Out with the Old

There's something about inertia which combined with a distaste for waste and a certain amount of disinterest in keeping up with Every. Single. New. Technology that has left me well into the twenty-first century with televisions that are dinosaurs. Big, old, fat.

They get the job done but the truth is that my demands are piddling. I don't watch sports, I don't watch reality shows and except for a couple of shows on a couple of cable channels now and again (which invariably end up on Netflix anyway or are available somewhere or another on the internet if not), most of what I watch that is not on Netflix is just broadcast TV, the erstwhile completely free to everyone no matter what TV they had channels. There have been periods in which Something Happened and I'd miraculously and unexpectedly have access to more than just Basic Cable (which is broadcast TV plus a bunch of religious channels), but the cost of this service has always seemed ridiculously disproportionate, but since broadcast has been happening in HD and my TVs are most definitely not HD, I've continued to pay the cable company for the privilege of watching free TV.

So the cable company has decided to do something or another which will require their subscribers to have a piece of equipment for each TV in order to receive any sort of picture (and sound, I suppose) which they'll let us use for two years for nothing and then no doubt they'll start gouging and I'm somehow just not in the mood and so I Did Something About It.

I bought a slim, trim, light, twenty-first century TV and an antenna and even though my main TV is in the basement I get more channels than with Basic Cable AND now I can watch stuff online on my lovely screen and I am SO cancelling cable as soon as I hit the "Publish" button.

No doubt my kids still think I'm a hopeless dinosaur but they're no longer five years old and easily impressed so that's not even part of the equation; I feel pretty youthful!

And then those organizations that will come to your house and pick up old clothes and whatnot because apparently they know we're too lazy to pack it up and take it to Goodwill ourselves? I felt kinda bad that I've ignored so many of their emails about when they'll be in the area so I gave in and made a date which of course means I have to collect things to give them and even though I'm not the worst packrat I know there's always stuff that you don't use but think you will even as a part of you knows you won't and you have to keep it around until even you can't ignore the fact that these things are unwanted and unloved in this house and now I feel lighter, fresher, younger, hipper because they are getting some extremely large boxes of stuff and there are areas of floor in my basement that are once again clear and what's more I made some executive decisions about things left behind by children who no longer live here (well, one child) and who are no longer small children so I have shelves that are empty (just small ones) and let me tell you that even though I barely finished any beading this weekend and even though I essentially haven't done any knitting since September and my left hand shows absolutely no sign of allowing me to do so in the foreseeable future, I feel overall pretty good.

Man, I love run-on sentences!

Now all I need to do is figure out how to get an extremely heavy TV out of my basement. And then figure out where to take it once it's at ground level. I don't think I could even make it palatable to the craigslist audience for free but it's worth a shot.

And I guess with the beadwork it's nothing all that new either though I have to say I enjoy making this one, even though it's hardly an instant gratification project. I'll be teaching for a few days at Studio Beads in Chicagoland in April, and I'm working on samples, the one above being the first. While I wouldn't have naturally gravitated towards those colours for myself, turns out I LOVE THEM. Who knew.

And kumihimo with size elevens is still happening.