Why I Run ( Part 1 )

I sit on the edge of my bed with a weight wrapped around my right ankle.  I slowly extend the lower portion of my right leg until it is completely parallel to the floor, and then slowly lower this part of the leg back down until my right heel is about an inch from the side of of the bed.  I do this over and over again, and as I do this, my right knee makes a sound very much like the sound of crinkling bubble-wrap.  Eventually pressure starts to build up in the knee.  The bubble-wrap sound slowly fades away, and after a few silent extensions of the leg, the knee makes a huge CRACK sound when I extend the leg.

However, as bad as this all might sound, this really isn't a problem.

The problem is ...

... my right knee is my good knee!

So yeah, my knees give me trouble sometimes.  While some of these problems are the unavoidable consequence of being 41, a good deal of the problems I have with my knees can be directly attributed to my running regimen. Of course. most people who hear about my cracking knees ( or literally hear my cracking knees ) don't give me much sympathy.  They'll look at me in a bemused sort of way, and say things to me that often include words like "swimming", "biking", and "elliptical machine".  Let's face it - there are certainly lots of ways to do cardio that don't involve the wear and tear that running put on my knees.  So, considering all this, I guess the natural question I should be asking myself is ...

Why do I run?

Well, it might take a while to give a comprehensive answer to that question, so let me start by explaining why I even started to run in the first place.  My current love of running can all be traced back to one thing, and that thing is ...

Basketball


  If you've known for me a while or have read most of my previous posts, you probably already know that I had rather severe asthma as a child.  Back then, running long distances was the furthest thing from my mind.  Back then, I would have had an asthma attack if I tried to run the length of a city block.

All that started to change when my Dad built a basketball hoop in my backyard when I was about 12 ( BTW, when I wrote "built", I really did mean "built" rather than "installed".  I installed a basketball hoop for my kids last spring; my dad actually built a hoop for my brother and me.  One day, when walking home from the train station after work, he noticed an old basketball hoop ( just the metal part the ball goes through - there wasn't any backboard ) that had been left out in somebody's trash.  He decided to take the discarded hoop home and mount it on the garage in our backyard.   He took some leftover pieces from a metallic shelving system ( he had installed metalic shelves in our basement years earlier ) and basically built what looked like a 4 foot high by 3 foot wide metallic bookcase ( 1 foot deep ) with shelves 1 foot, 2 feet, and 3 feet off the ground.  He then attached a piece of plywood ( a piece about the sized of an NBA backboard - he painted the piece white )  to the front of this "bookshelf".  He attached the hoop to the backboard/bookshelf structure, and then attached the entire thing to the garage ( Actually, he may have attached the "bookshelf" to the garage first, and then attached the plywood/hoop, but you get the idea.  The entire hoop/backboard combo was completely homemade from discarded/spare parts. ).  I'll have to remind myself to thank my Dad the next time I talk to him.  That hoop gave me lots of enjoyment over the years, and the skills I eventually gained gave me an athletic confidence that will endure for the rest of my life.).  At the time my upper body was so weak that I couldn't reach the basket on a 15-foot shot unless I produced momentum by starting the shot between my  legs and moving the ball rapidly from between my legs to a foot above my shoulders before releasing the ball ( kinda like the classic underhanded shot a little kid might shoot, except that I would release the ball like a regular shot with one hand behind the ball ( rather than one hand on each side of the ball )).  However I quickly gained both strength and accuracy, and soon I found myself spending most of my free daylight hours shooting hoops.

  As I entered my teen years I really didn't have the endurance ( or the confidence ) to start playing basketball games against other teens ( and young adults ) in the local parks, but I had already started a training regimen that would build the foundation of my game.  I would take various mid-range shots from all over my backyard ( The deepest shots I could take from my backyard were from about 15 feet away.  There was a fence 7 feet to the right of the basket, so I really couldn't take any deep shots from the right side of the basket.  There was more room on the left side of the yard, but I had to contend with a garden that started at the left boarder of the garage and extended about 6 feet into the "court" ( There was a raised 2-inch concrete boarder around the entire garden, and a similar boarder about 3 feet from the right fence that extended about 3 feet into the "court".  I can't tell you how many ankles I twisted landing on those concrete boarders.  Those things are one of the reasons why I have a comically limited side-to-side range of motion in my ankles these days. ), as well as a peach tree in the garden and a clothesline on the far left side of our yard.  If I wanted to take a shot deeper than 15 feet, I needed to step into a narrow driveway between our house and our neighbor's house ( My aunts lived next door, which was a good thing for me.  I don't think that most people not related to me would have put up with the basketball noise all day ( not to mention the thousands of times I needed to go into their yard when the ball would go over the fence ))), and sprint toward the basket as soon as I released those mid-range shots.  Whether the shot went in or not I would jump in the air to catch ball as it came off ( or through ) the rim and put up a layup before I landed.  Doing this over and over again did 4 things for me:

