Buying your first house means that your budget gets stretched a little thin, and comparison shopping becomes more important. The best deals can usually be had online, when compared to looking around in a brick and mortar store. You save the gas to get there, you can comparison shop more easily and effectively, and prices are often lower. You need to be careful not to lose all of your savings in shipping costs, but many home goods merchants online will waive shipping fees.
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Since May, I have been taking part in the Portland Trails Back Bay 5k race series. Every Wednesday night at 6:00 for the last 19 weeks there has been a free 5k around the back bay trail.

I only actually raced 3 of them, since I usually did a speed workout such as quarter mile repeats or half mile repeats on my trip around, but they were fun and made it easier for me to skip some of the more expensive races I usually run in the summer. I only missed one of the races, and that was because I was on my honeymoon and did not feel any need to hurry back for it.

If you have a favorite activity that you like to do, such as running riding a bike, you should see what is available in your area. Local stores will often sponsor group runs and rides for little to no cost.

The problems with my cable service that I was having are not really solved, but they are worked around. The network channels still do not come in, but I now have access to the high definition channels which come in really well. The channels that I watch regularly are all available in high definition except for CBS, which was not the worst in quality to begin with. Even the shows that are not produced for high definition look fine on the 700 range of channels. The downside is that I could not talk them out of the extra couple of dollars that renting the high definition box cost. Hopefully when three months rolls around, I can convince them to continue my promotional rate for another three months in order to keep me from cancelling my services. Going back to the blurryness is not going to be easy, but it will not be worth it to spend an extra $60 when the majority of the channels still do not look all that particularly well.

Recently, Time Warner cable took over for Adelphia. They still have not got complete control, but that should come over the next three to six months. Football season started last night, so I had cable television installed yesterday afternoon. Last night, I watched the Miami and Pittsburgh game with what is somewhat less than the quality that I would have expected from digital cable. The tech who installed the cable checked the signal, which was plenty strong. However, once I actually tried watching the babble box I had to check to make sure that I was in fact using cable and not some rabbit ears.
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High speed internet is important in my line of work, but for most of the year we do not bother with cable television. It is too expensive and it would not get watched often enough to make it worth having. Cable television is one of those things that just costs way too much, especially with our current cable provider. They are going through bankruptcy and are in the process of switching over to Time Warner, so I hope that it will be a little cheaper once that process is completed, but it has not been completed yet.

Our current cable company sends us deals on a pretty regular basis in an attempt to upsell us. The funny thing is that most of their postcards that they mail out are postmarked 2 to 3 days after the deal expires, so you can never actually make use of them.

I called up this morning, however, and ordered an installation. We will have 3 months of digital cable coming to us with a free installation, and then hopefully Time Warner will have completely taken over and will have a new 3 month deal that we can sign up for. If not, then we will go down to just basic cable. We do not really need anything but local network channels anyway. No matter what, at the end of February or in January, we will cancel the cable television service again and stick to cable internet.

Coincidentally enough, the first day that they could schedule the installation was on September 7^th around lunch time. This works out rather well, as Miami is playing Pittsburgh at 8:30 that evening.

As much fun as I had on my honeymoon in Quebec over the past week, I am glad to be home. Sleeping in my own bed, with a 9 pound bundle of fur laying against my legs, wending my way around the mess from all of the wedding presents…it is great to be home. I just wish that I could spend a few more days at home without having to go straight back to work.