Sand Pail List: Sunday Night Television

Sundays are typically awful.

Alright, that's being a little dramatic, we'll admit.

We get to sleep late, enjoy a real breakfast, read the paper and watch a rerun of yesterday's Soup - all without changing into anything more formal than a pair of worn-in jeans and a grayed and frayed Gonzaga or Providence t-shirt. It's not that bad of a deal.

Still, despite the relaxing, do-nothing nature of the Day of Rest, Sundays weigh quite heavily on us.

Each Sunday minute is inching closer and more quickly toward Monday. And each lazy Sunday we spend together doing a lot of nothing is one less that we have completely to ourselves. Once we have kids, they'll be no more relaxing Sundays. No more do-nothing Sundays. No more late mornings. And there is absolutely no way that the Soup will win out over Blue's Clues or Dora or whatever show kids will be watching in a few years.

But we'll also have to say goodbye to our normal Sunday evening routine: three hours of Emmy-winning television. Mad Men, Dexter, Entourage, the Tudors, Flight of the Conchords, True Blood and a half dozen other profanity-laced and "Rated M" dramas make regular Sunday evening visits to the Raia home.

But let's be realistic, Johnny Drama's outbursts and Sookie Stackhouse's promiscuity can't be the ambient noise that helps settle our future kids to sleep. Nor will we be able to dedicate three hours to thoughtless lethargy that leaves us sprawled out on the couch watching Don Draper be Don Draper.

So we're getting these shows in while we can.

Don't stress, though. We won't become completely out of touch - TV on DVD, DirecTV DVR and a new TV in the bedroom will become one of the most important facets of our future lives.

Sand Pail List: The Weekday Hangover

Ahh. Staying out until 11pm used to be easy. When we were in college, it was the norm - even with an early class schedule. Something about dive bars and cheap beer made the mornings easier. But after graduation and the reality of actual responsibility, if we're not laying on the couch watching DVR-ed Dexter by 10:30, we're living in fear of the next morning.

Still, every once in a while, a late night out during the week with friends we don't see often enough is the prescription we need, even if it means a self-prescribed dose of Tylenol, Gatorade and greasy McDonald's breakfast in the morning. And that's what happened last week when we decided to relive college with about 40-50 other young Providence College alums.

Providence College is your typical small, New England drinking school with a Catholic problem. It's a small campus - smaller than several high school campuses in the Washington area. And an even smaller student population - just over 4,000. Despite the size, PC shared a tailor-made zip code with seven bars, four "packies," and three Dunkin Donuts (four, if you had a car or were willing to walk an extra two blocks). So when we heard the alumni club was throwing a "Welcome to DC" happy hour at Bar Louie near the Verizon Center, we were all about it.

Happy hour turned into happy hours very quickly - especially after running into a good number of people we haven't seen since leaving the dive bars along Admiral Street. Old stories we retold and others were embellished. We met friends' wives and husbands and talked with casual acquaintances about their jobs and apartments. It was a trip back five years, to a time when just walking into a bar (or a classroom or cafeteria) made you part of a larger community.

That's what we remember about Providence. We all had something in common. We all had shared experiences, even if we didn't know the people we were sharing them with.

Despite the pulsing headache, these nights are important because they're about more than unwinding with a few drinks and a cold buffet. Since leaving college, these nights are few and far between - and, for a young married couple, they're an endangered species, making the next morning a scar we wore proudly.

So, there it is, a Sand Pail item crossed off. But still an item, nonetheless, we hope we can scratch off again.

The Sand Pail List

Forget the bucket list. We're at least 50 years from that one. But like our elders, we're facing a certain deadline.

When we got married, I went from zero nieces and nephews to seven in under an hour. Until then, kids - specifically infants, toddlers and preschoolers - were always memories of my last couple of years of middle school. Actually, there's a funny story about my younger brother Chris at age 5 accepting the fate that he'd have to attend Gonzaga because I chose it over Prep. But that's not the point...

I'm the oldest child in my family - the first to do things. Kristin's the youngest and her siblings are 12-18 years older than we are. In many ways, Kristin grew up with in-laws and has been an aunt since well before we started dating.

Looking back, it's kind of funny to see the stages I went through in Sarah's eyes (our oldest niece).

First, I was Kristin's "friend" Mike. Then I was accepted as her boyfriend. By the time we got engaged, Sarah referred to me as "soon-to-be Uncle Mike" and since then it's been a regular back and forth between "Mike" and "Uncle Mike."

But it's different with the younger kids. Kristin's sister Maureen and her husband Billy had Will shortly after we graduated from college. Kristin was living down here in Maryland by then, so Will's grown up with me in the picture. I bring Will up because the last several times we've visited New York, we've stayed at Maureen and Billy's and I've had the opportunity to see what's it's like to hang out with kids who look up to you (and at you - which is a pretty big deal when you're vertically challenged as I am) having known you their entire life. It's kind of like being an older brother, but not really.

So, to the point of this post...

While hanging out with our nieces and nephews, Kristin's siblings have joked about how kids take over lives - a rewarding sacrifice, I can only imagine. Her brother Sean put it best last Christmas when I mentioned that I wanted a Wii for my birthday: "That's my Wii. That's my 47 inch flat panel. That's my Jets season ticket package," he said, pointing to each of his three daughters.

Kristin and I look forward to having our own kids. But, we're 26. We still like the spontaneity of being in our mid-20s.

So, we came up with the idea of the "sand pail list" - a bucket list for married twentysomethings. These are things we want to before we have kids. Places we want to visit; concerts; parties; drinks... We'll roll out the list over the next several weeks and check them off (with full updates) along the way.

Stay tuned.