Welcome to my living hell!

It was the best of times....it was the worst of times.

It was the best of times for my roommate, that's for sure. He has been so excited and been looking forward to September for as long as I can remember. All he kept saying was "September" over and over again, almost like a chant. I really didn't know what was so exciting about September, but hey I figure we've all got our own demons and September was his.

On Sunday I found out why he was so excited.....The Bears were playing, no not the shirtless overweight hairy guys that meet once a month to rub up against each other....The Bears as in the Chicago Bears....football.....did I lose you? You know, that game where they wear the big shoulder pads and tight pants and chase a little ball around.....ok, you're back on course.

I asked him, "Oh is this like a Preliminary Game" (trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about, and he said "Hell no, this is the first game of the season."

Football...already?!? Where did summer go? How did I miss it. He went onto explain that College Football was just getting started as well, and that's what he was really waiting for. On top of that is the fact that Major League Baseball is still going on every day of the week until the Super Series in October.

OMG - you know what that means? That means it's going to be sports sports sports all the time in the house for the next month. I guess I"m not going to be watching too much TV am I? It's times like this that I regret getting rid of cable. Well this and when you're sick from work and there's nothing but Court TV programs on...but that's the only time I regret getting rid of cable.

I guess I've got to load up my Netflix Queue with some Hitchcocks, Joan Crawfords and Rodgers & Hammerstein Musicals to tide me over until this month is over.

It was the best of times.....it was the worst of times.....

Cable is Getting Da Boot

Well, I've done it again, I got rid of Cable TV! It's rediculous the prices they charge, for what we truly watch.

We've been paying a little over $100 a month for TV and Internet. We have the basic TV package (although we do have a DVR and because of that we had to get the HDTV Package) and 5MBPS Broadband.

The final straw just came a few weeks ago....we got a lovely letter in the mail from RCN (disguised as Junk Mail, I might add) telling us that they're going "All Digital - for YOUR benefit" and the only thing you need to do is get a digital tuner box for every TV that you have in your house. They'll gladly send us the boxes at no charge and only then charge us "just" $4.00 a month per box.

Well the problem is, we've got Four TV's in our house....yes I know there are only two of us there, but I have a TV in my bedroom, The Roommate has the same, we have one in the TV Room and one in the Kitchen.

So on top of the $100+ we're paying per month, they now want to tack on an additional $12.00 per month, so with taxes, etc our bill will be over $120 per month.

"ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" I said to The Roommate - we're getting rid of Cable TV.

After I picked him up off the floor and applied a wet handtowel to his forehead I repeated myself and he slumped back in his chair and gave out a gasp, I thought I was going to have to call 9-1-1 and make a Fireman cum, instead I grabbed a paper bag and made him breath into it.

Before moving last year, I lived without cable for 5 years and didn't miss it at all. Surprisingly there are a lot of "off the air" channels in Chicago. The last time I counted there were upwards of 15 channels. Now granted, several of those are in a foreign language (but the Spanish channels typically have hot guys so I really don't care what they're saying), but we have all of the network channels, plus a few extras.

We're also downgrading our Broadband connection to 3MBPS DSL (which will probably be faster than the crappy 5MBPS that cable barely provided) and getting rid of our landline.

In all, we're going to be saving about about $115 a month between the two of us - hey that's a Broadway Show a month almost in savings.

Of course I won't know what's going on with "The Girls Next Door" anylonger, but I think I'll be able to cope!