My News Vacation

I am on day 4 of my news detoxification and I'm very hungry, this is quite the challenge. I find myself constantly thinking "is this news?"...for example, is the weather news? Am I allowed to look up what the weather will be this week, I miss knowing the 5 day outlook. I had no idea it was going to be somewhat overcast today, everyday is a surprise. Also, is the Tonight Show considered news? I was watching Leno last night and he was making jokes of the most recent headlines, some of which I had no idea what he was talking about...it made me think, do some people only get their news from watching Leno? I hope not.

I must confess that I did watch a segment on 60 Minutes on Sunday at my parents house. Now just because I am torturing myself with a news vacation, I can't really push that on others. My parents however were nice enough to indulge me and turn the channel to something less entertaining....for a minute. My dad, like myself is a fan of the news and as we were sitting at the dinner table I could tell that he was thinking "I need to change the channel back to 60 Minutes, what if I am missing something?" So my dads rationalization for turning the channel back to 60 Minutes was that they were doing a segment on Bobby Jindal (Governor of Louisiana, for those of you that don't know) and that I may see a former co-worker of mine who now works for the Governor. Secretly I really wanted to watch the segment as I have met Bobby Jindal a number of times when I worked in DC and he is a very smart and lovely man...however I didn't expect to see my former co-worker on the segment. So...I let my dad change the channel back and we watched the segment, and I got 4 or so minutes of "news" and it was great. AND, my co-worker WAS on the segment, for only a brief few seconds, but I was really glad that I saw him on there. When the segment was over my dad said "Now aren't you glad you watched that?"..yes I was. Yes dad, you were right again.

It is weird not knowing what the headlines are of the day, I feel like I am not "in the know" crowd right now and I have a feeling it is only going to get worse as the week goes on.

To fill the no news void, I have caught up on all my tivo'd shows and don't really have a hard time finding something else to watch on tv during my normal news watching times. At work it is a little more difficult as I would regularly check DrudgeReport and all the major news network sites throughout the day, so I am constantly reminding myself "don't click on that link."