May, 2009

The old alarm system in our new house was dated — most security companies we contacted had never even heard of its manufacturer.  But the fatal flaw was that its motion sensors were not “pet-friendly” and would therefore go off if the cats were to move about in our absence.  Our insurance company gives us a significant discount for having an alarm system, so going without is not an option.  So I ordered a completely new, modern system, some of the components of which you see here.

The airport.  Not generally one of my favorite places.  But in a different guise, the Apple AirPort is our chosen solution to distributing music throughout the house.

Two little boxes now allow us to pipe music from the office to the living room on the 1st floor, and the loft on the 3rd floor, without having to fish cables through the walls.

Lis and I went for a walk around the neighborhood this evening.  It was a much more pleasant and sedate walk than we’ve been accustomed to in Southboro, not involving any stretches along busy roads like Rte. 85.  Still, I saw nothing photo-worthy.  But upon our return I saw the garage.  Someday, once boxes are cleared and organization is accomplished, I will park inside.

Tonight I cooked the first full meal in our new kitchen.  We’ve had good meals at the house already, but they’ve been of the quick, low effort variety, or from the grill.  I actually used all 4 burners.  Tonight’s selection is seared Coho salmon fillets with a lemon-lime glaze, served with couscous and a salad.

The good news is that the stove, while old, is in good working condition and puts out a good amount of heat with decent control.  I’m sure we will replace it soon enough, but for now it will serve just fine.

“Enough with the freakin’ phone already”.  OK, OK.  It’s just I built this little shelf for the phone in the kitchen today, running a new phone jack for it and everything.  This regains us a tiny little bit of much-needed kitchen counter space, and occupies an otherwise dead space next to the fridge.

We went to a wedding reception for our friends Jeff & Andrea today.  They got married a while back, with a big party later.  Today was “later.”

This photo is not my best of the evening, nor perhaps the most interesting, but it does capture the feel of Adolphus Busch Hall at Harvard, the venue for the evening’s festivities.

“Doug, why are you taking a picture of the phone?  Isn’t that the same phone you’ve had for years?”  Well, it is and it isn’t.  I found an additional handset for our phone system (which already has 2 cordless handsets) so we can have one on each floor.

Notice that this one says “handset 3.” The best part: $30.

A funny thing happens when you move a big CRT TV like ours: it goes out of alignment.  The TV is facing a different direction with respect to the earth’s magnetic field, and plus I suspect getting jostled around on the truck and stairs didn’t do it any favors.  In this picture, you can see that the text is crooked — it’s not the photo, it’s the actual picture on the TV itself.

I dug up my instructions and notes on this TV’s service mode and corrected this issue tonight.

We went over to Michael & Sabrina’s tonight for the Lost season finale.  We brought cookie dough from the cookies-in-a-jar mix that Sabrina had given us as a housewaming present.

We lost power tonight, just as I was starting dinner.  I plugged in the rotisserie motor, turned it on, and pow, it stopped.  I figured I had blown a circuit breaker, but no, a truck had hit a light pole.  Fortunately, I was able to simulate a rotisserie by turning the chicken 1/4 turn every 5 minutes or so.  And so Lis and I had dinner by candlelight.