Happy Friday

Ah, the joys of discovery! It's amazing what you can learn if you can just keep your cool and work to a goal. The goal: getting the TV antenna that we received yesterday hooked up and working.

Hubby started on it yesterday afternoon and did a stellar job of putting the antenna together. He ran to the store and picked up the necessary coax cable and hooked everything together. It was late afternoon by then, so we didn't go crazy trying a lot of stuff, but we did position the antenna at a few different spots in the house to see what kind of reception we could get.

It didn't matter where we put the antenna, we got an amazing signal from the Public TV station in Warrensburg. If we got toward the back of the house (which is south), we could pick up some stations from Columbia. Things were looking promising at the point we felt like we were both too tired to continue.

This morning we got up feeling rested, refreshed, and ready to try it again. Hubby started by taking the antenna out to the front porch. Every time we ran a signal search, we'd find another station or two. The higher he put the antenna, the more channels we could find. And the reception was phenomenal....much better than the satellite reception. By the time the antenna was at the ceiling of the porch, we were getting all the KC stations except one, plus all the sub-stations. We're still picking up a couple of Columbia stations, the Warrensburg station, and even one from Jefferson City.

We have wrought iron porch posts, and the clamps on the antenna fits one of those posts like they were MFEO (Made For Each Other – fans of “Sleepless In Seattle” will get that reference!). We also discovered that our 100 feet of coax cable was too much and could diminish our signal, so it's been switched out for 50 feet. All in all, we're pretty pleased that we have a good backup system for eventually freeing ourselves from satellite.

We feel pretty good with our forward strides for today. We got so much done with installing this antenna before we even did our daily podcasts this morning. We got those done and ready to post.....and since it was coming up on 11 and I was still in my pj's, I thought it was probably time to shower and get dressed!! I can't remember when I was still in my pj's at 11 am, except for when I was under the weather. It was kind of nice not to have any time pressure!

We decided to grab lunch at the local Mexican restaurant. I did some reading for my online class this afternoon, and we walked at the Fitness Track. All in all, it's been a great day!

I'm looking forward to a good weekend. We have no big plans. I do need to do some house cleaning tomorrow, then we're looking forward to NFL on Sunday. It should be a very relaxing weekend. I hope all of you have a good weekend, too.