The Aerie
Hi y'all! Just dropping by to say hello from my vacation paradise...
my basement.
Well, I got my refridgerator cleaned last night. Let me tell you, I
know how to have FUN on my vacation! It wasn't as disgusting as some
legendary refrigerator cleanings -- no stinking pseudopods of glop
rose up to fight back when I pulled out the crisper drawers. But I
emptied the sucker completely, tipped it on its side, and blew all the
dust out of the coils underneath.
That's one thing that kills me: why do they put the coils under or
behind the fridge? If the idea is to vent heat, put them on TOP and
let the heat float up off the fridge, instead of just forcing it to
soak right back into the fridge? I've always thought houses should
come with places where you can connect the fridge, and the heat would
be dumped outside the house... but nobody ever listens to my ideas for
some reason.
Anyway, I'm doing my best to make the most of this vacation, trying to
balance chores-I-want-to-accomplish with writing with
having-fun-with-the-family.
Saturday and Sunday I spent in intensive chores mode, building a
computer and upgrading to the latest patch levels in order to have
something to work on when I rebuild my laptop. Did you know that in
order to take a Windows 2000 CD disk and upgrade to the latest
patches, it takes five hours and over 100M of downloads? Criminal!
Monday we spent at the Science Museum of Minnesota. It's a great new
science museum, and anyone visiting the Twin Cities is advised to go
there, especially if you have kids with you. Spacious, gorgeous, on a
bluff over the Mississippi, it's a real treat. We saw the "Science of
Magic" show, in which Penn and Teller show how to decapitate your
friends for fun and profit, and then we saw the Omnitheater movie
"Space Station." Oh, my heart was breaking watching that movie. I kept
asking myself "Why didn't I get into the ASTRONAUT program when I was
15 instead of starting with computers?" Sure the ISS is hardly more
than a Winnebago parked 250 miles away in space -- I'd still pay the
Russians $20M for a trip, if I had it.
Sunday night my wife and I had our date-night, which was nice. I used
birthday coupons to Applebees and then we went for a walk around one
of Minnesota's 15,000 lakes, and then we went for chocolate cake.
They served us caffeinated instead of decaf. I fell asleep at 2:30
a.m. Thank you so much, Victoria Crossing Cafe.
Tuesday I wrote! Whee! I need to get to my writing again now, but it
was so nice to sit for about eight hours and actually head-down write.
I think I may have finished this absurd rewrite of the latest chapters
that has been keeping me stalled for a while, and I actually wrote one
or two pages of new story.
Today, after brunch and more writing, we'll do a little shopping for
school clothes (it's raining today). Tonight wife and daughter go out
on various errands, and I'll be home with the boys.
Oh, and another thing we did on Monday -- picked up a DVD player. I
had a $40 coupon that my friend Steve gave me for my birthday, and
while we don't normally shop at Best Buy anymore (ever since the
infamous 'You know, your warranty is already 2/3rds up' comment
several years back), I figured 'what the hell'. I completely dismayed
the salesman by walking in, grabbing the cheapest DVD player off the
rack ($59), and paying for it with cash and coupon (so I don't get on
their mailing lists). So for about $23 out of pocket we got a new DVD
player.
And it works! It works fine. I haven't actually watched a whole DVD on
it yet, but I watched some of Harry Potter, and then I put in the
second disk and played a little of their built-in game.
The coolest thing, to me at least, is the ability to listen to MP3
CDs. I popped in one of the first one's I'd ever burned, and the
player worked fine.
I'd been anxious buying the cheapest Best Buy DVD player that it would
fail somehow -- and goodness knows it may yet, before the warranty is
even 2/3rds up! But for now it's a fun toy, one that was affordable
only because of the generosity of my friends!
Tomorrow... the Minnesota State Fair!
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Posted by Albatross at August 21, 2002 12:00 AM