Dollars Now or Later?

It's August. That means that at the end of the month our household is no longer under contract with DirecTV, and we can keep it, cancel it and get cable, or cancel it and not get cable for our TV watching pleasure. I'm leaning toward cancelling it and NOT getting cable. I'm not sure which direction the man of the house is leaning at this point, though I have a feeling we're not exactly parallel... Sure, I watch plenty of TV, but I think it's mostly out of (unfortunate) habit, and because it's there. When I'm busy out of the house or we're camping, it's not like I constantly think, "Huh, I wonder which "House" reruns I'm missing today?" Every weekday evening at 5:30pm chances are VERY GOOD that you can find my husband ensconced on the couch watching the "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams." And then I get sucked in, and then we watch half an hour of local news, and then at 6:30 "Wheel of Fortune" comes on and we usually watch that while eating dinner. Why? It's a mystery. I think of the cash that flows out of the house on a monthly basis for the privilege of having my brain turned to jell-o, and know for a fact that I wouldn't hand over the dollar bills necessary to watch TV every time I turned it on, if I had to pay for it as I used it. So why fork over the money once a month? I am appreciating this post over at Get Rich Slowly. I haven't done the math to figure out what the DirecTV bill is costing us in retirement savings, but I'm confident it wouldn't be a pretty picture.

Christmas Cards sans "The Letter"

I'm more than a little behind on sending Christmas cards, having sent all of four or five so far. I keep reminding myself that Christmas doesn't even START until after sundown on Christmas Eve, and then lasts for 12 whole days, but the "busiest day for the USPS" news segment last night re-ignited my culture driven angst. While I am sending cards, I'm not writing a Christmas letter this year (the man of the house wants to write one, which is fine, but I'm not sending one in "my" cards). I figure the defining moments of my year aren't exactly things most people want to read about while sipping cocoa and watching the lights twinkle on their Christmas trees. Instead I am penning simple greetings on each card and calling it good enough. I actually managed to watch two hours of TV last night. I try to catch Jay Leno on Mondays because he does "Headlines" which always crack me up. Last night he also welcomed "Garfunkel and Oates" - a hilarious duo with a hilarious song. Enjoy!!