1) It improved my mid-range shot.
2) It improved my leaping ability .
3) It gave me the ability to make off-balance layups with either hand from any spot near the basket.
4) It improved my endurance.

Yes "endurance".  That 9-letter word is really the whole point of all the rambling tangent-laden paragraphs above.  Basketball gave me endurance and help me overcome my childhood asthma.  Basketball is the reason why I ultimately had the ability to run regularly.

However, having the ability and the inclination to do something are two different things.  Despite that fact that I had mostly overcame my asthma ( pet allergies can still give me asthma attacks ) and had better-than average endurance, I never really had much of a desire to get my cardio exercise by running.  I figured jogging would be bad for my knees, and I was quite wary about my knees, especially considering they started making all sorts of weird cracking sounds by the time I was 16.

So, I really didn't do any kind of distance running until I was 31 ( I started my running regimen 10 years ago in  February of 2001 ), when basketball had an impact on my fitness again.  At the time, I was playing on the company basketball team.  I'd been playing on the team for 5 years ( I was actually one of the founding members of the company team.  If the company team had existed a few years earlier,I certainly would have joined the team at the age of 23 rather than 26.  I can't really take much credit for founding the team - the idea came from a guy I was supervising.  He was fresh out of college and asked me if our company had a basketball team.  When I told him we didn't have a team, he actually had the gumption to ask HR if the company could sponsor a team ( pay for league entry fees, uniforms, etc. ).  The next thing you know, management said "yes" to the request and we had a company basketball team. ), and while I was still enjoying the games ( we played 30 - 40 games a year ), I was starting to feel my age for the first time.

You see, jumping had always been a big part of my game.  Of course jumping is a big part of basketball in general, but I relied on my jumping ability a lot more than the average player.  The biggest weakness in my basketball game is my dribbling ability.  I'm not a bad dribbler these days ( I knew enough about the finer points of dribbling to teach Michael how to do it well ), but I've never really had quick hands, and dribbling wasn't a big part of the foundation of my game.  As I mentioned above, I taught myself to play the game with a regimen that involved a lot of shooting and jumping, but not much dribbling.  So, when I eventually gained the confidence to play games at the park,  I found that I didn't have much of an ability to dribble around people to get close enough to the basket to make all those off-balance layups I had practiced.  However, I found that I could jump around people.  I know that "jump around people" might seem like an odd term, so I'll offer the following example:

Often when I was driving towards the basket and  found a defender between me and the basket, I would leap directory towards the left or right shoulder of the defender.  I would then twist my body 90 degrees in the air ( so that my back was facing the defender ( so the defender couldn't really get his hands on the ball without reaching around me and fouling me ) and arch my back to avoid contact with the defender.  Once I got past the defender, I would twist my body 90 degrees back to its original orientation, and then put up a layup before I landed.

A basketball move like the one above ( plus many others where I would just jump into traffic and contort my body until I found space to put up a shot ) works fine if you can stay in the air long enough to pull it off.  I could easily stay in the air long enough when I was 21, but by the time I was 31, it was getting a little bit tougher.  I wasn't as if I was out of shape or anything, but very few people have as springy legs in their early 30's as they did in their early 20's.  So yeah, losing leaping ability as you age is a fact of life, but it was a fact I was having a hard time dealing with.  I constantly found my basketball brain writing checks that my body couldn't cash.  I would leap into the air with a plan of action, and found that I was landing before I could execute that plan.  I was only landing a split second earlier than I was in the past.  Most people probably wouldn't have even noticed, but I noticed, and knew I was going to have to adjust my game to adjust to this new reality.

So, I decided I needed to improve my endurance.  I knew I wasn't as quick and as fast as I was in my younger days.  I knew I could no longer outrun a lot of the younger guys at the beginning of games.  However, if I had better endurance than those younger guys, I might be able to outrun them at the end of games - when lots of games are won and lost.  Thus, I resolved to dramatically improve my endurance.  There were two treadmills in the fitness room of the apartment complex my wife and I were living in at the time.  I tried the treadmills out, set a few goals for myself, and the rest as they say, is history.

