Eggs, Kleenex and DTV

Well, we successfully navigated the Westville Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday morning. It was cold (45!) and cloudy, but we went anyway. Erin did not get out of the carseat, but stayed in her blanket. Ian got Pu-lenty of eggs, enough to have our own condensed version of Egg Hunt at home, if we can put all the halves together and make them stay. He had lots of fun with his friends and we had lots of fun with their parents. Then we came home to inspect the loot. :)

We are still feeling much better, but boy are we tired of coughing up phlegm! Erin has her little runny nose and cough back, so we are yodelling back and forth to each other pretty constantly. At least nobody is having problems sleeping.

I finally went out and got our digital converter box for our tv antenna. We were all excited to put it together. I read all the instructions (a few times...) and figured out how to do the channel configuration. We waited excitedly. What? This can't be right. 2 channels? We flicked the channels. A mass of frozen pixels was all that came up. Uh.... Chris fiddled with the antenna some. Ok, that was better, but the sound was all hiccupy and every other second a blob of pixels would freeze like a Picasso painting. The second channel was no better. Actually it was worse.

We moved the antenna to the other side of the TV stand and covered the little ends with an 18-inch long wad of aluminum foil. I tried the channel scan again. 3 channels this time. Two of them were actually kind of clear. One of them was ABC (woo hoo! local weather! uh. scratch that. We don't live in Rogers, AR). Biiiiiig problem. The only channel we got without the DTV box was channel 13, PBS. Ian's little shows are all on PBS. And how will I live without Hyacinth and "Keeping up Appearances"? Or Judy Dench in "As Time Goes By"? Sigh. I made do with Cold Case instead. That wasn't too bad, but what would I do in the mornings without Curious George and Word World to keep him busy while I showered?? Oh well, we would live.

Chris had other ideas. Since his 7-day work stretch on the new schedule was over, he has 2 glorious days of weekend. His solution was to get some type of booster for our rabbit ears and try to get PBS back.

So this morning, we hied off to Radio Shack to see what we could see. We got there. The only boosters made are for outdoor antennas. We would have to come to the realization that the rabbit ears I kept from college were just not made for serious rural channel pickups. It was time to upgrade. We looked at the choices. Why get one that looks like a 14 foot bird sanctuary when we're just going to move? So we got a little plastic box that bolts to the side of the roof and then you run a wire inside. It has its own amplifier. So guess what? Now we get 11 channels. 11 beautiful clear channels with only slight pixel congestion. 4 of those channels (13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 13.4) are PBS. Ha! Woo hoo! No more lines on Clifford's face! This is great! And we are excited about all the other channels we'll get after we move too. That is, of course, if we even remember to watch the TV. Hm.