New Forms of Entertainment

Last week we canceled our Internet and cable at home. I have to say I am amazed at the transformation in our house. It feels quieter, simpler and more relaxing. Not that we always had the TV on, we didn't, but there was always the possibility of it. I love the simplicity and quite of coming home with to no computers or TV.

It does however create a new challenge of what to do with our time. I am ashamed to admit how much of our evenings were spent watching TV or spending time online. Mr. P and I have had many conversations about the change this has brought about and we think they are good changes. On Saturday while I was picking up the house, Mr. P did the dishes, took out the trash and recycle, and cleaned out the car. He said he was bored so he figured he might as well help clean up. This is definitely a change for the better!

Last night while dinner was cooking we both worked around the house. Mr. P worked on the re-organization of the office some while I did laundry. Then after dinner we went to Goodwill. We spent at least an hour wandering around Goodwill. First we looked at furniture because we need another book shelf for the office, then I looked at dishes because I'm hunting down some old dishes I saw and am obsessed with. Then we ended up in books. The book section at Goodwill is dangerous. First it is full of so many good books at extremely cheap prices. We left Goodwill with 6 books. Some new entertainment we decided. After our Goodwill adventure we went home and spent the rest of the evening reading.

After thinking further about our Goodwill trip I have decided to give myself a challenge. Because we need to save money, hence cutting the Internet and cable in the first place, buying books at Goodwill, even at good prices, is not really going to accomplish that. So my challenge to myself is this: I will not buy any new books until I have read all of the books in our house that I have never read before. Honestly I'm not sure how many books that is but I'm sure it's a lot. One, we have a lot of books. Two, many of those were Mr.P's and I have never read them. Three, I frequently buy book I want to read and then don't get around to reading all of them and then buy more. So you can see the cycle. Now I need to figure out how many books I have that I haven't read and start reading them.

*by books in our house I mean everything but philosophy that I don't want to read. Mr. P and I were both philosophy majors and we have a lot of philosophy books I know we have all of his wittgenstien and Kant and I don't want to read those
** we still have our small TV with DVD player so we can borrow movies and TV shows from the Library and watch those from time to time