Guilt-Free Pleasures

Hello, blogosphere! As you may have guessed, I took a long weekend off from blogging. I apologize for not announcing it, but I was sort of going with the flow. It was a bit of a guilty pleasure, I must admit, which in turn got me thinking about some other guilty pleasures.

Like watching Ghost Adventures. The Best Husband Ever cringes and rolls his eyes every time I load this up on Netflix -- and, I'll admit, he's not without reason. But for some reason I just love this show in all of its ridiculous stupidity. It's hilarious, and delivers just the right amount of creepy that I get covered in goosebumps while watching but then can go to bed without feeling freaked out. I don't know if any of the stuff these ghost hunters experience is real, but frankly I don't care. It's fun to watch and it makes me smile, so I'll continue to watch with only a little guilt. It won't kill that many brain cells, right?

Another semi-guilty pleasure of mine is reading young adult books. Now, this isn't too guilt-inducing because I actually would like to one day be a published YA author, so I can consider all of this indulgent reading "research." And, if you've never ventured into the YA section of the bookstore, I highly recommend it. I find better reads there more regularly than in the adult genres. Still, there are definitely fluffier YA books out there, and many of those have a supernatural theme since the advent of Harry Potter and the much less wonderful Twilight series. I was looking for a fun, light read, though, and this sub-genre delivered. I devoured nearly all of Rachel Hawkins' Hex Hall in a single elliptical session at the gym this week . . . and I liked it. Sure, it won't go down in history as a classic, but it certainly was fun to read. You can bet I'll be checking out the next books in the series when they are released . . . with a guilty smile.

Other not-so-guilty pleasures include an inexplicable enjoyment of the film The Man in the Iron Mask, cheesy musicals, Peeps candy, video games, t-shirts with silly and mildly inappropriate sayings, and taking compromising photos of our dogs.

Speaking of dogs, they have their own set of guilty pleasures (but probably don't feel all that bad about indulging). Look what I caught Cody doing after accidentally leaving the garage door ajar:

He is the new poster child (poster pup?) for gluttony. Yes, Cody does have his head stuck inside a bag of dog food. And I do mean stuck. After I caught him in the act of cleaning up the [thankfully] few kibbles left in the bag, he didn't know what to do. So he hung out in that compromising position until I stopped laughing, and then stayed there while I dashed upstairs to get my camera. It turns out that I need not have hurried.

Do you have any guilty pleasures? What are they, and do you receive any teasing about them? I think it's okay to have a few "guilty" pleasures. It makes life more fun, after all. Besides, what would I do without my Ghost Adventures?