Good December 28th to you all.  Hope you had a nice holiday.  Ours was quiet and totally at home since my brother's family, with whom we were supposed to spend a bit of time Christmas Eve, were all down with the flu.

It has been quiet on the posting front also largely because I haven't really felt like commenting on much I have seen on-line.  The news hasn't really been new--the names may change a bit but the basic stories are the same.  And has anyone else noticed how little of it merits the time the programers devote to it?

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To continue the thoughts from yesterday (it is now December 29)--I remarked a while ago that we reduced our cable subscription to simple basic though the representative tried very hard to induce us to go to a bigger package.  The change was the culmination of several years of increasing dissatisfaction with cable TV generally.  The provider wasn't the problem--the content was.  More often than not we simply couldn't find anything we wanted to watch.  After almost a decade of debating the situation as the we found our choices more and more restricted (not everyone loves the "reality" shows or Duck Dynasty) we cut back on cable.  If we had found an indoor antenna that would have functioned with our constraints, we would have cut it entirely.  The final straw came when we realized that even the news programming had shifted to more infotainment and less of what we considered real news.  We don't care what is going on with the Kardashians or which former child star is misbehaving or what new idiocy Justin Bieber is up to.

Ah, for a bit of relief from my grousing and grumbling an absolutely cute bit from the Archdruidess.

Yesterday Mom suddenly remarked that she just read an article which listed 75 TV shows that have been cancelled--and we haven't seen a single one of them.  Didn't want to see the ones we saw promoted.  We both chuckled a bit over that but it does go a long way toward explaining why we cut back so severely on cable.

OMG--gas prices here were down to $1.84/gal this morning.  Haven't seen prices that low for the last 8+ years.  We'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Does anyone else get the feeling that a lot of bloggers and others on the 'net are very glad to see the end of 2014 but don't feel any great enthusiasm for 2015?  I do feel that way to an extent.  The political deadlock was frustrating and annoying coupled with the unending campaigns.  Some of that was fueled by the (s)news media which simply has to hype the controversies and speculations.  And more of it was fueled by the gigantic egos and small brains of the politicians.  I would be more welcoming of the new year if I felt that anything would change on that front for the better--but I feel in my bones it won't.  The weather has been just as strange as ever and that is something else I don't see reverting to what had seemed normal for most of my life.  The economy is as absurdly surreal as it has been since well before the 2007 meltdown.  That is something else I don't expect to change for the better in the coming year.  Wall Street and the politicians do well and try to convince the rest of us that things are improving.  2015 just doesn't appear to offer anything to be enthusiastic about.  Hope I'm wrong; afraid I'm right.