Stuology

I did want to spend some of the day at The Little Green Festival today, but the heat index is already 109, and it isn’t even the hottest part of the day yet. Little James doesn’t do so well in the heat. Neither does big James.

I think today is a good day to stay inside and paint in the basement. Mac has already done some work down there the last couple of days. I decided to just paint where the hideous wallpaper is at. We don’t know how long we will be in this house, so I didn’t want to paint it the colors that I really want and then go turn around and paint it again next summer so we can sell the house.

TV update: So far, I do not miss it at all. I do miss the music though. We need to get the media center and the 360 talking again so I can stream music in the living room. The tuner on the amp picks up mostly static.

Day 22: Line-up change

This is why we were at Best Buy on Sunday. Something that we kept talking about is replacing the, um 32-inch, CRT that is in our bedroom. We’ve looked at LCD tvs. Mac has looked around at projectors. We always pass with my statement being “we only use the tv to help go to sleep at night, and the CRT works fine for that.” However, on Saturday Mac and Ada went looked for DVD organizing solutions, and while he was at Best Buy, he looked at tvs, coming home with two model numbers for a Sony jotted in his phone. He asked me about it again, and on Sunday, we looked at the two tvs online for comparison. They were on sale! And Best Buy would give us 3-year, no-interest financing, and they threw in a $400 Blu-Ray player for free. Now, our new 46-inch 1080p LCD is in the living-room pinch hitting for the 60-inch tv which is broken. We get to keep the money for the tv in our savings account until I have stable employment. We get to play games again. And as soon as the living room tv gets fixed, we have a mounting kit to hang the 46-inch tv on our wall, freeing up floor space in our bedroom.

I was leary of buying into high definition dvds until one format became standard. However, it was free^*, and with Warner Brothers Home Entertainment going Blu-Ray exclusive this May, and with rumors that Target is going Blu-Ray exclusive as well, online forums are all a chatter with the death of HD-DVDs. I don’t think that we are going to spend tons buying Blu-Ray discs, but we can rent them from Netflix.

I also used this pic to try the Pixelmator demo, hence the watermark. It would be another option besides Photoshop Elements for affordable photo editing. I’ll probably stick with Photoshop. It is just a pain to have to start up Parallels since we only have a Window’s license.

*One wonders why Sony doesn’t offer a PS3 for free. The 40GB system cost exactly the same as the Blu-Ray players they are giving away, PS3s are coming in last in console sales, and they have a Blu-Ray player, so people will not only buy into the movies, but they would also buy into the games.

Mac got me a surprise which was delivered today–a chest freezer! My excitement over getting a chest freezer has solidified how domestic my life has become. I’m happy with it though–both my life and the new freezer. It has two sliding baskets, and small shelf basket, and then slightly adjustible dividers in the bottom. It also has a key, which will be important when one kid^* reaches the age where putting the other kid^** in the freezer would be funny. Right now though, we aren’t sure why we would lock it. Now I may buy my cow^***, although I’m a little bummed that the price has gone up since I last looked.

Mac also picked up Season One of Heroes on DVD for me as a surprise. I want to start watching it, but ugh, work.

Mac bought Ada a Fraggle yesterday during his shopping trip. With it, came a DVD with two tv shows and a cartoon. I watched the tv shows as a kid, but never knew they made a cartoon. I love the classic Jim Henson humor that is in these shows. My mother was also impressed that I could sing the theme song. Yes, I watched it as a kid, I said. The theme song without words is one of my ring tones on my phone.

James has been super, super grumpy and crying these last few days. I have to keep singing “Dance your cares away, worries for another day…” to keep myself sane.

Season one of Fraggle Rock is on DVD. I’m going to pick it up. I also need to see if they released season two of the complete Muppet Show on DVD. I bought season one.

ETA: It is coming out in August. It only took, what, 3 or 4 years inbetween the two seasons?

With the things that I still need to do around the house, including planning next week’s meals, I’m not going into KC for shopping today. Maybe I can sneak out of work a couple hours early and do a shopping trip before coming home. I just don’t have a lot of clothes that fit me that aren’t t-shirts. I even had to wear a maternity shirt the other day because everything in my small arsenal was dirty. I’m just tired of looking like a slob.

Tonight was the season finale of Heroes. This was my favorite tv show of this season, followed by Battlestar Galactica. During tonight’s episode, I saw three things:

• The theatrical trailer to The Transformers: It made me even more excited than watching it online. I know that Mac thinks I’m a big dork, but I think I squealed.
• A tiny clip of the new show for next season on NBC, The Bionic Woman: When I saw the scene in the hospital, I jokingly said something about her being made better, faster, stronger. Then they pulled back the covers, and again, I think I squealed. Wow! Yes, this was announced in 2002, but I don’t pay attention to such things. I’m glad that I don’t, but the surprise of seeing it was way better than reading a long time ago that it was going to be made. Starbuck is going to be the nemesis in this series. I wasn’t really a fan of the original series. I’m just impressed at how people are remaking these shows, taking away the hokeyness and replacing it with a tv-noir element.
• A tiny bit about next season’s Heroes: I have already read about this and "Generations." I wasn’t too thrilled about reading about the voting part. I don’t want to vote for anything. I want to watch, and be absorbed in a good story. "Choose Your Own Adventure" — if in fact that is what they are aiming for — does not thrill me.

Heroes comes out on DVD at the end of August, as I have been told. I can’t wait to watch the entire thing again. I’m hoping that I will be able to tempt McKitterick into viewings.

I just recently got digital cable. Today was the first time I actually had time to stop and watch it. I think I spent more time browsing through the interactive TV Guide than I did actually watching anything. So far my favorite new addition to my channel line-up is the Independent Film Channel and Discovery Science.