"Cara Recommends...." - a series of tv shows that are pretty good.

Good evening, friends. I just got home from an attempt at running (a sorry one, I might add), and am now drinking some Sleepytime tea. I've seen billboards for it on buses and stuff, and it says something to the effect of "Brew some sleep." Not sure why I even bought it, because I sleep just fine without brewing Sleepytime tea, but it can't hurt.

The topic at hand is my current favourite tv shows, so let's get to it.

Dr. G: Medical Examiner. A really great show on the Discovery Health channel which features Dr. G examining bodies to figure out how the people died. It's super interesting as she goes through the steps to figure out what happened. She only does interesting deaths, not boring ones, like people dying of old age. My only beef with this show is that it could probably all be summed up in about 15 minutes, but they stretch it into an hour-long show (featuring 2 bodies) because there are all these "dramatizations" of her wearing her blood-splattered scrubs, making a Y-incision into the body. The Y-incision is ALWAYS the first incision. The cool part is when she can't figure anything out from the internal organs and she has to move to the cranial exam. This involves a drill cutting a hole into the skull to get to the brain. Neat!!

Mystery Diagnosis. In the same vein (pun intended) as Dr. G, this show features people who have odd diseases or conditions that no one can figure out. They all have harrowing stories of having gone to 20 or 30 doctors and no one being able to figure out their disease, and them almost dying before one doctor finally figured it out. The diseases are always really rare, and if you're a hypochondriac, you probably should stay away from this show.

Jon & Kate Plus 8. I love this family. The kids are so darn cute, and one of the twins even shares my name. Kate is so ridiculously bossy and Jon's always rolling his eyes, but they try to do cool activities with the kids. They recently moved into a new home, and got two new puppies.

Ace of Cakes. OHHHH man. If you haven't seen this Food Network gem, you are missing out. Chef Duff and his coworkers at Charm City Cakes (who are all hip cool people) make cakes for people. They make the coolest cakes EVER and are ridiculously creative. In one episode they made a cake version of Hogwarts for the Harry Potter premiere in Hollywood. Watching this show makes me so hungry for cake, and it makes me want to hang out with the Charm City Cakes people because they seem so fun.

Cash Cab. Ever seen this? It's a surprisingly entertaining little show, usually on the Discovery network, set in Toronto. It's just a guy driving a minivan-cab around, and when people get in, he tells them they're in the cash cab. From that point til they reach their destination, he asks them trivia questions, and then for every question, they win cash. On the last one I watched, two guys won almost $900 during their ride!! I'm constantly on the lookout for the cash cab but so far no luck. Best part about the cash cab is that when the passengers get the answer right, the inside ceiling of the cab lights up like a disco.

That's it - going to test out whether the Sleepytime tea has actually induced sleep.