A Good Day

Today was a good day, all in all. My wife had an interior decorator over to help her decide where to hang pictures and which pictures to hang. The decorator offered a number of other tips after going through some of our "stuck in drawers" do-dads and such...old crystal glasses, mugs, vases, knick-knacks, etc. The decorator's personality is, for me, like fingernails on a chalk board, so I wanted to be away during her presence, but because I might be needed to hold heavy pictures, I stayed. Her behavior today did not send me over the edge...a good thing. Mind you, despite my lack of love for this woman, she does offer good ideas. My wife has much regard for her creativity. At the end of her visit, we had pictures hung, do-dads in appropriate places, and plans for more improvements that will be painless, financially.

Another good thing today. Ever since we had some sheetrock work and tile floor renovation done, the DVD player connected to our big-screen TV has not worked. I assumed it was the dust, so I tried compressed air to no avail. No luck. I started thinking we would have to pay someone big bucks to test the DVD player (which is, actually, a component of a home theater system, so not an easily or inexpensively replaced part) and might, in the worst case, have to replace the sytem for lots of money. Today, finally, I disconnected the DVD player and placed it my back seat...and we went driving around, looking for a TV/DVD/VCR repair shop. Much driving, not many options...but it was close to 5:00 pm, so our timing was wrong. I decided, though, to buy a CD/DVD cleaning disk and try it out...just in case the compressed air was not sufficient to clean the thing. We found what we needed at Radio Shack and came home to try it out. After a long, painful process of reconnecting the home theater system (why did I disconnect it all before trying the cleaning approach), I tried the cleaner. I went through the process and...it worked! Our DVD player works! We can watch "Road to Perdition" tonight, if we like, on the big-screen! (My wife got the movie from Netflix.)

We had lunch today at one of our favorite Lebanese places...both of us had falafel sandwiches, falafel wraps with a nice yogurt sauce and sour pickles, onions, etc. It wasn't a particularly big lunch, but enough to make us decide we would munch for dinner. After a crazy trip to Costco (we renewed...after thinking about Wal-Mart, we opted to spend money for Costco membership, instead of buying anything from Wal-Mart), we came home and I prepared some stuffed jalapenos...jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese mixed with canned shrimp, lemon juice, and ground comino. We may just nibble tonight.