priorities

FFP is up early. I think he went to the club. Then he's back and showered and putting on a tie to go to the doctor for a checkup.

I type a long e-mail to someone, don't save and then my system crashes. I don't type it in again. Instead, I send a message saying what happened. The new message will be completely different than the old one. Some of the same stuff will be said in a new way. Some things never said.

I go work out. I'm reading The Hours on the bike now. After the bike I do some upper body weights.

Home again, I eat two pieces of wheat toast and a big serving of the tuna salad. And more coffee.

I have set two priorities for today: figure out why the cable reception in the media room is getting interference and clean out the wine cellar and figure out what to serve for the party on Saturday (and whether I need to buy anything).

I futz around and answer some e-mail. Then I take a little TV into the media room, hook it directly to the cable box and 'no interference.' I demonstrate this to FFP who wanders in to eat lunch and show him how the tapes played on the VCR work fine. This says to me that the bypass circuit, the thing that sends the cable signal through to the amp from the VCR is faulty. What else could it be?

I spend some time in the wine cellar. It seems cool but not 55 degrees. It is, though. I do have on sweats, of course. I identify some good wines to serve for the dinner party. I clean out a bunch of stuff on the floor so that I can move around. I see some wines I'd forgotten about, some that are probably gone, etc. There is some good stuff, too. I think I have enough to do the party without buying anything. That's good.

I think about buying a new VCR. I even visit a store in our neighborhood. But the difficulty of the hook-ups discourages me. The VCR power cable (which isn't detachable) goes snaking up behind the zillion pound German TV. I give up. I'll get the HiFi guys to come wrestle with it. Doubtless they will disagree with my assessment of the problem, too, but I'm betting I'm right. I have to be. I arrived at the culprit (cable in circuitry in the VCR) by the logic of 'everything else works if this is bypassed.'. Unless. Unless it's that cable between the cable box and the VCR. Nope. Connected that cable to the small TV to test. Plus, I changed it, too.

I also visit a shop on Burnet that sells chef stuff. I'm not really looking for anything but thinking they may have napkins or chardonnay glasses (they don't seem to have linens and glassware) but, really, I think I have enough. It's a cool little store, though.