Still, why treadmills rather than exercise bikes, stair-masters, rowing machines, or elliptical machines?  Well, to lean that, you'll need to read Part 2.

Rich

It's that time of year again

Another birthday, another big Jets playoff game.

Last night I wrote an email to EZ to respond to some of his Jets-related replies to my "My Excuse" blog post.  The email got pretty long, and considering the time I spent on it, I figured that I might as well save all those thoughts in a blog post.  I know that at least one other football fan ( a Jets Fan ) reads this blog, so I might as well take a few minutes to cut-n-paste my Jets thoughts into this post.  Anyway, what follows between the two lines of "#############################################" is  the Jets section of my email to EZ.

#############################################

Now, on to the Jets ...

You wrote ...

"P.S.: Last year, nobody thought they had any business being in the playoffs... this year they are closer to belonging there. Maybe they will pick things up in the postseason, again...?"

Actually, I had more confidence going into the playoffs last year than this year.  While the Jets were a 9-7 team last year ( with 2 gift wins in their last 2 games ) and a 11-5 team this year, I actually thought the 9-7 teams was a stronger team.  It will take a while to explain this, but here's why ...

Yes, everybody said the Jets were a 7-7 team that got handed 2 wins by the Colts and Bengals at the end of the year, but consider ...

1) While the Jets would have lost to the Colts if the Colts had been trying, there was no doubt in my mind that the 2009 Jets could beat the 2009 Bengals 100% of the time in the Meadowlands whether the Bengals were trying or not ( The Jets pretty much proved that 1 week after their final regular season game by beating the Bengals by 10 in the playoff game at Cincinnati.).  So, that makes the 9-7 2009 Jets, a theoretical 8-8 team.

2) However, the Jets also played 4 games that year that could have easily gone one way or the other based on a lucky break or two ( 2 really close games against Miami in which the games came down to a 1st and goal situation at the end; a game against Atlanta that came down to a 4th and goal play at the end of the game; an overtime game against Buffalo in which a Jets run in OT that would have put them in easy field goal range was negated by a questionable holding penalty that had no impact on the play ).  The Jets lost all 4 of those games.  If the Jets played games like that 400 times they would have gone about 200 - 200 in those games.  So, if you take the luck factor out of the equation, the Jets should have won 2 of those 4 games.  When the 2009 season ended, I was convinced the Jets had the ability of a solid 10-6 team rather than a team that would have been 7-9 if they had faced real competition the last two weeks of the season

On the other hand, consider these 4 games played by the 2010 Jets:

Oct 17th at Denver:

The Jets are losing by 3 with a little more than a minute left in the game and are facing 4th and 6 from the Broncos 48.  Sanchez drops back, and uncorks a bomb more than 50 years in the air towards Santonio Holmes near the goal line.  Let me tell you, when that ball got airborne, every Jets fan had the same reaction Jets fans had last week when Sanchez threw a bomb to Braylon Edwards on a 3rd and 5 when the Jets were trying to run out the clock against the Colts

WFT are they doing!!!

That's such a low percentage pass!!!

JUST GET THE FUCKIN' FIRST DOWN!!!!!

GOD, I HATE BEING A JETS FAN!

GOD, I HATE MY LIFE!

( Well, Maybe not everybody had those exact thought, but you get the idea. )

So, this game was pretty much lost, until the Jets got a ridiculous amount of luck.  Specifically ...

1) Sanchez underthrows the ball.

2) Santonio Holmes see the ball has been underthrown, stops short, turns around, and subsequently loses his balance and falls on his butt.

3) The defender stops short, turns around, loses his balance, and instinctively flails one of his arms backward to try to keep from falling down.

4) That hand on the flailing arm hits Santonio Holmes on his facemask and gets caught in it.  The defender is called for pass interference.  The only reason the Jets get the call from the official ( and it was the right call ) is that the hand caught the facemask.  The only reason the hand caught the facemask was that Santonio had already fallen on his butt!

The Jets were RIDICULOUSLY lucky here.  On the next play they score the touchdown that wims the game.

