Blessing in disguise

"I got some bad news today..." Mark had just gotten home from work, had hung up his coat, and walked into the kitchen where Claire and I were cooking when he said this. And before finishing his thought, he turned around and walked right back out. What's the big idea?!

It's been a rough week, so my first thought was something major: pay cuts at work, threats of job elimination, a huge heating bill, a family member with a terminal illness.

"Well don't say something like that and then walk away! What's the bad news?" I exclaimed when he walked back in a moment later. (What a stinker!)

It turns out that our cable provider is changing things up, and we will no longer be getting free cable channels beyond channel 28 (in other words, we'll no longer be getting any of the good ones.) He had stepped out to grab a flier for cable rates that I had just thrown into the recycling bin. Can you tell we've been having a rough week? We're somehow zombies, yet kind of on edge at the same time.

So this cable thing...we probably sound like whining jerks for complaining that our free cable is about to be taken away. It's kind of funny how it happened, though. A few years ago Mark found a really great deal on cable, an introductory rate for 6 months with no obligation to stick with it. So we signed up, knowing it was just going to be temporary (we were not ok with the cost increase afterwards, and agreed together that we would cancel it then.) It just so happened that the 6 months ended in March, and a few days before the actual day our service was to be terminated, we had a huge blizzard. We did our part and drove the cable box and remote back to the service provider. We both had long faces that day, having become hooked on the large selection of channels and the on-demand feature, not to mention the tv guide that allowed us to scroll through at our leisure. But that night after work Mark turned the tv on for some reason and the cable channels still worked.

The 5 feet of snow blanketing our yard, including the very spot the cable guy was supposed to access, must have been a pretty strong deterrent. Ok, it probably wasn't 5 feet, but it was really deep. At any rate, it's been a few years and we've been enjoying free cable ever since - minus the on-demand feature and the scrollable tv guide. But recently this provider has started converting to digital, so the channel numbers are changing; we lost the annoying tv guide channel a few months ago (the one where it scrolls by slowly on it's own on the bottom half of the screen, and the top half is occupied by American Idol Rewind or the Canadian celebrity makeover show). I felt guilty continuing to watch the stolen channels at first, but then justified it by the fact that we did our part, returning their components, and it wasn't our fault that they didn't do theirs by disconnecting the wires. Besides, most cable shows can be found online for free anyways, with less commercials to boot; we're doing the advertisers a favor by subjecting ourselves to more ads on tv. Right? Yeah, I don't really believe that, either. Flimsy excuse.

Over the last few years we've gotten busier and don't have as much time to watch tv, and like I mentioned, we can find virtually any show we want online. So I'm not too disappointed. Paying for cable just doesn't sound worth it at this point, and I'm actually starting to see that this is a good thing. No more parking in front of the tv before bed and flipping through the many channels just because we have them. No more wasting time waiting for something good to come on, or getting engrossed in something we wouldn't normally watch just because we're already in front of the tv. From now on, the content we see will be on purpose, shows we seek out because we want to see them, not because the last show ended and why not stick around for the next one.

It was fun while it lasted, but the party's over. Thanks for the good run, unknown Cable Guy.