Monday, April 07, 2008

The Weekend

Saturday: After getting up around 8:30 I spent some time continuing the finishing touches on the migration of the old HTPC to the new one which I had moved into the entertainment system cabinet last weekend. iTunes was not recognizing anything except the few songs I had purchased. Post thinking and troubleshooting about this the answer turned out to be somewhat easy; on the old HTCP my external drive was drive E: and on the new it had gotten mapped at J: because for some reason the card read slots were taking the first four drive letters. I had to disable both USB disk devices and then trial and error fashion re-enable the one the drive was plugged into. After doing that changing it to drive E: was easy, iTunes came up and all my songs were accessible. I re-enabled the other USB device and the card reader slots mapped above them.

Danielle arose around 10:30 and after a good morning headed downstairs, I rode the exercise bike around 11 and after I had finished up Scott had wakened and we headed out for some errands. We stopped at Costco first for some items. I had to wait when I finally got to the register as they were changing tape. "Good News!" exclaimed the cashier brightly, "You get to be first on a new roll! Isn't that great!" The person next to him who boxes your purchase looked at this guy askance as if to say "What planet is this gut from", and I brightly interjected "Oh my god, something must seriously be wrong with me, you know because here is this great thing, like, first with new register tape, and for some reason I find myself unable to drum up even mediocre interest!" This set the boxing dude into much laughter along with patrons and the supervisor who were within earshot. As I was handed the receipt I muttered pseudo sotto voce "I can't want to get home and put this in my memories box! This is truly a day to remember!!" which caused a fresh burst of laughter.

We zipped over to GameStop because after I had sold a couple of xBox 360 games to a coworker a bit back I had told Scott we would get a game we both liked, but, nothing suited both our interests. I had promised them Wendy's for lunch but I guess the mild weather brought out the bad parent in me and I asked if they'd still like that or going into Coldstone next door. They picked the latter and they each gave me a taste of their 'lunch'.

At this point Scott was awake enough to drive and with him at the helm we headed out to Best Buy to look for a good wireless mouse as the performance on my current one was lacking. I found something suitable there, paid, and since I had to go through the ATM machine for some cash, I drove and after procuring additional fluid assets we headed off on the next mission looking for a rental game for the Wii Scott wanted. I 'did Scott a solid' as I told him and backed into a space at Family video because his weak spot is still parking lots. He remarked there was nothing 'solid' about this....

No Soap at Family Video for the rental but down the hill at Hollywood video we obtained the game using a free rental I had from a previously defective rental DVD. Back at home I ran the cabling from the HTPC to the Onkyo receiver; the old hookup was an optical audio cable and a DVI to HDMI from the HTPC to the Onkyo. The new setup would be a single HDMI to HDMI with both HD audio and video. Once I got this working I marveled how things sounded much better and with one less cable across the floor. (Not that you'd notice on the right side of the plasma display with the mega bundle of cabling from that device and the xBox 360!)

Scott and I then watched a Scrubs, I played around some more on the HTPC. Scott headed out for a bike ride, and a bit later figuring Danielle had been on-line long enough I took her with me to Forest Hills Foods for some shopping and a refill on the propane tank for the grill, because this weekend I, like cooking legend Biker Billy, planned to Cook With Fire!

For dinner, I made pasta. For Scott, the usual pasta with marinara sauce. For Danielle and I, I oven roasted fresh broccoli, mushrooms, and garlic cloves in some olive oil and tossed that with pasta, olive oil, a bit of 2% milk and some grated Romano cheese. It was awesome!!

Thanks to the patience of my friend Brian, who had loaned me Meet the Robinsons weeks ago, Danielle, Scott, and I watched that and found it incredibly funny, in fact downright hilarious. It's now on my list of DVD's to pickup.

The kids have off next week and had Friday off too, so, I let Danielle stay up until midnight, and Scott until 1AM, I headed to bed around 12:30AM.


Sunday: ANOTHER GORGEOUS DAY! Blue sky and sunny, around 9AM I headed down to Forest Hills food to see what types of family packs int he beef variety they would offer, I snagged a five pack of New York strips for just under $20 and shucked four ears of corn on the cob to have with dinner. The remainder of the morning passed in exercise bike riding, computer puttering, and getting myself and the house cleaned up a bit. I also made a nice spicy (using Red Monkey seasoning) turkey bacon rollup with lettuce and tomato on a Flat Out flat bread.

At 12:30 PM there was a knock at the door; Emma had arrived. As Scott was not up yet I sent her in to wake him, she was trailed by Tails who wanted to join in. After Scott was up and the two of them got some food together (Scott made himself Ramon noodles and Emma some rice balls wrapped in seaweed) we sat down to watch Hot Fuzz off of HD-DVD; Danielle decided to stay on the computer (what a surprise). Scott and I remarked afterward that the movie was even better the second time around and Emma enjoyed it too. After the movie I went back to playing around on the computer and Scott and Emma headed for the family room. Emma left around 5:30 and I fired up the grill after putting a pot of water on the boil for the corn on the cob. By 6 PM we were eating perfectly grilled NY Strip steaks, all of them seasons with Montreal rub and mine also had Red Monkey Barbecue Spice rub. Danielle and I each had an ear of corn on the cob; Scott had two. We all remarked it was a most delicious dinner.

After dinner the rest of the evening was spent on computers and watching TV, by myself, and on and off with the kids.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Chris - cooking on the grill - great!! Want to keep what nutritional value corn has in the corn and out of the boiling water? Do not shuck corn. Cook 20 minutes in 350 degree oven. Silk threads come off so much easier, too. Glad to hear you and yours are all doing fine. Bev

Blandishment Blog said...

Bev - I mitigate the corn issue by only boiling it for a minute; Scott won't eat roasted corn though I love it!

Unknown said...

Chris,

When I am going to grill corn, I first steam it for three minutes by putting it in a covered casserole dish, with a couple of tablespoons of water, in the microwave on high. This works great!

- David

Blandishment Blog said...

David - That sounds tasty and worth trying, thank you!

Curious - Have you seen Meet the Robinsons or Hot Fuzz?