November 7th at Detroit:

With about 4 minutes left in the game the Jets get the ball down by 10 points.  I'm pretty sure they had already blown at least 1 timeout earlier in half.  Somehow, they manage to score 10 points in the last 4 minutes without having to attempt an onside kick.  This was only achieved due to some incredibly poor clock management by the Lions when they had the ball.  The game goes to OT and the Jets win.

November 14th at Cleveland:

About 5 minutes into OT, a Cleveland receiver catches a pass an runs into field goal range. Just as I'm about to scream about what an awful loss this would be ( Cleveland scored a TD late in regulation to tie the game ), the receiver fumbles.  He's really close to the sideline, but somehow the ball stays in bounds and the Jets recover the ball.

  Later Sanchez throws and interception with about 90 seconds left in the same.  I'm just hoping for a tie at this point, but somehow the Jets get the ball back ( AWFUL playcalling by the Browns ) and score a touchdown with seconds left to win the game.

November 21st vs. Houston

The Texan's kick a field goal to go up 27-23.  This happens one play after they fail on a 3rd down conversion that would have clinched the game.  There are 55 seconds left in the game and the Jets have NO timeouts.  This was shaping up the be the worst loss of the year, becasue the Jets were ahead 23-7 going into the 4th quarter.  Somehow Sanchez drives them down the field to win the game on a touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes.  I scream so load at this point that I literally make a few kids cry ( A bunch of Ruth's college friends and their kids were at the house that day ).

If the Jets had played 400 games like the ones above, I think they'd be real fortunate to win 100 of them.  However, I'll be real generous and give the Jets credit for 1 out of those 4 wins.  Thus, I think the 11-5 Jets are really more like an 8-8 team.

If you are still not convinced that the 2009 Jets were a better team than the 2010 Jets consider the following stat.  In 2009, the Jets defense gave up only 8 touchdown passed all year.  Think about how incredible that is for a moment.  If a quarterback throws only 8 TD passed over 16 games he'd be out of a job.  The 2009 Jets made QBs look like guys who did not even belong in the league.  In 2009, they played against Tom Brady twice, Drew Brees once, as well Peyton Manning for about 2.5 quarters.

The 2010 Jets gave up 24 touchdown passes.  That's not awful, but it can't compare to the defense of the 2009 Jets.

Anyway, before I seem too much like a Gloomy Gus, here are a few more stats.

Career records on the road in the playoffs ( I'm not counting the Superbowl as a road game )

Peyton Manning: 2-5

Tom Brady: 3-2

Mark Sanchez: 3-1

Now, I'm not trying to suggest the Sanchez is better than Brady or Manning.  I'm simply pointing out ( as Drew Brees learned last week ) that winning on the road in the playoffs is a hard thing to do, and Sanchez has been able to do it.  That bodes well for the future. 

Also, I think it's kinda interesting that Eli Manning had more road playoff victories in one season ( 3 in 2007 ) than his big brother has had in his whole career.  As a big brother, I'm a little bit insulted.  Time to step it up, Peyton!

It's also worth nothing the Jets victory over the Colts last week marked the first time the Jets franchise has ever won playoff games in consecutive years.  It also made Mark Sanchez and Rex Ryan the Jets all time leaders in playoff wins with 3 ( Yes, even counting Superbowl III, Namath only won 2 playoff games in his career.).  I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that stat.

In any case, it should be Sunday, though as usual, I'm not really expecting much.

However, for the first time in my life, I do believe the the Jets have a coach/QB combo that WILL ( evenatually ) take us to the Promised Land.

#############################################

BTW, as I gear up for the big game tomorrow, I find myself playing the following video quite a bit ( I was playing it throughout last week's win against the Colts ):



Also, just for the sake of balance ( and humor ) I've decided to also include the following Tom Brady video in this post.  I think I've mentioned it before, but the video below inspired me to get my MoLewis57 YouTube account.



Rich

Peter's Christmas Pageant

Happy New Year folks!

I don't have anything to write about the the New Year, but I would like to share some Christmas songs from Peter and his classmates ( Peter is in the grey sweater and plaid tie ).

Note: The video below is actually too wide to fit on my blog page, so just double-click on the video if you want to see it full-sized on he YouTube page.



Rich

These Boots Are Made for Walkin' ( for more than 22 years )

A few days ago a major blizzard hit the east coast of the USA.  We got at least two feet of snow ( The town right next to us got 30 inches of snow, so we were probably within a few inches of that ), so it was time to get out my old boots and get to work with my snowblower and shovel ( I needed to use the shovel a lot more than I would have liked .  There were still very strong winds the day after the storm.  A lot of the snow you would try to blow away would just blow right back at you. ).  The snow was quite impressive, but I'm not going to include pictures of the snow-scape in this blog post.  I've already posted enough snow pictures in his blog over the last few years.

