Stooge blog.

Time to start this thing again, before the wheels completely rust up. December 1st is a good day to do it, too, being the start of meteorological winter. No need to wait around for the solstice around here, since it's pretty cold just about every day now. What better definition of winter do you need?

I scanned the early evening sky for Orion, too, another certain sign of winter. Not yet. I will be sure to record the first moment when I see it in the sky. That means winter has arrived.

Sometime about two months after we moved into the new house, I broke down and attached the TV to the antenna, so that we could get broadcast television. Television, that is, as God intended it: three networks plus PBS, and an assortment of cut-rate stations in the netherland of the UHF band, some clear, others fuzzy, a few in Spanish, others showing bizarre, unwatchable programs. I'm still resisting cable or satellite TV. The cost is one thing. The size of the wasteland is the other. If broadcast is the Mojave, cable is the Sahara. Cable is Dune.

That said, we passed a major milestone recently in my eldest daughter's cultural education, thanks to one of metro Chicago's UHF stations, Channel 26. Every Saturday evening, this station runs two hours of Three Stooges shorts, and we caught most of them last Saturday and the Saturday before last. Previously, she'd never shown much interest, though she hadn't had a lot of exposure. Six, it turns out, is the right age to appreciate the Stooges.

"What is it?" Lilly asked, after watching a while, and laughing a lot.

"They're the Three Stooges," I said.

"I love the Stooges!" she answered.