From Wit’s End

Running Errands: Meeting a contractor at the house, A dentist or doctor appointment, or dropping something off for repair somewhere in town. About once every one or two months.

Out to lunch: Either Stevie B’s Pizza, China Buffet or a local Mexican Restaurant (under duress from manager) with my associates, or No Name Deli downtown with one or two guys from church. About once every two or three weeks.

Allergy Shot: Leave at 11:45am, go downtown, read a few pages of Entertainment Weekly, get stuck once in each arm, stop at Andy & Ellie’s to pick up Jack, drop Jack off at home with Rachel, get back to work around 12:45pm. About once every ten days.

Rachel at the Pool: Rachel leaves to go swimming at the gym around 12:00pm. I leave work at 12:30pm, pick up Jack from Andy & Ellie’s, come home with Jack and have some lunch. Rachel comes home with wet hair and smelling of chlorine, and I go back to work, arriving at about 1:30pm. About once a week.

Staying in: Sandwich, cookies, chips and applesauce, with a healthy sprinkling of internet browsing and blogging. Two or three times a week.

Pollen,

Sweat,

Pinestraw, &

Static

Last Sunday we used the internet to watch the penultimate episode of Trump’s Apprentice off of the laptop in the living room (The PC in the den being recently defunct). This was the first time we had ever watched a full TV program off the web instead of by more conventional methods. The picture was pretty clear, but the choppy movement made it look as though all of the final four contestants had just recently been replaced by androids.

Just this evening, we saw last week’s episode of LOST off of the internet, piped into the TV by means of an S-video cable from the back of the Mac — widescreen format, with just a few Chrysler commercials interspersed. It was pretty cool. It froze for a minute about two-thirds of the way through, which prompted me to go ahead and hit record on the VCR for this week’s episode that was just starting. So we won’t throw out the VCR just yet, but its days are numbered, I think.

Rachel has christened the new iMac “Pippin”, which is apparently an older variety of apple. [I like the name, of course, because its Tolkien-ish.] She uttered the above observation when she noticed the white spot of light fading in and out on the front of the computer as it was in sleep mode this evening. So it seems like the Queen approves of the new resident of the house.

I’m heading to the nearest Apple Store (which is in Charlotte) to learn more about Macs and then buy one. I was thinking of doing something like this on Friday, but then decided that I couldn’t wait. Like I told Rachel, it matters not when the hookey is played, but that the hookey is played. Watch for an update later today.

UPDATE (about 10pm): Success! The Mac is on the desk, plugged in and turned on. Here’s how it got that way:

I dropped Jack off with Ellie at 9am, and took off for Charlotte. I arrived at the huge mall in Charlotte at about 10:15am and found the Apple Store. I peppered the sales lady with questions, and settled on what I thought I would: the higher-end 17″ iMac G5 with a DVD writer. I carried the big white box back to the car, then went back in a did a lap around the mall (following the right wall, of course), only stopping to procure a slice of cheese pizza in the food court and once more at the Apple Store to pepper the sales lady with more questions. I left around noon and got home at around 1:30pm.

I began disassembling the old technology setup and too stock of what item I had to go out and purchase to make the new setup happen. I went out to Lowe’s, Radio Shack and Trenholm Plaza to get said items and do a few errands as a favor to Rachel. Back at home around 3:30pm, I continued work on the setup. Realizing that I bought the wrong size shelf hardware at Lowe’s for the TV cabinet, and also was short about 1 foot of USB cord for my printer, I blocked off the den-side of the room from the interference of Jack and zipped out one more time. I picked up Jack at about 5:30pm between stops at Lowe’s and Radio Shack, and came home to start dinner. I put a pot on to boil for some spaghetti, and reheated the leftover grilled chicken quarters from the weekend. Rachel got home from work just in time to cut some lettuce from our garden for some salad. After dinner, I wrestled with hiding the cords, while Rachel took Jack with her to the grocery store. When she returned around 9pm, Jack was ready for a bottle and bed. As Jack took his formula, I brought in the groceries and put them away.

