But I Do Have Central Heat and Air

I'm one of the three American households who does not have cable. Nope, none of that in my living room. There are two very nice, almost straight antenna that get adjusted with most switches of the channels. I received for Christmas one year a tiny glass angel figurine who does an excellent job of holding up one antenna when I need channel 3. About a year ago I found that extending one of the rabbit ears with your basic aluminum foil makes the picture quality significantly better. I've even been able to see the score of a football game or two on occasion. I figure this just helps sharpen my observational skills during the game. I either have to listen for the score or keep up in my head. Usually I just fall asleep.

So the Big Switch is coming on February 17th, according to all of the commercials on channel 5. Now the government seems to think that three years' warning was not enough for some. And I'll admit it: I'm one of the delinquents. I may not even be getting my voucher for the converter box. But let me explain. I DID send off for my voucher, a long time ago. I received it, put it aside like a good procrastinator, and when I went to retrieve it, it had expired. Why in the world they needed those things to have an expiration date of 90 days from mailing is beyond me. But I'm still appreciative of the voucher. I found an article and some interesting comments, and like one astute reader pointed out, there were no vouchers when the Betamax player became extinct; no one gave me help in upgrading my car's cassette player to CD (upgrade = buying a cassette adapter to plug into the ipod- I skipped the whole CD era); I wasn't given a jump drive when 3 inch floppy disks went out of style. So thank you, government, for supporting my TV habit. Without your voucher, I just may have gone without television altogether. I may have relied on actual paper books, live person-to-person interaction, and getting out of the house for entertainment. Maybe I can get together with those other two households without cable and we can watch my latest Netflix DVD.