1 Year with Elmo and Without TV



He's driven almost3,000 miles over the last year without a single visit to the gas station. We track our monthly electricity usage and cannot discern an increase in our bill. We could be off-setting any increase by the fact that also dropped cable / network TV at the same time, so we do not run the projector very often.

It's very interesting to drive Elmo out among other cars. You realize just how powerful and large the average car is and how fast people drive on neighborhood roads. Few, if any, people drive the speed limit on roads with 30-40 mph limits unless a cop is visible. I even notice a difference in my temperament when I drive Elmo vs Sheila (2004 Subaru Forester XT, 5 speed). I have more patience and calm--I cannot really be in a hurry and I cannot use my car to vent frustration. It makes me wonder how different the roads would be if people could not show aggressiveness through their driving.

Speaking of calm, not having TV in the house for a year has been fantastic. I guess we are in the minority, according to this NYT piece. We can watch online stuff (Hulu, PBS, YouTube) if we want to by connecting the laptop to our projector, but we don't do it very often. Background noise is limited to NPR or music, and I'm finding that I have less tolerance for repeated news and discussion on NPR. If KF wants to watch the Twins, Badgers or Packers, he goes to the JCC (gym) or to the GC (local restaurant & bar).

Many evenings we end the day quietly discussing how things went at school and the gym. We play with the cats and get the kitchen, laundry and other chores done together, rather than fall asleep in front of the tv. Seriously, we've probably slept a year in front of the TV over our 16 years of marriage. No more.

When you are not subjected to a constant stream of talking heads and streaming images, you realize just how much excess noise throughout most of our daily environment. Take the constant stream of information out of your day--most of which doesn't really impact our immediate lives and is stupidly alarmist and argumentative--and eventually you will find yourself with more mental and emotional energy to focus on what is really necessary in life.

The next step is to possibly get a phone that is also a Wi-Fi hotspot and ditch Charter altogether. I'm a little nervous about the quality and speed of service, but you know what, I'm probably better off with less internet time anyway. There's so much more to life than being online.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A System of the Absurd

Charge for wellness checkup blood tests @ St. Lukes Hospital: $1142.20. Amount written off by hospital as negotiated by Anthem BC/BS: $967.20. The insurance company pays NOTHING for this service. Amount patient required to pay: $175 Does any of this make sense? Does $1142.20 represent the true cost of doing the testing for the hospital? What if I had requested to pay cash for the whole thing? Same charge? BTW, my mom's hospital bill (Des Peres Hospital) for her same-day surgery (rotator cuff repair)--ready--$33,000. Not sure what her insurance is going to cover yet, but she was at the hospital from 8 am to 5 pm, and in actual surgery less than 2 hours. Never admitted to a room, just in and out burger style. The surgeon had 8 similar surgeries on the schedule that day. Bonus!
Read more

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit
Read more