I don’t watch a lot of television.

Well, OK, scratch that. I watch a lot of terrible television, mostly true crime documentaries, televised sporting events and reality shows. (Currently alllllll about “Who the Bleep Did I Marry?” on Investigation Discovery, because I could totally sympathize with marrying a really nice guy who turns out to be wanted in four states for murder, but I digress …)

So, tonight, I’m watching “Jeopardy” and for the first time today feeling mentally superior to the plate of mashed potatoes in front of me, and they cut the show. For Jim Tressel. To be, well, Jim Tressel.

I would so not have wanted to be the person working the night news phone at Channel 9 tonight. If there was one thing I learned during my years of sharing a newsroom with a television station, it’s that old people get really, really upset if you preempt their television shows — their game shows, their “stories,” you name it.

So, as I was about to wager the $1.38 I had in my coat pocket against my sister for Final Jeopardy, they cut over to the Ohio State press conference, and in a flash, it was all over. No competition. No Final Jeopardy. Just Jim Tressel making it sound like his upstanding band of Boy Scouts would write on a blackboard 100 times “I will not sell my national championship ring for a barbed wire tattoo.”

In my mind, I saw the phones at WTOV lighting up … Some poor assignment editor or news producer hearing the night news phone ring and ring and ring. Someone from Dillonvale calling to order them to get that “no good sumbitch” off their TV in time for “Wheel of Fortune.” And then another guy from Martins Ferry wanting to pitch to the sports department his take on all of this, oh, and will this be over in time for “Wheel”? A band of rogue misfits from Good Shepherd in Wheeling calling to demand Pat Sajak be put back on the screen because, dammit, “Wheel of Fortune” is on at 7:30 p.m. every night!

I can’t recall ever being upset about the TV cutting out on a show … the closest I came was when I totally believed my then-husband had accidentally hit the remote during the series finale of “The Sopranos,” which, as it turns out, so did the rest of America.

I’m tired. You can tell I’m tired, can’t you? I’m not tired in the way that I need more sleep at night, but I’m just … tired. Tonight, on my drive to my sister’s place, I told Known Associate that I’m just exhausted, which makes me a little salty. I’m not sleepy. I’m exhausted. I’m incredibly busy, I’m working at least half of the weekend, I travel a good bit. (Side note: Is it wrong that my sister’s watching “The Biggest Loser” and I may go in and grab the last Belgian Brownie Bite? That just feels wrong …)

I’m starting to feel like an 82-year-old who just sat down with some Sanka to watch “The Price Is Right” and now you’re cutting over to a breaking news update about cholera in fruit bats.

Maybe it’s on the OnDemand …

How Sunday night is playing, thus far, at my house:

“I can’t believe you just voluntarily put this television on ‘Jersey Shore.’”

Though, I don’t suppose I can judge. I subjected Known Associate to an afternoon a “Operation Repo.”

It’s been a relatively eventful couple of weeks. First on this list:

Say hello to my nephew. He showed up on Thursday. He’s so friggin’ cute. I can barely stand it. He’s healthy and happy and loves his mother very much. He only cried once when I held him. I think it’s because his feet were cold. I get pissed when my feet are cold, so I’m cool with that.

The two weeks before he came were a blur … I had my first real test at work. Let me assure you, you haven’t lived until you do an emergency clothing purchase at a Cabela’s after you’ve had one bite of Applebee’s French onion soup and spend the next seven hours on your feet in the middle of nowhere. When you finally put your head to the pillow, and you’re still happy you made this choice, you forget about how tired you are.

And, then there’s this bronchitis that won’t go away. I’ve just decided it’s pleurisy because that sounds far more exotic than “I can’t shake bronchitis.”

But, this weekend has been relatively normal. I woke up Saturday morning with this genius idea to make something in a crock pot so I could spend the maximum amount of time being an absolutely lazy bastard on the couch. I went downstairs to the basement where the majority of my stuff lives and opened a box labeled “kitchen appliances.” The crock pot wasn’t in there.

With a heavy sigh and a case of the “f-ckits,” I went down the hill and bought a new crock pot. The $34.88 I spent on the crock pot was far less expensive than the aggravation of opening a bunch of boxes from Maryland I didn’t pack and don’t care to open.

Here was the end result:

Food. Coma. And took relatively little time and effort.

I’m old, man. Old. When my bang-up awesome weekend includes going to buy a crock pot and making meatball sandwiches, I may as well hand in my “I still have a life” card. Not that I mind, really. I guess I’m 32. This day was coming, no matter how much I thought I could stop it. We didn’t leave the house all freaking weekend. Slackers.

Kind of bummed I won’t be going to D.C. this coming weekend for Shamrockfest, too. Some work obligations have me tethered to the area and I won’t get a chance to actually get rained on but keep dry feet.

