I discovered the pleasures of this ritual last football season, my first without romantic complications. I get up at 7am and, via the Internet, tune into Pittsburgh sports radio for three hours of Steelers talk. I bake while I listen. Yesterday, I made wheat bread, and I pulled pizza dough out of the fridge and chopped ingredients while listening to my fellow fans. At 9:40, the pizza slid on to the stone. At 10am, I tune into the televised game and ratchet the sound way down so that I can listen to the local announcers instead, and then I munch on whatever food I had just prepared. Including the post-game wrap up show, it's a glorious eight hours of me-time. And it's over by 3pm, so I still have considerable day left for them-time.
When I was back east, I had no understanding of how wonderful it is to watch sports on the west coast. Sure, I knew that 1pm football games started at 10am there, and that sounded weird and wrong, but now I know better. My games end by 1pm. There's a whole day remaining. Baseball games and Monday Night Football wrap up promptly by 11pm, so they don't cut short your night's sleep. Bliss.