Up until a month ago I had basic cable.  15 channels to choose from … and I was just fine with it.  I never really watched TV that much except for, perhaps, “The Office” or an occasional episode of “Oprah” or “Saturday Night Live”.

Then my new roommate moved in.  Talk about the hook up – figuratively and literally – thanks to Time Warner.  Suddenly every single bell and whistle was at my disposal.  And yet, I still only watched the fifteen channels I’m used to.   My run-of-the-mill cable bill ballooned from $18 a month to $145.  I blacked out from sheer disbelief.

My roommate is always pointing out shows he thinks I would find interesting – but, frankly, I can’t keep up.   I’m happy to have the TV on for ambiance.  If Oprah or Diane Sawyer has something interesting to say … fine … I’ll pay attention.  Otherwise, who cares?

I used to be addicted to TV.  I would have my “shows” that I’d have to watch every night of the week.   After awhile, it became problematic.   Some random television-programming executive would move one of my shows up against ANOTHER program I wanted to watch.  I had trouble choosing.  I felt like I was cheating on “LA Law” if I flipped over to watch “Knot’s Landing”.  And so it went.

Now I have a DVR on every floor of my house and can record hundreds of hours of programming to watch at my leisure.  Two things to note … 1) I don’t have leisure time anymore and 2) if I do have time to kill, I sure as hell don’t want to watch two week-old sitcoms.

That isn’t always the norm, however.  Several times I have been rendered powerless by marathons.  A marathon is where a network will play every single episode of a show back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to … oh, you get the idea.  That’s how I found out about “Top Chef”.   One particular Sunday, I accidentally stumbled across this show and never left the couch for nine hours.   But I refuse to watch it unless it’s sequential.

I will admit — I have made a conscious effort to sit down and watch TV with my roomie.   Unfortunately, he’s a chronic flipper.   He doesn’t want to watch TV.  He wants to see what else is on.   He’ll land on something for approximately eight seconds and then quickly flip to something else.  If something catches my eye, I bark out, “Oooh, go back!”  But he’s usually flipped light years past whatever snippet caught my attention.

I’m not sure when I lost my interest in the boob tube.  But it’s not coming back anytime soon.  I have 250 channels to choose from … and not one of ‘em has one thing I want to watch before I go to sleep at night.   Unless there’s a “Top Chef” marathon – and then I’ll put on a pot of coffee.