Lost Connection

Since we got married, we have not had cable or satellite television in our house. At first it was because we could not afford it. Now it is out of choice. We discovered that without cable or satellite we spent more time reading, talking with each other, taking care of things around the house, pursuing hobbies, and learning new things.


As of today we are down to one channel, NBC. All of the others switched over to digital. (There were not that many others....maybe three.) We have not yet bought the box we need to receive digital broadcasts. I assume we probably will at some point, but we are not in a hurry to get it. During a typical week we watch a couple Veggie Tales videos with our daughter and perhaps some cartoons or a woodworking show on Saturdays. Occasionally we will watch a movie or episode on dvd. (We do have a pretty good collection of vhs and dvds, mostly from the $5 bin at Wal-Mart.) We usually follow sports on the internet or radio.

So what do we do for fun you ask? (I know you are dying to know.) We listen to music and talk shows on the radio. We read books, currently most of them are on the founding fathers and the constitution. We read message boards and watch videos on the internet pertaining to our hobbies (astronomy, woodworking, cooking, cars, shooting, gardening, sewing, education, etc.) We take care of things that need to be done around the house. We play with our daughter. We talk about current events, our hobbies, things we would like to do, parenting, goals, etc. Often after our daughter has gone to bed we will work on our woodworking projects.

Just to make sure I do not give you the wrong impression, I do not have anything against television. However, I do think that reality tv shows tell us something about the culture that we are living in: When people would rather sit and watch someone else live their life as opposed to living their own lives, we are getting very dangerously close to Farenheit 451.