We're Easily (Inexpensively) Entertained

My wife and I don't have TV. No cable, satellite, antennae, rabbit ears -- nothing. And we don't miss it.

Our old school, squarish set (well into its teenage years) is simply hooked up to a DVD player. Periodically, we also connect it to the Nintendo 64 we borrowed from my brother. (Shhh! We think he's forgotten about it.)

Naturally, not having TV saves us considerable monthly expense. It also prevents us from developing mindless addictions to television shows of dubious quality and value. (On a related note, if you still burn away your evening hours watching the news on TV when you could take fifteen seconds to find better, more-relevant information on any one of billions of Internet news sites, I need you to explain something to me: why?)

That said, I must confess we're hooked on several shows, namely "The Office," "How I Met Your Mother," and the ever-so-awesome-and-incredibly-mind-bending "Lost". These have ended for the season, of course, but while they were on air, Heather and I were online...at NBC.com, CBS.com, and ABC.com (not to mention Hulu.com). That's right folks -- in case you haven't heard, most of your favorite shows are available for free on the internet, to watch whenever you please. It's glorious (even if it means we're watching our shows on a 12" laptop screen).

And that is the story of Heather and Mike without TV.

Now we face a new challenge: the evil Comcast Corp. is poised to increase the cost of our Internet service from $20 to something approaching $60, which is perverse and unacceptable. So, by the end of the week, we'll have either successfully negotiated a sensible rate, or forgone home Internet access as well. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.