Work was mostly relaxed today, until the last couple hours of it. Usually that happens on Fridays, where the day will be pretty easy-going then BAM! I get hit with a bunch of calls and work. I expect that’ll happen tomorrow since I’m going to try to get out a little bit early. We’re heading to Rougemont to see the parents, Jerry and Rhonda Dotsey, and my sister Andra, her fiancee Josh Sawyer and their son, Jackson.

I talked to my dad a little bit today. He was telling me that Mom will be our riding on Saturday most of the day and that he’d appreciate some help in the barn this weekend. He needs to move around about 60 or so bales of hay to make way for a shipment coming in next week. “Sixty bales?” I scoffed! See, back in the day I would help unload tractor trailer loads of hay. That’s back when I was real skinny and had nice shoulders.

I finished shredding years’ worth of bills and such today. That shredder does a nice job. I took a few bags of paper (plus some cardboard, a few plastic bottles and some aluminum cans, but mostly the bags of paper) to the recylcing bins at Lowe’s Food.

Rob Peterson was sick tonight and Kristen Barriner had a lecture to go to so we cancelled small group tonight. Kristen said she wouldn’t have been able to reschedule anyway because of so much that’s going on with her having gotten back into school. So instead we watched TV tonight. It was a good night of TV. In fact, Thursday is shaping up to be a hell of a good night of television. There’s My Name is Earl, The Office, Smallville, Supernatural and CSI (and, for the millions out there who like it so much, Grey’s Anatomy).

Let’s talk for a second about the shows on this new CW station. CW is an amalgam of The WB and UPN. They’ve kept, and I’m glad they have, both Smallville and Supernatural. Smallville’s last season was up and down, but I think the start of this one was pretty good. It was sufficiently dark and had a pretty decent (but way too short) fight between a super-powered Lex Luthor and Clark Kent. Lex pounded him through a boulder then tossed him through a forest before flying up to him and telling him to “Kneel before Zod.” On top of all that, Clark is finally showing some interest in his buddy Chloe Sullivan, who I think had always deserved him a lot more than Lana Lang. But now Jimmy Olsen is in the picture (played by Aaron Ashmore, who I can only assume is Shawn Ashmore’s brother, because the two look almost exactly alike. Shawn played a bad guy in the first or second season of Smallville and also plays Iceman in the X-Men movies). Chloe mentioned a while back having hooked up with Jimmy Olsen. Anyway, tonight’s Smallville season premiere wasn’t perfect and fell back on a few crutches they tend to lean on, but I thought it was decent.

Then there’s Supernatural. I never heard much buzz about this show, but I’m really glad it’s back. It’s a show I don’t usually think about, but I really enjoy watching. I think the bothers, Sam and Dean, have a pretty good chemistry. The season premiere of Supernatural had a surprise ending that Amanda called, and I thought might happen but was hoping wouldn’t. It was a little touching.

Speaking of touching, I think I mentioned yesterday that Amanda and I started watching a 20/20 Barbara Walters interview with Terri Irwin, Steve Irwin’s widow. We finished watching that this evening over a spaghetti dinner.

Earl, I think, is getting better. The Office hasn’t been as laugh out loud funny, or not as much anyway, so far this season, but this episode did have some Jim and Michael moments, and I really like those.

I just saw that the South Park where Chef almost marries a succubus is about to come on. I love that one, mainly because Brandon Bartlett would always do some dialogue from that one quoting Chef’s dad. “I said ‘Well dammit monster!'”

Zach Dotsey