A while back, Jeremy and I were trying to talk ourselves into getting rid of cable, and I asked for some personal experiences about life without.

Jeremy and I talked about the responses, and they became part of our decision to smash the satellites, so to speak. (Although, apparently we own the satellites, so they still adorn the front of our house. Anybody looking at DirecTV? We’ll give them away if you’ll come take them off the house.)

That’s right, we’ve been cable-free for over a month! How’s it going?

Really well.

First of all, we still watch TV, but we do it over the internet and on DVD through Netflix. We have two half-hour programs (21 minutes) and two hour-long programs (43 minutes) that we watch each week, plus Battlestar Galactica on DVD. Hulu seems to be the best for internet TV, at least as far as we’ve found so far. You can create a personal list of shows, and the site will put those shows on one page as new episodes arrive. It’s been working really well for us.IMDB has some current shows, but often it only has clips. And the individual network sites tend to have a longer lag between air date and internet date than the independent sites.

Secondly, we haven’t had any trouble at all filling up our days. I used to spend hours in front of the tube on Saturdays, and already I can’t imagine how I ever found the time! Granted, our house is bigger-better now, so activities like having guests are possible though they weren’t before. (In fact, last night I faced the possibility of throwing a get-together for ten people with 30 minutes’ notice. I declined, but I decided to explore that challenge and see if I can come up with a way to do it to my own satisfaction. I think it might be possible!)

We’ve been reading more. Actually, I’ve been so busy that I’ve been reading less, but Jeremy has been reading more - which is a huge indicator of how the pace of our lives has changed, because that is not the first leisure activity he reaches for. We’ve been playing Wii Fit and Wii Brain Age more. And last Sunday, for the first time, we actually ran out of things to do… and ended up like this: Jeremy lounging on the couch with a book, the propane stove on, a cat cleaning herself on the braided rug in front of the fire, and me practicing my harp. When my brain was tired I put the harp away, and Jeremy said, “We’re going to do that again tomorrow, right?” We didn’t, but we did it again later in the week. It is a great way to spend an evening!

I think the main challenge in getting rid of cable has been redefining “down-time”. While we had tons of TV readily available, down-time was only sitting in front of the TV for two hours before bed. That was it. Anything else was work. We still do that sometimes; Battlestar Galactica is riveting. But now down-time is also an evening like last Friday. Or an evening playing board games with Jeremy’s parents. Or having friends - or complete strangers, as the case may be! - over for lunch and a game. And I’m sure we’ll come up with more as our lives without cable progress.

So far, we’re very, very happy with our decision. Of course, the real test will happen when life slows down in January….