I hate tv

July 1997. That was the last time we had cable. For those of you with horrid math skills like mine, that was 10 years ago. For the last 10 years, we have accessed local tv stations using our rabbit ears atop (or beside or hanging off the edge) of our television. We basically get about 6 channels in well: nbc, abc, cbs, fox, pbs and whatever channel 53 is. Honestly, when it is on, it is usually tuned to pbs. Josh loves pbskids, and we tend to be fans of shows like "This Old House" and the occasional documentary. The other channels get used for finding out the weather and watching sports.

When our tv died earlier in the year, we refused to give in to the super-duper-flat-screen-hang-it-on-your-wall-because-it's-so-cool-and-everybody's-got-one Best Buy marketing ploy. We had the perfect excuse to give into those material desires -- our tv was dead! Here's why we didn't:

1) Those puppies aren't cheap, and when you are adopting, you don't spend money on fancy-schmancy gadgets.
2) We would have felt compelled to sign up for digital/cable/satellite/whatever. Let me tell ya, it's really hard to pay for something when you haven't paid for it for TEN YEARS!
3) We don't want to become tv junkies, which we probably would just to justify paying for the tv and the cable.

So M went out and replaced our dead tv with a super cheapo brand of tv that I had never heard of. Nothing flat about it. And to get pbs in we have to use the tuner in the vcr, so the tv is always set on channel 3 and we use the vcr to turn channels. We made this purchase knowing that the day will come when we will need to give in, break down, and join the digital world. If we didn't have a child in love with pbs, I would be tempted just to chuck the thing out the window and not have a tv at all.

But if I did that, then I wouldn't be able to watch Big Ten football. Oh wait. I CAN'T DO THAT ANYMORE!!! Why? Because they went and created something called The Big Ten Network and now they can't even get cable companies into agreement. Idiots. I will admit my first reaction was, "Omigod -- where do we sign up??" How can I not watch Buckeye football? I enjoy games from other conferences and schools, but they can't replace my Buckeyes and Big Ten games. But then I thought about it a little more. How many other people are panicking about losing their free access to Big Ten sports? How much money are they going to make by making us all pay to see the game? Why should they have all the power? Screw them. I'm turning on my radio. So far, it's still free.