I have yet to fully explore the labyrinthine mess of channels that make up our DirecTV lineup. In fact, as opposed to actually trying out some new programming or browsing through the pages upon pages of channels, i find myself coming back to the same six or seven channels. I'm watching much more soccer these days, not out of a burning desire to follow Ecuadorian football but because i know the channel numbers of Gol TV and Fox Soccer Channel. There's the ever present Cartoon Network, which has actually bummed me out lately because they show the same Family Guy and Futurama episodes at 8 and 11pm. I'm also wondering if perhaps the first season of the Venture Brothers was a self-contained story, precluding the possibility of any (highly warranted) additional seasons. As our premium channel lineup has decreased from "every HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, and Encore known to man" to just seven HBOs, i find myself watching fewer movies ... which isn't necessarily a bad thing as the ones i used to watch were flicks i'd seen on average 5-10 times. The History Channel has picked up my viewing slack. I spent a few hours on Sunday watching Barbarians, a series chronicling the exploits of history's most famed savages. The one on the Mongols was very good, even if it never mentioned the Great Wall of China. Maybe they left it out intentionally to make people like me feel smarter. Job well done.

The weekend was pretty lackluster ... i watched the Chelsea/AC Milan friendly, mostly boring except for two brilliant second half goals by Didier Drogba and Rui Costa. Matthew happened to be in NY and managed to make it to the match. V and i were also enlisted to help N and G move into their new place in Diamond Heights, paying off our moving debt. The moving itself wasn't too bad, but after a few hours on their cat Una's turf, i was again a raging bundle of sinuses. Like last weekend, only instead of inhaling lots of dust, the dust was replaced with cat dander. Eek. My histamine status is now once again mostly in order.