(Sunday Paper, Year V, Issue 4)

For a while now we’ve talked about getting rid of cable and figuring out a cheaper alternative.

Other than price, there’s been no huge event that is driving us to change.

That’s probably why we’ve dragged our feet on it for so long - if there was a bigger reason to cut the cord we’d have done it by now.

But at the end of last year I wrote an article about alternatives to cable and I finally did the homework on what was out there in a way I hadn’t done to that point…

And this week was our first without cable in many, many years.

I’m slow to adapt to certain things.

I still had a VCR connected to my TV up until a few years ago. (Which is also when we finally got a high definition TV…which is also when we got a Smart TV.)

But having the nice, new television also opened up some possibilities to a new media viewing world for us.

As I mentioned, we were fine with cable.

But we only used a fraction of the channels we had.

So when I looked into what was out there, YouTubeTV met my live sports needs (along with the MLB.TV app via my Roku), and the recent addition of Disney+ covered my new Marvel obsession. (The rest of the family has what they need as well.)

And so here we are, with Verizon (who provided us with cable, internet, and telephone) giving us a new router that increased our wireless speed (which is good for all the streaming we’re doing), and a cheaper monthly bill.

Which is probably still more expensive than it has to be because we still have that land line for the telephone.

Like I said, I’m a slow adapter.

Writing

*I continue to have the busiest start to a year in my freelancing life. It’s good to have while it lasts.

Comedy

*I continue to have the slowest start to a year in my comedy life.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

*For years people have told me I would love Hamilton. I knew I would, but I hadn’t taken any initiative on it. But this week I bought the soundtrack and figured I might as well start there like so many people did years before me. Wow. I was just blown away. Very inspiring to listen to that music/story.

Thoughts on Dog Ownership

*As promised last week, I took Tate to a play group on Friday. She seemed to love it, and it certainly exhausted her. I’m going to make an effort to go every week…and there can certainly be more dogs there. If you’re interested, and you have a puppy/teen dog in between 6 months old and a year and a half, I think, let me know if you’re interested in spending an hour together on Friday afternoons in Sudbury.

Notes

*In case you missed it, this week the organization I Am ALS posted a video about their fight against the disease, and they used my brother’s music as part of the video and it’s quite powerful. Click here to visit the website and watch the video.

*Oh, hey, that picture at the top of this post? That’s the new TV we have in the bedroom, which was the gift Kathy and I got ourselves for Christmas. It replaces the close to 15-year-old television we have in there. And it will go down in history as the first TV I’ve ever owned that didn’t get a cable wire plugged into it. But what’s also notable about it is it is mounted to the wall. I did that. I think I did it on New Year’s Eve…and it wasn’t even that difficult. (Just don’t pull on it if you’re ever here. Let’s not tempt fate.)

*If you don’t already, I’d love it if you gave the Facebook page a Like! And you can follow me on Twitter here if you so desire.

*The Facebook page is where you’ll find a new post every Wednesday with a little mini write-up…not unlike when I did the countdown of ‘40 of My Favorite Things’ leading up to my 40th birthday. Saturday was the 20th anniversary of something that happened on January 25, 2000…I plan on posting something about that this week on Wednesday.

*For those of you keeping score at home, the 49ers-Chiefs Super Bowl is a good Super Bowl because it is a matchup that has never happened before. This matters to me. It would have been bad to have Kansas City-Green Bay for a second time.