If You Think You're Having a Bad Day...

I haven't gotten much done this week because I'm deep in the middle of watching 24 Season Two from the library. I've had it on hold for several months, and it finally came in. Of course, 24 Season Three came in last week, so I watched some of that and then put it aside to come back to Season Two.

Anyway, that's what I've been doing this week. The show isn't terribly realistic, and most of the actors are not long on dramatic skill, but I do like Kiefer Sutherland, and this show has a hook like you wouldn't believe. I watched one episode, and I was sucked in, just because I had to see how it was going to end.

If you don't know, the pretense of 24 is that it depicts events in the life of Jack Bauer (Sutherland), a government agent who works with the elite Counter Terrorist Unit in Los Angeles. Events occur in real time, so that one episode encompasses one elapsed hour in the life of the characters. Hence, one season is one 24-hour day on the show.

If you're ever feeling like too many bad things have happened to you in a day, just watch this show. If you were Kim Bauer, Jack's daughter, here's what might have happened to you in the past 13 hours:

1. Boss walked into your bedroom of the house where you live as an au pair and saw you in your underwear.

2. Boss hit on you at breakfast.

3. Estranged dad came to visit you and asked to reconcile (your mom died a year ago and whenever you look at your dad, you think of her).

4. Boss came home, beat up wife, knocked over daughter, hit you, threatened to kill you.

5. Boss chased you down when you and his daughter fled the house in his wife's SUV, beat you with a crowbar, you had to abandon the SUV.

6. You and the daughter rode the bus to CTU headquarters to find your dad, only to be caught in the middle of a bomb explosion.

7. The daughter started seizing and was rushed to the emergency room.

8. The ER doctor accused you of injuring the child and called the police.

9. The dad showed up at the hospital and you called your boyfriend to come help you kidnap the daughter.

10. The dad confronted you, your BF, and the daughter in the parking lot, your BF karate chopped the dad and you escaped in the dad's Lexus.

11. The local sheriff pulled over the Lexus as you were driving out of LA to escape an imminent nuclear disaster. He opened the trunk when he spotted blood dripping from it, and you discovered your boss had killed his wife and put her in the trunk.

12. You and your BF are arrested for murder and kidnapping (not to mention car theft).

13. You cause a car crash while the police are transporting you and your BF back to LA, then you escape into the mountains only to be terrorized by a cougar and caught in an animal trap.

14. After nightfall, you are rescued by a kook who tries to trick you into staying with him in his bomb shelter by telling you the "big one" has gone off.

15. You escape from the kook, are hitchhiking with a nice lady to get out of town, and your dad calls you to say he is flying the nuclear bomb to the Mojave Desert so it doesn't harm LA, and he will be killed when the bomb detonates.

16. You see the nuclear explosion on the horizon and know your dad is dead. You get out of the car you're hitching in because you "need to be alone."

17. You get the owner of a closed liquor store to let you in to use the bathroom. A guy breaks in to buy food because he has to flee to the mountains to avoid the fallout, there's a struggle and the guy shoots the store owner with the gun the kook gave you for protection. The police show up, but the guy takes you hostage.

See, makes your day sound pretty tame, doesn't it?