[Jeffhs]

I was very sorry to read of your misfortunes, but am glad you are starting to rebuild things. I hope everything works out for you. I had a stepmother in the early 1970s I never got along with. We were always drawing sparks from each other; at one point, when I was 17 years old, and in the middle of that winter yet (!), she locked me out of her house (my dad and I were living with her at the time; they had had a huge argument over something, don't know what, which led to her locking me out after he stormed out of the house in the middle of the night; long story, though I think she may have been drunk at the time). She had very serious problems; she wound up divorcing my dad and we moved back to our old home town.

After all the monkey business and worse I put up with while we were living with that woman, I was never so glad in all my life as I was when my dad told me we were moving back to my old stomping grounds. When I left my stepmother's house for the last time in mid-1975, after I graduated high school, I felt like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders; however, I had nightmares for the entire first year after I moved about her chasing me.

Anyway, again, I hope things work out for you in the future. Your dad may eventually come around, or maybe not; only time will tell.

BTW, that little RCA table model TV you have looks great; it must be one of a very few CRT TVs equipped with an ATSC digital tuner. I don't know if you have tried it on cable or with an antenna, but if the CRT is strong, you should get an excellent picture, now and for the foreseeable future. It isn't a "true" RCA (I have a 19" table model "RCA" set in my bedroom, bought new when I moved here in late 1999, but unused since I got a 19" flat screen eight years ago and replaced it with a 32" FS set six months ago), but it was likely made by Thomson, and is probably better in a lot of ways than many of today's flat screens. I don't know how old your set is, but if it is a CTC203 or later, it will have a tuner that is mounted separately from the main chassis. RCA (Thomson)'s earlier TVs, including mine (CTC185A7 chassis) had the tuner mounted on the main board, which caused no end of problems--especially when the ground points around the shield over the tuner came loose and allowed noise to enter the "jungle" IC, corrupting said chip in an instant. I bet RCA replaced/reprogrammed dozens if not hundreds (!) of those chips under warranty until the CTC203 came out.

Hang in there. Every cloud has a silver lining. It sounds as if, as I and VK member Jon A. said, you are starting to get back on track. Hopefully, things will continue to improve for you.

Best of luck.