For a guy who averages less than an hour of television a day, it’s important to me to have good choices when I do sit down in front of the tube. I need to be able to catch The Amazing Race with a clear picture Sunday nights, and I like to be able to relax occasionally and watch Mike Rowe do all the hard work on Dirty Jobs.

Sometimes, I’ll even spend quality time with my wife watching Paula Deen or one of the Food Network Challenge shows. If you are thinking that my wife has no reason ever to question my love for her if I’m willing to make that kind of sacrifice, then go to the head of the class.

Since my wife and I moved into my mother’s home in Suffolk last month, we have had to make some obvious adjustments. We’ve traded the toys left on the floor by our grandsons for my mother’s ubiquitous collection of mermaids. We’ve traded the shriek of sirens bound for nearby Maryview hospital all night long for the sounds of silence in a well-insulated basement bedroom. Clearly, not all of the adjustments have been hard to make.

But the switch from watching DirecTV on a wall-sized projection screen to doing rabbit-ears yoga in an attempt to get a clear picture on the old 27-inch tube in the living room has been more than I can bear.

So I broke down and did something I promised I’d never do again: I called the cable company. And then, during the period between calling to set up the service and having it installed, I got excited about the prospect of super-fast Internet service combined with a high-definition television picture and more than a hundred channels to choose from.

In other words, in my zeal for better television and faster Internet, I forgot the cardinal rules: Don’t get emotionally attached to a product. And ALWAYS look for The Catch.

In this case, I didn’t discover The Catch until the installers were in my home. That’s when they told me that the special $10-per-outlet installation charge would pretty much only be honored if they didn’t have to do any actual work. “We’re the ones with the bad news,” they said as they quoted me a new price of $90 per outlet to install the service.

No, I’m the one with the bad news, and I might as well break it here.

Honey, we won’t be watching Paula Deen for a while. I threw the cable guys out of the house.