Finally, when Jack was finally in his crib and asleep, I finally got to turn on the Mac. BONG. A dialog pops up to tell me that it needs to get some updates from the internet, to which I give my assent. The downloading starts, and then it stops prematurely. It had attempted to use a wireless network that wasn’t mine, and I closed that and gave up on figuring out how to fix that until tomorrow. As I finally finish hiding the wires from little hands, the white screen falls asleep. That being a good idea, I’m off to bed as well.

That was some good hookey, if slightly expensive.

Well, the e-Machines PC that I bought about three years ago finally flamed out this afternoon. There were a few capacitors on the motherboard that had worn out to a point that when they reached a certain temperature they would open up and shut the computer down. Kudos to the Geek Squad at Best Buy for showing this to me.

Soooo… I’m going to be switching over to a Mac in the next week or so! I don’t think I’ll be getting an iBook, I’m pretty sure it’s either going to be a Mac Mini or an iMac. AppleTV is also very attractive to me, but I suppose that could wait while I get accustomed to the main computer. Let me know if you have any suggestions or pointers. Look back in at most a week to see what I decided.

Well, I had the most exciting grocery shopping trip of my life this evening. I was standing in line at the checkout at about 8:00pm Monday night when I heard a huge crash coming from the wine section, quickly followed by a scream and a woman yelling “Stop him! He’s got my wallet!” There was something about the way she said it that no one in the store doubted her. He dashed all the way across behind the row of registers and headed for the entrance next to the pharmacy with quite a few people in pursuit. Another crash and the pharmacist came running out the door to intercept him, the manager came over the customer service desk, and three men tackled the thief. He was on the ground right at the doors. He yelled a lot and the men holding him down yelled back. They stayed on top of him until the police arrived.
After what happened at VT today, I couldn’t help but be afraid this guy had a gun. If he did, he never had a chance to get it out. I think I’ll be watching my purse a little more closely now.

The first time was while Rachel was changing his diaper right before bed. I wasn’t quite sure myself if he actually did it, but Rachel said that he was looking right at the object of his sign, so she was sure. I actually saw it for the first time when she was giving him his before-bed bottle. At our prompting, he did it again and again, and was pretty pleased with himself. What was his first sign, you may ask? I’ll give you one guess…

Usually when we come back from church and we’re not having anyone over, I’m in the habit of getting comfortable by taking off my button-down shirt and shoes and hanging around the house in my t-shirt and socks. This afternoon, when it was almost time to go to evening church, and I was carrying Jack. “Well, Jack, we’re going to have to go to the back of the house so that Daddy can put his shoes and shirt back on, because … heh… ‘No shirt, no shoes, no service!’ “

I got up this morning to put the dogs out, and lo, one of them could not be found. Mercy came out of the woodwork, but Kat was not to be accounted for. Rachel got slightly jumpy about this, so I ventured down the street in robe and moccasins with just enough light to see where I was going. I called, “Kat, come! Kat, house!” a few times, and she came bounding out of the shrubbery from a few houses down the street as only a greyhound can. She was all trembly and excited from her campout once she got in the house, and received many scritches and scratches from her loving mistress. It was about then that I had remembered that when Jack had untimely awoken from sickness at about midnight the night before, I had heard random dog noises behind the house, but had thought that I was hearing things. Best we can figure, Kat followed Rachel out to the garden the evening before, gotten distracted by something, and didn’t follow her back in. Dogs… what the hey.

This is how lightly I’ve been sleeping lately: In the middle of the night last night, the frequency of the air passing through Rachel’s nostrils as she slept happened to be in the possible frequency range of Jack’s crying, and it woke me up. Sheesh.

I woke up this morning, made a bottle, and sat on the couch in the den to feed Jack. While I was feeding him I looked at the VCR to check on the time, and I couldn’t believe that the time has passed by so fast. I’m used to time just whizzing by in the mornings, but this was ridiculous. I could have sworn that I got up a little bit after 6am, and the VCR told me that it was 7:20am. What? Then I figured it out: The VCR itself had no idea of the ministrations of our well-meaning all-knowing federal government concerning the start of Daylight Savings Time, and innocently was trying to be helpful by springing ahead one hour as it was programmed to do. Somehow I don’t think changing the time on certain machines four times a year instead of twice a year is saving any energy.