A Year without Cable

So it's been a year without "cable" in our house, and the world hasn't exploded.  It has saved us over $1,000 for the first year and has also saved us a bunch of time wasting time on watching TV.

I am going to breakdown my pros and cons to cable cutting.

PROS

Money - It has saved us over $1,000 just this year.

Cable Companies - Fuck cable companies.  They are giant monopolies that don't care about customer services and control the pricing, the scale, the product and everything else you watch on your television or internet — enough of that.

Tastes - My tastes and probably my whole families tastes have completely changed since we cut the cable — no more binge-watching stuff we didn't like.  No, we concentrate on what shows we love and want to binge.  For me, I watched through a ton of PBS specials on Netflix.  Sadly, the other one left is "Prohibition," and it is annoying as shit (I don't recommend it).

Unlimited Recording - Oh yeah, that magical think cable companies charged you extra for.  It's now basically free with whatever service you have.

Mix-it-up - The best thing is being able to choose a la carte what you want.  It is excellent, but some people will realize that you will need to spend more than you think about everything you want.  So you need to pick your battles.  

CONS

Cable Companies - You still have to use the cable companies for the internet.  Come on local governments, get into the game.  It is just another utility that we should have control over instead of some billionaire.  

A-la-carte - the downfall of cutting cable is the cost of A-la-carte.  Cable companies, broadcasting companies, movie companies are all catching up to the cutting cable idea and now moving towards their business models.  ESPN and Disney are two perfect examples of this.  Soon you will have to pay them extra to watch all your favorite sports or movies.  Disney is even getting rid of their vaulted films and forcing people who want to watch the original dumbo to have to pay for their service to watch it instead of being able to purchase it via DVD, Blu-ray, and digital.  This whole business model will explode.  But I see the Netflix/HBO service might blow before the bigger companies.  

"APPS"- the best and worst part of cutting cables is apps.  You can download any app.  but the biggest downfall is swapping between them to pick a show.  It is much more cumbersome than going from channel to channel.  I know, first world problems.  

GRIPES 

One of my biggest complaints with cutting cable is having to stick to the only cable service in my area.  This is mostly faulted by our easily swayed political system locally and statewide.  Our cities and public should have better choices and better prices.  I have one option.  This is not good enough in 2019 in the largest city in the state of Virginia.

OVERALL

I would do this hands-down again and again, and I highly recommend everyone else too.  I do wish I could try out the other operating systems like PlayStation and Apple or even try the other "cable" services like HULU with Live TV to see how it is.  But overall, it has been well worth it (except for all the random Power Ranger shows Avery watches on Netflix).

Living Life: Part One

It's been a long time since I last blogged but life has been good.  I did attempt to blog about our bathroom renovations, but I just was over it when I was done.  I got about halfway done with typing but couldn't get the energy to finish it.  It was a pretty exhausting but well worth at the end of the day.

Since August, the Lambert contingent has grown a bit.  Tim started his Senior year, and Avery is in Pre-K.  We will be celebrating two graduations this spring.

We have also grown our family by adding chickens.  We have been talking about getting chickens for a couple of years, but we finally bit the bullet.  And it has been a fun adventure so far.

One Sunday in early March, we went to Tractor Supply to pick up some bird food and stuff and luckily it was their spring #chickdays.  Avery has always loved looking at the baby chicks.  Magically, we walked out with six babies and the things we needed to start.

We loved them so much that we got four more right the week after.  For me, this was my gateway drug to get Lori to let me get more animals.  One day, I would like to raise other animals, but chickens are an excellent way to start.

We decided that we wanted to build our coop and run to make everything mobile so we can give them the best conditions by giving them new grass to feed, dig, and play in regularly.  It will also help us fertilize our yard and my garden.  Currently, we have our run on the garden so the chickens can dig up, eat up the weeds and feed it for our it before we plant this spring.  Designing and building mobile coops and runs is like opening a pandora box.  Everyone seems to be a professional designer, builder, and chicken expert.  The first thing people research after buying baby chicks is coops.  I decided to build my coop a bit sturdier than others because I wanted it to last and wanted it to stand up to the weather.  I took ideas from several different designs and put them together for my model.  I enjoyed building it.  There are a few things I would have done different, but overall I was pretty happy with the plan.

The other funny thing is figuring out how much space you need in your run and coop.  For us, we have designed everything for twenty chickens to be completely happy in their field and their coop at night.

The funny part of the coop design wasn't how or what but really what color we were going to paint it.  And with a 4-year-old girl in our house, we had to let her pick the color.  Even with suggestions like barn red or solid colors, Avery chose a bright purple that turned out adorable.  The purple against the white looks fantastic.  And she and Lori enjoyed painting it.

Next up was building the chicken run.  We decided on making it mostly out of PVC pipe arched and aviary netting over it with chicken wire three feet up the sides. My brother-in-law recommended using a netting needle and tarred twine to tie it up.  None of the plans I saw online had this and mostly used zip-ties.  But I highly recommend using netting needles and cord because it makes the net tight.  It took some time, but the effort was worth it in the end.  We then put three feet high chicken wire around the door and all the sides to protect them from getting out and the dogs getting in.

So far everything has worked great but each day is a lesson.  But the best experience we learned is how much love they have brought us as a family.  Every morning we all enjoy checking on them, watching them grow and seeing their different personalities.  And the outcome will be giving us organic pasture-raised chickens that are happy.

I highly recommend getting chickens.  We look forward to seeing how it goes and can't wait to watch them grow.