We, too, unplugged our television cable -- and suffered the consequent bounce in the price of broadband Internet service (sigh). So far, the net result is a quieter household with more reading and more music. We live in Ottawa where we enjoy excellent radio service courtesy of the CBC and two newspapers, the local daily and a national daily; the last thing we need to keep informed is television. Edmund misses rugby after church on Sunday mornings, so now we eat Sunday breakfast at a Don Cherry's sports bar -- and now I eat smoked salmon at least once per week, boo hoo.

In 1995, about a year after I kicked out Husband No 1 (Mr. Wrong), I unplugged the television for the first time, and did without it for three years -- in fact, until 1998 when I married Edmund (Mr. Right). I remember the initial reason was to make it easier to re-arrange the furniture in the sitting room so the most comfortable reading chair would be beside the window, but once it was disconnected I found that I couldn't possibly put it in the bedroom (too cold), the kitchen (no room), the study (ditto) or the dining room (too tacky for words). While waiting to figure out where to put it, I realized that I felt much less nagged, hassled and harried, and was sleeping more restfully, so I put it in the cellar, promising myself that if I really, really missed it I would re-install it. Six months later, I gave it and the VCR away to a young couple who had been burned out of their apartment.

This time we're keeping the equipment -- but now we can get lots of really good shows and movies on DVD, which we didn't have in 1995. So we watch the occasional movie, and I've been trying to learn something about string theory from a DVD I borrowed from my 12-year-old cousin the genius. And I'm sleeping more restfully, and we eat at the table like grown-ups much more often.