Quite often when I’ve moved I’ve spent the first few days, weeks, or even months without cable. There is just so much to do when you’re moving it’s easy to forget about something as non-essential as cable. Back in the days when I had roommates we would sit around talking, maybe watching a Red Sox game on the bunny ears, and save a few dollars on cable until we just couldn’t look at each other anymore. This time, though, I made a decision not to get cable. And so far, it ain’t so bad.

Here’s the thing; between Netflix and the internet there isn’t much you can’t watch without cable. In fact, I end up watching more of what I actually like and less of what just happens to be on. Thanks to Netflix I’ve been re-watching “Northern Exposure,” one of my favorite shows of all time, and finally jumped on “The Wire” bandwagon. And I’m catching up on the seasons of “Big Love” I missed while refusing to pay for HBO. I’ve watched movies I never would have seen otherwise, and have a laundry list of other  TV shows to watch on DVD. Meanwhile, I use Hulu.com to watch any current shows I follow. Other than “Chelsea Lately” and “The Soup!” there isn’t much I can’t get full episodes of.

There is one strange side effect though; being behind in the news. I haven’t gotten around to getting myself one of those new converter boxes so I can watch the regular channels, but I fully plan on doing so, because when I turned on the radio this morning and was, apparently, the last person in the world to have heard Michael Jackson was dead I felt a bit out of sorts.

So far, though, I don’t miss TV much. When I first started to consider this move I couldn’t imagine what I would do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I’m only slightly more likely to go out somewhere because a lazy Sunday afternoon is…well…lazy, but now, instead of watching a marathon of “Top Chef” or “The Real Housewives of Wherever” (which I’ve probably already seen several times) I watch some movie on my Netflix Instant Queue. A couple of weeks ago I had an Irish history lesson when I watched The Boxer, Michael Collins, and The Wind that Shakes the Barley all on one rainy day.

So far the only problem has been getting a computer hooked up to my television so that I can watch shows on Hulu on my TV instead of my monitor, but that hasn’t been a huge inconvenience. In fact, if I would hurry up and get one of those digital converter boxes I might not even notice.