The Olympics and cheap TV

Deal of the month: free HD channels for a one-time fee of $12.

Last year I bought a 32'' Vizio HDTV when it went on uber-sale. It's a great TV and up until a few days ago its only purpose was for me to watch DVDs by hooking it up to my laptop; usually Pride and Prejudice (1995) or the Lord of the Rings special features - I like to watch those while I'm cleaning or cooking or doing homework. Cable is in very expensive and it's kind of a temptation I don't want to give in to, even if I had the money; something about having all those channels at the touch of a button makes me feel like if I had cable, I would watch TV way more than I should. I haven't watched much TV in years, and in general, I don't think I'm missing much.

However, during the first week of the winter Olympics I started feeling sad that I was missing out on them. I felt a little too awkward to invite myself over to one of my friends' houses with cable, and anyway I had a paper to write. But it still bothered me. Enter a $12 antenna from Best Buy, and now I get all the network channels for free, in HD! I know this isn't a revelation, but that was definitely $12 well spent! I've been happily watching the Olympics since. And it's nice to know that if I want, in the morning I can turn on the news to check the weather instead of using the internet. As a plus, if I ever take up learning Spanish or Chinese, I get three Spanish channels and one Chinese channel (which so far has only seemed to show crazy game shows).