And now... the weather!

Back in Ohio we didn't watch much television and when digital tv came along we all but gave up on our tv set. Watching digital tv with poor reception is a lot like watching a dvd that someone set on a gravel driveway and backed over three or four times with a car. The screen seizes up or pixelates, and the audio starts to stutter, like a skipping record. Imagine the frustration during a particularly dramatic or climatic scene as such:

"Tonight's Lucky Lotto numbers are Three, Seventeen, Burrrrrrrdiddditttttt"

"Here's the pitch. He swings and Oh! It'sssssssssssdddddddddididt"

"The killer is in this very room Watson. Obviously the culprititttttttttiddddddddtttt"

Suffice to say, that this made watching LOST a gamble.


Investing in a digital antenna didn't help much, as we constantly repositioned it to get the basics and even then never received CBS. When we moved to Minnesota we had no idea of just *how much* better it would be. Our first channel search tuned into an impressive 14 channels. Next, we hooked our tv into the antenna on our roof, and scored an amazing 40 (yes, I said forty) channels.

Full disclosure: several of the channels were duplicates. We picked up blocks of religious channels (15.1, 15.2, 15.3, etc), essentially "clones" showing the same material all the time. Still, with the surplus stations we ended up with what looks like a basic cable package for free; a home shopping channel, a Spanish channel, 4 public television channels, 2 weather channels, all the major networks (including the CW), a block of 3 Ion television channels, and one network that's constantly playing Everyone Loves Raymond or Two and a Half men. I still haven't figured that out.

One other refreshing thing about television out here are the local newscasters who mostly refuse to work under a phony broadcast name. In Minnesota we're treated to the likes of Amelia Santaniello and Rena Sarigianopoulos (take that Rob Powers!).



My personal favorite broadcaster is a weekend meteorologist with an alliterative monicker any super-hero reporter would be jealous of. Even better than Lois Lane, or Peter Parker, Sven Sundgaard gets bonus points for being a weatherman with "sun" in his name.

I couldn't make this guy up, but if I did, rest assured he'd be fighting against the Mighty Thor in a Marvel comic book, or exploring the Tomb of Horrors in a Dungeons and Dragons game. Sven even has an alter ego, dressing up last Halloween as Jack Frost, as if to illustrate the point...


that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

I forgot in last week's update to include our biking viking miles... today we're at 1596!