As I mentioned yesterday, our TV got broken in our disastrous move, but it could turn out to be a good thing in the long run (if my sanity lasts long enough and I don't end up in a mental institution before then), because my Minimizing Monday victim target is our phone/Internet/cable service. Since the TV is broken, I'm certainly not going to sign up for cable service and pay for it while not being able to use it, and we want to get the bundled service for the deal, so my husband and I agreed not to get any Phone/Internet/Cable service until we get a new TV.
Well, the moving company is taking their sweet time to sort this mess out, and it's been nearly a month since we got here and haven't had service, and we haven't imploded yet. We get our news from the Internet, and instead of zonking out in front of the TV, we spend more time as a family, and I spend more time reading when he's at work. I've been through more books in the last month than I have in the whole year.
We had already agreed beforehand not to get phone service because for an extra $10 or $20 towards our cell phone plans, we will have more than enough minutes to use. With our current plan, we had saved up over 1000 roll-over minutes, so right now I'm waiting for those roll-over minutes to be used up before we upgrade our cell phone plan because we will lose those minutes otherwise. I'm starting to think that with all these roll-over minutes we have, we may never have to upgrade, or when we do, we only have to spend an extra $10 a month. No home phone service is $10 a month, and we don't have to worry about letting people know of our phone number change, or missing messages, since we always have our cell phones on us.
And as far as Internet, I have to sheepishly confess that right now we're piggy-backing off someone in the neighborhood that does not have a secured connection. Internet is the only thing that I think we really NEED, since these days you can watch more shows online than you can on TV (case in point: my husband has watched over 100 episodes of the anime Bleach online subbed, whereas on TV you can only get it dubbed at 3am in the morning).
In the future, if I ever feel compelled to make friendly with any future neighbors, I plan to propose sharing Internet service. From what I've seen, all base housing is so squished together that the cheapest wireless router will send your signal to your 5 immediate neighbors - so all you really need to do is split the bill and share your access password. It's seriously not a bad plan. And let's be honest - if your neighbors want to steal your private information, they can just steal your mail from your mailbox that is right next to theirs instead of going to all the trouble of doing it electronically.
We're only going to be here for another 4 months, so our family challenge is to starve off Phone/Internet/Cable service, which will definately help our budget since they used to cost us $100 a month. We have our eye set on a $900 40" HD LCD flat-screen TV, which we definately can't afford right now, so instead of buying a cheap TV we don't really want and shelling out the money for cable, we'll just do without for now (like we've been doing for the past month) and put that $100 savings into the TV fund - which means we'll just get our TV that much faster.
See, some good can come from a PCS-move-from-hell...you just have to do a fine job convincing yourself and your family of it.
Well, the moving company is taking their sweet time to sort this mess out, and it's been nearly a month since we got here and haven't had service, and we haven't imploded yet. We get our news from the Internet, and instead of zonking out in front of the TV, we spend more time as a family, and I spend more time reading when he's at work. I've been through more books in the last month than I have in the whole year.
We had already agreed beforehand not to get phone service because for an extra $10 or $20 towards our cell phone plans, we will have more than enough minutes to use. With our current plan, we had saved up over 1000 roll-over minutes, so right now I'm waiting for those roll-over minutes to be used up before we upgrade our cell phone plan because we will lose those minutes otherwise. I'm starting to think that with all these roll-over minutes we have, we may never have to upgrade, or when we do, we only have to spend an extra $10 a month. No home phone service is $10 a month, and we don't have to worry about letting people know of our phone number change, or missing messages, since we always have our cell phones on us.
And as far as Internet, I have to sheepishly confess that right now we're piggy-backing off someone in the neighborhood that does not have a secured connection. Internet is the only thing that I think we really NEED, since these days you can watch more shows online than you can on TV (case in point: my husband has watched over 100 episodes of the anime Bleach online subbed, whereas on TV you can only get it dubbed at 3am in the morning).
In the future, if I ever feel compelled to make friendly with any future neighbors, I plan to propose sharing Internet service. From what I've seen, all base housing is so squished together that the cheapest wireless router will send your signal to your 5 immediate neighbors - so all you really need to do is split the bill and share your access password. It's seriously not a bad plan. And let's be honest - if your neighbors want to steal your private information, they can just steal your mail from your mailbox that is right next to theirs instead of going to all the trouble of doing it electronically.
We're only going to be here for another 4 months, so our family challenge is to starve off Phone/Internet/Cable service, which will definately help our budget since they used to cost us $100 a month. We have our eye set on a $900 40" HD LCD flat-screen TV, which we definately can't afford right now, so instead of buying a cheap TV we don't really want and shelling out the money for cable, we'll just do without for now (like we've been doing for the past month) and put that $100 savings into the TV fund - which means we'll just get our TV that much faster.
See, some good can come from a PCS-move-from-hell...you just have to do a fine job convincing yourself and your family of it.
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