Kitchen Hooks

Cleaned up the kitchen today and decided to put up a bunch of 3M hooks we had laying around in a drawer. It's amazing how a handful of hooks can make the kitchen look so much more organized.

I also took down and put away all the Christmas decorations. Well, all except for the lights on the outside of the house because it was raining all day. I'll do that when the weather is better.

Christmas Vacation

We ended up visiting my aunt & uncle and my grandparents for Christmas, which was enjoyable. We intended to head down there Friday night, but didn't end up leaving until Saturday morning. We spent Christmas day at my aunt & uncle's house, and the next day we spend over at my grandparent's house. Today we headed home, but stopped in Sacramento to visit my wife's mom and ended up going out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant called On The Border. After that and a trip to WalMart, we resumed our journey home.

Early Christmas!

We opened our Christmas presents this morning. I got my wife a Ginsu knife set, a Ben 10 Wrath action figure, the book The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, and the book Dexter by Design (which I gave her earlier).

I also got a nice framed poster that says "PROCRASTINATION. Hard Work Often Pays Off After Time, but Laziness Always Pays Off Now". We are both procrastinators, and when I saw it, I not only thought it was funny but also put a positive spin on procrastination, so I though she would really love it, but turns out no, not so much. So that was kind of disappointing. But at least she loved all my other gifts.

New Remote Wall Switch for Ceiling Fan

Picked up a remote wall switch at Home Depot for our bedroom's Hampton Bay ceiling fan. I got tired of having a remote loosely attached to the wall where you had to support it with your fingers to press the button less it pop out of its cradle, so I wanted one that was installed in the wall like a regular switch. Installing it wasn't too much trouble.

No Soliciting Sign - Try 2

I discovered that plastic cover on my No Soliciting sign had developed condensation underneath it, which totally ruined the cutout paper sign beneath it. So this time, I printed out the sign on something thicker than paper, an old inverted USPS priority mail envelope, and after cutting it out I put clear mailing tape over it as sort of a poor-mans lamination and ditched the plastic covering. I think it actually looks better than the previous version, so hopefully it will work better as well.

No Soliciting Sign

Today I made a No Soliciting sign. I found a rectangular piece of wood that was about 5" by 6", then printed out a No Soliciting sign I found online and attached it to the piece of wood. Then I put a piece of hard plastic over the wood and screwed it down.

Moving Day, and Dinner with Friends

This morning I helped my wife's friend Becca unload a storage locker to a U-Haul truck so she could take it to her mom's or grandmom's or something like that.

Later on in the evening we went over to our friend's Ray & Dawn for a lovely dinner. Ray cooks the most delicious meals! While there we watched Despicable Me, which turned out to be quite funny. From the previews I wasn't so sure, but I enjoyed it.

Tron: Legacy 3D

Last night my wife and I headed off to the midnight showing of Tron in 3D to meet up with one of her friends. While they talked, I played some game on my DS. Once the previews started, my wife asked if I would go get a pair of glasses for her friend, so of course I did. Another guy left the theater right in front of me, so I was thinking he forgot glasses too, but turns out he was just telling them that the 3D was totally messed up. And man was he right. Once I got back and put on my glasses, it was like one lens of the glasses would be black and the other would be normal, then they would switch constantly and quickly. I'm surprised nobody had a seizure. It took them several previews before they finally got it working.

We both enjoyed the movie, and were quite hungry when we got home, to the point of our stomachs audibly voicing their complaints, so we had a snack before bed. It must have been well after 4 before we finally embraced unconsciousness. And when I woke up this morning, she was still here. Which makes me happy that she didn't try to go to work being so tired.

Around 2pm the guy from Redding Comfort Heating & Air Conditioning came by. He inspected our heater and found that contrary to what the Gallagher's guy said, there was nothing wrong with our heater other than it's not meant to heat a house this big. And unlike the Gallagher guy, he actually went around to various vents to measure the temperature. So that's good news, and I'll definitely be attempting to get our money back.

My wife's friend Becca dropped by today, arriving here at almost the same time my wife got home. They then went out to eat at Lai Lai's so I took the opportunity to play more of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Heater Dispair

Today we had a guy from Gallagher's Heating come out to give our heater a look-over and tuneup. We had gotten a flier in the mail which said their tuneup would save $79 in heating bills over the winter, and that if it didn't or if we were unsatisfied for any reason, or no reason, then they would refund the entire amount, so I figured it was worth a try.

After he finished up, he gave my wife and I his report on our heater which made our heads spin. He said it was in terrible condition with a long list of problems, and that we would definitely need to be getting a new one. And so after he left, we set up an appoint with Redding Comfort Heating & Air Conditioning for the following day to come out and give their opinion.

New TiVo Hard Drive!

The new 1.5TB hard drive I ordered for our TiVo arrived today. I was able to get that installed without too much hassle, so now we've gone from 160GB of space to 1.23TB... I don't think we'll need to worry about making room for our programs anymore.

I did a deep cleaning of the kitchen to try to get rid of that fish smell that continues to persist. Oh, I also figured out how to remove the armrests in the Highlander so I could get the seat covers to fit better. I thought I was going to have to cut a hole in the seat covers in order to put the arm rests back on, but turns out I could just put them right back on over the seat cover.

Tangled

We went to see Tangled in 3D today. It was enjoyable enough. Afterward, we went over to my wife's friend's place for lunch/dinner, and also so I could set up her mom's new laptop. It was a good day.

Power outage

The power went out at around 2:20am last night (or this morning, depending on how you look at it). Since there's nothing you can really do at 2:20 at night without power, I just went to bed.

Something fishy is going on....

I awoke to a very strong smell of fish, which I assumed meant my wife had made fish for breakfast, but when she got home from work and also noticed the smell, I found out that not only did she not make fish, but that the smell did not exist when she left for work. So sometime between her leaving and me waking up, something that is not fish caused a strong fish smell to appear. And emptying all the trashes didn't help a bit.

Dell Inspiron 700m Repair

Today I installed a new LCD screen in my mom's old laptop, and while I was in there I also fixed the speaker wires which had been split, which is apparently a common issue with the Dell Inspiron 700m. It was actually more difficult to do that than to replace the screen. I had to clip out and use a section of old headphone wires in order to bridge the gap, but I eventually got it all working.

New external hard drive

The external hard drive arrived today (along with the 3M Shower Caddy), but when I plugged it into the USB hub the computer recognized it as an "Initio Default Controller". This was a bit confusing, but it was easily fixed by unplugging it, removing that driver, then plugging it in directly to the computer. Once it was recognized properly, I was then able to plug it into the hub with no problems.

My wife took a little break from work this afternoon so we could go over to a guy's house who was selling used Lego kits on Craigslist. All of the big sets that she wanted were gone, but she still walked away with about five medium-sized kits.