-attractive guy but I'm sure he has an AMAZING body as well, wow, this is like 500 trashy romance novels compiled into one show! - well I knew that I had let things go too far. Why, I was only one step removed from actually watching Judge Judy and Maury Povich! I couldn't let that happen.

So I actually found myself attending extra orientation events and shopping classes I had no intention of taking, just to reassure myself that my brain hadn't atrophied into a mush of daytime soap operas. I needed to recultivate the intellectual snobbery that I was so proud of.

Thankfully, classes are starting today. And if I walk home slowly enough, I'll get back after Days is over and I'll be safe. And I'll forget that we have Tivo, because if I Tivo it it really will be the end of the world.

Now, if only I could avoid the siren call of iced chocolate on my walk home. Because really, five gazillion calories in liquid chocolate goodness do not lunch make.


P.S. Fun NY updates later. Did I happen to mention that it was quite a pleasant surprise to return to Cambridge late Sunday night, only to find out that all my professors had assigned reading for the first day of class. One class has over 60 pages of reading! Bastards. If I had wanted homework due the first day of class, I would have gone to law school, instead of merely sleeping with people who actually do.