Is There Life After Cable?

"We are paying HOW MUCH for our cable television?"

Somehow, I thought I was hearing Alex wrong when he said $260.00 a month. What? That cannot be right! Okay, he allowed that charge included our internet service. "Fine. Keep the internet service and cancel the cable."

We had started off with a little "promo" deal that gave us basic cable, a couple of movie channels and the "premium channel" of Showtime. (We need Showtime so we can watch "Dexter" and "Weeds" and a couple of other programs we like. I also watched the show "Gigolos" while Alex was traveling, but it really wasn't my favorite no matter what you may think.)

We may have been paying about $50 or $60 dollars a month for a time. Then the charges started creeping upward. A couple of years passed. When I really realized how much we were paying, I started nagging Alex to cancel the service.

This weekend, Alex finally complied. He walked into the Comcast offices and canceled our Cable service. They said fine and told him to bring in the equipment. He came home and boxed it all up (including the remote controls that our dog, Zoe, had eaten). He was told that he could not sign up for Cable under one of the "promotional" pricing schemes for a minimum of one month. Now, we not only do not have Cable, we do not have remotes, chewed on or not. The reality set in on me this morning when I flipped on the tv in the kitchen to catch some news. The local station programming had switched from news to "infomercials" by that time. I think we get a total of 5 television channels.

No longer will I be able to watch VHI for the videos. No longer can I turn on "ANTM" and watch the whole season in one long afternoon. I cannot watch CNN. I cannot watch much of anything. Well, that's fine of course. It gives me so much more time to do worthwhile things. Today I realized that my dogs Harry and Zoe are playing inappropriately. Harry has begun the very impolite practice of trying to mount Zoe's head. Where did he get that idea? Was it from a Cable show I had watched.

I can listen to music instead of watching Cable television. I can eat cookies and make artsy craftsy things and sell them on "Itsy" or whatever that site is. All right, I will probably just eat the cookies and watch my perverted dog because I don't have an artsy / craftsy bone in my entire body.

One channel I may get is the "Home Shopping Network". I can order very special things at very special prices just by picking up my phone with my credit card handy. I can also order the stuff that is advertised on the infomercials I guess.

I really had not planned on feeling deprived, but I do. I think I'm actually suffering from withdrawals. Still, we will not go back to the stupid Cable people and say "Go ahead and charge us whatever you want! Just turn our cable back on!" That's not happening.

At least it's not happening for the next 30 days.