Oh, adulthood. You sure are. But I’m OK with you about 90 percent of the time.

You know, for two and a half years, I lived every day breathing in enough pollution to kill people and never got sick.

I move home … and cannot stop being sick.

This one, fortunately, seems to be content to keep itself lodged solidly in my chest. No sexy Bea Arthur voice. Just a lot of coughing. A lot.

Boo.

Dear Dad,

While I enjoyed the living hell out of this song when I was four years old and you’d play the record over and over again, it’s totally breaking my balls for this to play over and over and over and over again in my head while I’m in this little hamlet in the Southern Tier of New York.

Love,

Me

… and while I’m thinking of it, who knew John Oates was so multifaceted?

Holland Oates … and …

… the lead singer of the Oak Ridge Boys.

Hrm. Hadn’t really thought of this before. I’m actually impressed.

Greetings from the road. It’s been a while since I’ve rapped at ya (God, I love you, Jim Anchower …), but thing are going awesomely.

Last week, I flew halfway across the country and back in a day. I’d say things are going pretty well, eh? Tonight, I’m in upstate New York. I spent about six hours in the car today driving from my office to the hotel, and I have to say … Interstate 86, you’re looking a lot more rough than you did the last time we hung out. Jeeeeez.

AnywowI’mstillwatchingStorageWars … Life, Version 3.0 has been everything it’s cracked up to be and more. I celebrated my 32nd birthday last week with family and friends, I spent Valentine’s Day with my sister and my soon-to-arrive nephew, I joined a gym near my office (no, seriously! Stop laughing! I’m serious!!). All of those things I missed when I lived and worked in Washington.

So, here I sit in a nondescript hotel room off the interstate in upstate New York, trying to make myself tired for my early day. Bad television on in the room, a phone pressed to my ear to talk. Aaaaaaand hold the phone for this quote of the day …

“Every now and then, I like to give them bottled water just to be an asshole.”

That’s Known Associate, speaking about cat management. Well, at least I know when I’m out on the road for days at a time, Walter and Inky are sipping Evian.

Lord …

But, in total, I’m seeing and doing a lot of cool things lately, and it’s rare I have two similar weeks. It appeals to me, really. My nomadic tendencies like to know that when I wake up in the morning, I may have a totally different day than I anticipated. Keeps me from getting in a routine, and that’s the way I prefer it.

Though, I do miss my own bed. If there’s one thing being a road warrior has taught me, it’s to appreciate my own bed. My own shower. My own couch. To appreciate home, really.

Unless I start scoring jacuzzi suites. Then all bets are off. I can be bought.

So, as promised, the aforementioned ham. This was living in the bottom drawer of the fridge and when I woke up on Sunday morning, it seemed like a delicious and ambitious idea to coat this thing in something and bake it for a few hours while we watched football and I got ready to come back north for my second week of Life, Version 3.0.

I stared at the plastic-wrapped package for a little bit before I could decide what to do, and then consulted my favorite cookbook, also known as “Mom.” She told me how she made the ham at Christmas, and with a few minor adjustments, I knew we could pull this off.

Protip: Even if you’re doing this as a team project (and I was; Known Associate is a fantastic kitchen partner and a huge help), making a delicious ham can be pretty messy. It involved the vacuum cleaner, paper towels and water, and I’m pretty sure there was brown sugar left on every surface of the kitchen. I also got my sweatshirt vacuumed, but that’s another story.

But, basically, here’s how our ham rolled:

I coated the ham in a layer of honey. I could take honey or leave it, but Known Associate is a huge fan of honey and would probably drink it out of the bottle if the urge hit him. So, my paws are covered in honey and then we got a brilliant idea that since it was already coated in honey, may as well throw some maple syrup on it, too. (This was probably the only time in my life I approved of a Cracker Barrel-themed substance being used in food consumption.) Once that layer was complete, the person with clean hands shook some cayenne pepper over the gooey surface and then I packed it in a layer of brown sugar. And, well, in case that wasn’t enough carby goodness, we coated the brown sugar with a drizzle of pineapple juice (because everybody loves using basters and making artificial insemination jokes) and then some pineapple slices and some more cayenne pepper.

Three hours later, delicious ham.

And, likely, enough ham to feed everybody in the neighborhood. I brought enough ham to my parents to last weeks, and I didn’t take a huge portion. Maybe 12 pounds is a little two much ham for a two-person household, but I really wanted to experiment and see how solid I was at making ham.

And it gives me a chance to use this:

It really was a pretty perfect way to wrap my first week back home as a repatriated West Virginian. I’ve been commuting by car to my office every day, and it’s still less time than I spent on public transit. It gives me an hour and a half each morning to listen to local talk radio and think about my day. The drive home gives me a great window to catch up on phone calls.