Instead, I posted a picture of my boots.  My late mother took me to a shoe store to buy these books back in August of 1988.  I was about to head off to Cornell University, and my Mom wanted to make sure my feet were properly protected against the harsh Ithaca winters.

Well, more than 22 years later these books are still protecting my feet.  They're still 100% waterproof and my feet have never felt the least bit cold in these boots ( BTW, in case you are wondering were you can get such great boots, I just discovered that this brand of boots ( Northland ) was discontinued in 1998 ).  Now, I certainly don't wear these boot every day ( I only put them on when the weather is really bad ), but regardless of how often I've worn them, it's still rather impressive that these boots have lasted for more than 22 years.

So, their durability makes these boots rather special, but what makes them even more special is that they were a gift from my Mom.  Whenever I put these boots on, it kinda feels like my Mom is still looking out for me all these years later.  I hope these boots can last at least another 22 years, cause it will kind of be a sad day when I finally need to replace them.

Rich

My Excuse

I'm going to try to keep this post relatively short, because at this point I don't think too many people are actually reading this blog regularly.  I wouldn't really blame anyone if they stopped reading my blog, because to be completely honest, I really haven't been bringing a lot to the table lately.  There was a time when I was regularly writing about 10 blog posts a month.  There was a time when I making several YouTube videos a week.  There was even a time when I used to post photos to facebook every once in a while.  Times have certainly changed since back then.

Why is that?

Well, there are a whole bunch of reason, but for now I'll just off one excuse.

As some of you know, I'm a HUGE sports fan.  Prior to September of 2007, the only real "hobbies" I had ever had were watching sports, reading about sports, talking about sports, thinking about sports, playing sports, and listening to sports talk radio.

Starting around mid-September 2007, my favorite baseball team ( The Mets ) began a collapse of historic proportions that cost them 1st place and made them the laughing-stock of the baseball world.  My favorite football team ( The Jets ) was in the midst of a 4-12 season, and my favorite basketball team ( The Knicks ) had completely sucked for about 7 years.

Around that same time, I started making YouTube videos, and I really don't think the timing was a coincidence.  My traditional "hobby" was becoming far too depressing, so I was open to finding a new one.

Well my online hobby has been a lot of fun, and I expect it will bring me a lot of joy in the future, but over the last year, I'm found myself focusing back on sports.  Last January, the Jets made a surprise run to the AFC championship game.  There were playing well enough this year, that I found myself going on a desperate quest to buy an antenna.  They were playing so well, that less than a week ago, they were tied for the best record in football, and they had me dreaming about finally getting to see my football team win the championship.

Well, in the last week, I've watched the Jets lose 45-3 ( !!!!!!! ) and 10-6, and all my dreams of a Jets championship have been dashed for another year ( I've been rooting for my 3 favorite teams for more than 100 combined seasons, and only in one of those seasons did my team win the championship ( and that happened way back in 1986 ). ).

So, I guess it's not surprising that less than 3 hours after the Jets last loss, I found myself writing this blog post.  Does the Jets recent ineptitude mean that I'll be online a lot more in the near future?

Who knows?  After all, after 10 years of sucking to high heaven, the Knicks are now on an 8-game winning streak.

Rich

P.S. So much for making this post short.  I'm not sure if anyone is going to read this, but it was fun to to write again.

Fall Fun

This was a lot easier when I was a little kid.



I expected to hear the sounds of leaves crackling and crunching when I did this.  Instead I heard a faint rustling followed by a thump.

Rich

Everything I never wanted to know about antennas, but I was afraid I would have to ask.

Just a mundane slice of my life ...

On October 16th, my cable system ( Cablevision, a cable company with more than 3 million subscribers in the Northeast USA ) stopped broadcasting the FOX network ( which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp ). News Corp's last contract with Fox ended on October 16th, and there was a big dispute about how much Cablevision would have to pay to carry the FOX network.

This initially wasn't that big a deal to me. These disputes usually only last a few days, and I don't really watch any FOX show regularly these days ( Well, I do love The Simpsons and Family Guy, but they are not really what you might call "appointment viewing" anymore. Considering how many stations show reruns of those shows, if I miss any new episode of The Simpsons or Family Guy, it's only a matter of time before I see it as a rerun on another station ( Plus, there is always Hulu. ). ).

