We’re in winter-bonding mode these days. Too cold to go out, we’re spending winter evenings in our newly arranged* pint-sized living room watching television. The green leather couch is the most coveted spot, obviously. Next is the big red ultra-suede red chair. After that it’s the cool vintage chrome chair we bought at a stoop sale 15 years ago for $2.50. We had vintage style cushions made for it at "Economy Foam" on East Houston Street (black vinyl with red piping).

A very wholesome family scene I might add.

This is the family that banished television in 2000. Hepcat couldn’t take it anymore — the noise, the distraction, the destruction of the juvenile mind. So he cut the cord. Literally and put one set in the basement. We had another television that we used for video rentals, which didn’t have an antenna or cable. So without cable, the TV was basically useless as a television.

Since Christmas, the television is BACK. I’m not sure why. Teen Spirit wanted to watch "House." Then OSFO and I started watching "The O.C." on Thursay nights. Saturday morning cartoons meant Hepcat and I could sleep late again and…

The next thing you know, we’re watching "American Idol" on Tuesday AND Wednesday. We balance that with regular viewings of "Bleak House" on Masterpiece Theater on Sunday nights with Gillian Armstrong (of the X-Files). It’s an incredible adaption of the great Dickens’s masterpiece, by the way.

It’s interesting to be part of the culture again via the television. We were real losers in the "water cooler" conversation department for a few years there. The fact that we didn’t have offices to go to is another matter. We didn’t see  "Sex and the City," "The Sopranos," "American Idol," and more. We’d attach the hidden antenna on for presidential debates, conventions, and the Oscars. But we also missed a lot.

Since last week we’ve been glued to the winter Olympics. Hepcat loves the downhill racers, OSFO is into the skaters and we all enjoy the speed skaters.

So mid-February, our living room is the place to be. Last night, after the Olympics, we turned to the atrocious and lusciously 1970’s Barbara Streisand version of "A Star is Born." That said, I must put in a good word for Kris Kristopherson’s performance. Teen Spirit, IM-ing with his laptop in his lap on the red chair, thought the film was pretty awful.

After Barbara’s wreck of "A Star is Born" channel 13 showed the original, original version written by Dorothy Parker with Janet Gaynor (made before the Judy Garland version). It was wonderful. But I was too exhausted to make it past the part where the Esther character meets Norman Maine…

It was 1:15 and I was very, very sleepy from a night in front of the television.

*The newly arranged living room: We walled off one third of the room for Hepcat’s desk, his computer, photography, and digital printing equipment. Now he has an at-home office (and an office in Manhattan) and his stuff is out of sight. The living room is smaller by one third and much, much cozier and cleaner.