Maybe the thought of that kind of daily slog will weigh on me eventually, but right now, I’m just embracing every part of it. And Sheetz. Embracing it, and Sheetz. God, Sheetz. I missed you, and there you are, just two miles from my office. I haven’t even eaten anything from you, but you’re there for me when I need you.

I talked to The Original Paige on the drive home tonight and told her that at no point have I had even a minute of regretting this decision. And while I won’t talk specifics about what I do and who I do it for here, all I will say is last Friday, I had a day at work unlike any day at work I’ve ever had, and I loved every single minute of it. I smiled from ear to ear and couldn’t wait to call my parents and tell them what I’d done that day.

It just felt right. When that Friday rolled into a very laid-back Saturday spent with college basketball and some new friends, I realized how much I’d missed that part of my life while I lived in Maryland. I wasn’t able (timewise, or financially, really) to have that kind of weekend over there.

And, I mean, ham, y’all. Ham.

I’d planned a post last night about my first week back, but got to Mom and Dad’s a little late so just watched “Storage Wars” and called it a night.

I do need to post ham pictures. That’s right. Ham. How does one cap her first weekend in West Virginia? Making a ham.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

This is Inky about two hours into her incarceration on Saturday. By this point, she’d exhausted most appeals and asked me if she could file a grievance with her union representative. I denied.

Not that I have to tell anybody who’s been through it, but even when you hire movers, moving just sucks. Sure, it was pretty awesome to have three guys come in and pack all of my stuff and carry it down three flights of stairs. Saved me a lot of time and aggravation.

But when the movers left and there were the aforementioned and predicted 50 bags of debris to take the Dumpster, everything sort of went to hell.

(That is NOT what was left behind in my apartment. That was two and a half years of my newspapering career in Washington in a single box. I was proud.)

No matter how strong a friendship you have with someone, that relationship will be tested if they help you move. And if they bring a vehicle incapable of transporting larger amounts of boxes and trash. And if you have to go to Home Depot with them to rent a truck for an hour to haul the garbage. And they have to drive it to the back of your apartment complex to unload the trash while you carry the rest of your stuff and cats to the car.

So, really, thank you for not killing me on Saturday, Known Associate. I saw it cross your mind a couple of times, but I think after our peace offering of Chick-fil-A in a Hagerstown parking lot, we were all good.

We got to the house around 11 on Saturday night, and by that time, I think both of us hurt from top to bottom. I carried Inky and Walter into the house while Milton and Rose were sequestered in the basement. I opened their carriers … and again, things went to hell.

Walter bounded out and sniffed around and seemed to be intrigued by his new surroundings. He ventured down the hallway and sniffed out the guest bedroom and a couple of other rooms. He checked out the laundry room. The living room. Hissed at Rose. Went to sleep on my sweatshirt.

Inky is still hiding under beds after spending 12 hours hiding behind a toilet. (Which sounds suspiciously like the period of time after my divorce, but I digress …) I’m hopeful by this weekend, she’ll at least be checking out other areas of the house.

The unloading of goods on Sunday was relatively easy, save for that trip to Home Depot to buy salt for the driveway, because why would someone with an inclined driveway ever have driveway salt? Pfft. It took them a few hours, and then I promptly curled up under a blanket on the couch and slept for hours.

It felt good to be home. Really, really good.

I’m still getting things situated, but I’m happy and excited to start working tomorrow. … Just in time for six inches of snow.

You would do this to me, Metro. You just would.

That’s my nephew in the photo above. I mean, it’s an ultrasound of my nephew. He’s still floating around in my sister’s womb, even though the little rascal has been trying for weeks to escape.

This morning, she posted that pic on Facebook, which led me to post in response:

“I’m sorry I’m such a dick. I have no idea what I’m looking at. Where’s his head?”

My sister, who is a saint in her ability to answer my primitive and often stupid questions about the process of childbirth with a great sense of humor, replied, “You’re looking at the front of his face. Over to the right the two dark holes are his eyes, then his nose and mouth. Over to the left are his hands up by his face. LOL.”

I read her comment, and then looked at the photo. Went back to her comment. Went back to the photo. Comment. Photo. Comment. Photo. I tilted my head to the side, and stared at the black-and-white scan of a human life and crinkled my nose a little.

I typed: “I see a panda. Or maybe a doorknob. I think if I turn my head to the side, I can kind of see a baby. I just want to see him in person.”

I’ll spare you the details of what else you can supposedly see in this picture or other pictures that weren’t shared on Facebook. Wooooof.

Thanks to the fine folks at DCBlogs.com for featuring my post on how I’m scared to death that when the movers come, they’re going to run screaming out of the apartment.

Tick-tock, kids. It’s coming faster than I thought it would.