However, I was concerned about one thing; My beloved New York Jets would be playing against the Green Bay Packers on October 31st, and they only network with broadcast rights to that game is FOX. I probably wrote enough about my devotion to the Jets in this post, but I'd just like to reiterate that the Jets have not won a championship in my lifetime ( The last time they even played in the NFL Championship game was when they won the Super Bowl back in January of 1969 ), and watching the Jets win the championship is one of the items on my bucket list of things I want to see before they put me in the ground.

Well, the Jets are still a long way from the Super Bowl, but they are 5-1 this year ( in a 16 game season ) and are among the 3 or 4 teams in the league with the best chance of winning the championship this year. I'm as excited about this team as I've been in many years ( though as a long-suffering Jets fan, I'm still very worried that this team will far apart like all the promising Jets teams have in my lifetime. ), so I'd really hate to miss a game this year.

Anyway, I wasn't too concerned, because Jets games usually are not even broadcasts on the FOX network. The Jets usually only have one game broadcast on the FOX network a year, and I figured things would probably get resolved by October 31th. However, as we started to get closer to October 31st, and the FOX/Cablevision dispute became more contentious, I started to research contingency plans.

I looked into any and all options for watching the game online via a live feed, but I really couldn't find any non-sketchy websites that could guarantee access to the Jets-Packers game. The best option was probably this site, but this company has only existed for a month or so, and is being sued by every major broadcast network. While their 30-day free-trial sounds like a tempting offer, I didn't feel comfortable about giving my credit card number to a new company that might be sued into financial ruin soon. So, I started to research antennas.

FOX is actually a broadcast network, so by law all their programming has to be broadcast for free over the air. However, getting reception via an indoor antenna can be sketchy at times, and as much as I love the Jets, I wasn't going to buy a big outdoor antenna and install it on my roof to watch just one Jets game.

Still, an antenna was really my only option other than unreliable online feeds, so I started to do research. I started to do LOTS of research. This blog post has gotten long enough, so I won't bore you by writing about any technical details, but lets just say I now know a shitload about antennas, far more than I even wanted to know about antennas.

So, after lots of research, I bought a $15 indoor antenna today ( well worth the price, if the thing actually worked ), brought it home, hooked it up to the TV, pointed the antenna in precisely the correct direction ( Google Maps was involved here ), crossed my fingers, and tuned the TV to the correct channel.

Voila!!!! At 6:30 PM on October 30th, FOX was back on my TV! About a year ago, all over the air TV broadcasts in the USA switched from an analog signal to a digital signal. The nice thing about a digital signal, is that you never get the "snow" or "ghosts" you would often get using an indoor antenna to get analog signals. With digital, you either get a perfect picture or no picture at all, and my little $15 dollar precisely-aimed indoor antenna was getting a perfect picture.

I was actually stunned by this. Despite all my preparation and research, I really didn't think the antenna would actually work.

Anyway, the amusing postscript of this story is the following: After watching the baseball World Series on FOX via my antenna all night ( much better than watching it on crappy online feeds), I switched my TV back to my Cablevision cable box input and started channel surfing a bit. After about an hour of surfing ( just before I decided to start working on this blog post ), I discovered that FOX was available on Cablevision again. Apparently, as I was hooking up my antenna, Cablevision and News Corp were resolving their dispute. As far as I can tell from news articles, FOX became available on Cablevision just minutes after I hooked up my antenna.

Well, I guess I've now got 2 ways to watch the Jets tomorrow, though I must say I'm a little disappointed with Cablevision. It seems like they caved a bit in the negotiations with News Corp, which of course will mean higher cable bills soon ( Switching cable providers is a bigger pain in the butt than you might think, because we get our cable TV, internet access, and phone service all though Cablevision. I'm not fan of Cablevision, but I must admit that their internet service is ultra fast. All non-biased reviews indicate that all other internet service providers in our area offer much slower upload/download speeds than Cablevision. I could cancel the Cablevision TV and keep the Internet and phone service, but the price of the Internet and phone service goes WAY up if you do that. ).

Oh well, at least I got a good antenna for situations like this in the future, and I have all this antenna knowledge that I could use if I ever find myself on one of those oh-so-popular antenna-based quiz shows.

Rich