The boob tube...

It is not because it is so important that it gets its own room.  The TV does, however, have the room with the best view.  The room also doubles as the guest room.  And currently, Thomas has become a fixture in there on the couch with the new Clancy novel Julie loaned him.

 

I remember that growing up we were limited in how much we could watch, and it wasn't until high school maybe that we got cable.  We divided the bill, and though none of us got an allowance, we all paid $5 or $10 a month towards the bill.  That is the only time I have had cable. 

 

Somehow TV programming has mostly been more of a social event for me: the nights of watching ER in college in Amber's room, the parading across the neighborhood to watch Friends and Scrubs at the Monroe house my second year in Denver, then crowding into the TV room in the Columbine house to watch Thursday night TV, and finally watching the Simpsons with Thomas on Sunday nights. 

 

Movies are a whole other story, and for that I am grateful for the attachments to the TV to make home-viewing possible.  I am also grateful for the generosity of our local video libraries (read "Tom's family").  Occasionally we turn down a Netflix from Pop, but movies are usually fun entertainment.  ("Usually" suggests that sometimes the movies we borrow are just weird - it's true.) 

 

So the exception when it comes to the boob tube and me starts at 6 pm on KRQE out here.  This was not the one station that we got, which is FOX.  For some reason this station came in somewhat clearly the night of the Super Bowl, and then never again.  Whatever I did to the rabbit ears residing on top of the TV, the station never came back.  The day before I left for California a month ago, Thomas was messing with the antenna (probably because whatever I did to the rabbit ears made the FOX reception go fuzzy!), and I asked him if he could figure out how to get KRQE for that show at 6 pm.

 

When I got back from California, he was all hot and bothered about the TV.  Evidently, Sunday night while I was gone, Thomas spent the half hour of the Simpsons and the following hour messing with the antenna fuming that there was no reception and no Simpsons.  He suggested that I had done something, which was of course not the case.  It did lead him to remove the TV antenna from his old travel trailer of college days and attach it to ours.  We positioned it just so, even checking the internet for information about the position of the FOX repeater off in the mountains.  Still no luck!  (After an e-mail I sent, I got a reply that the repeater was in fact out of service and inaccessible because of snow.) 

 

Well, the repeater was fixed last week, so this weekend we got to watch the Simpsons.  More importantly to me, Thomas and I have gotten to watch Jeopardy together again at 6 pm!!

 

(dedicated to my brother - who I still think should be on the show for his amazing ability to rapid fire the answers)