Now I'm trying to be a bit more balanced about it, and it's harder to do a little bit of exercise regularly than a lot. At least for me. Your milage may vary. Especially since the bike is the only real exercise these days. No running till I get the images of my foot. No swimming till I renew my City membership, or actually buy one at Talisman. Monday should be the day for that.
Today was two hours on the bike. Easy warmup, a steady workout but not over the top. Watched another few episodes of Sanctuary. I've still no idea why the second disc is fine and the first is not. Maybe the computer sees a scratch that I can't.
I've got my holiday reading all picked out. The Game of Thrones books. Packing for Mars, How to everything by Red Green, Civilization the West and the Rest, and Canadian Pie by Will Ferguson. That ought to keep me out of mischief for a while.
Going into Costco they have the displays of TV's right near the front. I actually wandered through and looked at them. We bought a plasma TV on Boxing Day 2002, so just about 9 years ago. It was a great deal at A&B Sound for mumblty thousand dollars. Plus a theatre in a box DVD player and speaker system. We got the extended warranty, which we usually don't, and it paid for itself through two repairs. The plasma is still working just fine, but I was astonished at how cheap they are. Our's is 40" in a 4:3 ratio, and the prices now for 42" widescreen plasmas are about one sixth what we paid way back then. Just amazing. No wonder everybody has two or three of them, and you see ads for 80" TV's. For the record that's nearly the size of our King bed. I'm just saying.
What got us into all this was the closure of many DVD rental places nearby. In fact, we haven't rented a DVD since the Rogers closed sometime during the summer. Nor do we subscribe to cable, and we don't want to. What a scam to buy so much crap to get so little you actually want. I'd love to get some shows through the internet, but neither the TV or the DVD player talk to the internet or to the iPad. So far my theory is to buy individual episodes to see if we like a show, watch it on the computer (a paltry 24" screen) then go on line to buy the season at the cheapest place we can find. It's getting harder to find regular DVD's since they are all migrating to Blue Ray. Our normal thing was to rent discs, unless we were sure to want to watch them again, but that isn't so much of an option anymore.
Eventually the plasma will die, which could be years, and then we'll go get a new one. Probably at half the price of today. Maybe if I buy the right box of cereal one will come in it.
Where do you get your visual entertainment from?
Oh, and after I posted this, the sunset was amazing. Starting from the South East, moving to the southwest, and then a panorama of it.
We have way too many visual entertainment options. We have expanded basic cable - and you are right, it costs a mint and we watch 3 channels about 90% of the time (Nick, Disney and Cartoon Network) with maybe another 6 or so filling out the other 10% (including our local affiliates that don't come in clear without cable). We also watch Netflix streaming to our computer (although I'm having issues with my wifi right now and we used to also watch through our Wii or on the laptop). And we still subscribe (with now an extra charge) to the DVD service because the streaming service has a SUCKY selection (although tons of the TV series which I think you would dig). I also occassionally watch missed episodes of of shows (Glee and Biggest Loser lately) on the NBC or Fox web sites. And of course, we have a decent size VHS and DVD collection (mostly kids' movies, but ones I enjoy). Needless to say, we need to spend less time in front of a screen, but we don't seem to be whittling it down at all.
ReplyDeleteWow! That's a lot of choices. Netflix doesn't offer a very good choice in Canada. There's a rule that 90% of everything is crap, but there's so much stuff on TV now, that the 10% actually adds up to enough worth watching. The movies seem to be mired in formula reruns and building their "franchise", which adds up to dreck. TV, hard as it is for me to admit it, has some very watchable shows. I think our next ones are going to be The Borgias, and Boardwalk Empire.
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