I'm back. Been back since Sunday, but I've been busting my ass all over this house. That, and our computer gave up the ghost Sunday before I got to sit down and do anything with it. We ended up shopping for a new one most of the day Monday and came home with a shiny, new one that hasn't a thing on it but the operating system and a few programs. Now it's a matter of transferring files, so I can have email again and get all my bookmarks back. I almost didn't remember the password for this journal as I haven't had to type it in in ages.

The other thing I got (finally, after near two years of begging) was a Tivo. And I love it as much as I thought I would, though I'm already regretting being cheap and getting the 40 hour version. I have plans to crack open the case and plop a bigger hard drive in there regardless of the voided warranty. Though I really don't need a reason to watch even more TV. I don't watch all that much anyway as I realized when Kay asked me, "Do you watch _insert TV show here_?" and my answer was a consistent, "No." I haven't watched much of anything all summer but for the occasional sitting down and surfing incidents when I was bored and didn't feel like working. Now I'll have something worthwhile to watch when I sit down for those times, because my little Tivo is recording its sweet heart out for me.

It helps that I can get things done and not have to worry about taping things too. I'm lazy. We all know that. And setting up a VCR was beyond my laziness tolerance level, so I rarely did it. That and living with kids who change the channel even when there's a big note in the center of the television saying not to change the channel prevents much taping of shows that weren't being watched with my very eyes, and then why would I need to tape it?

So I have been getting lots of things done. We got a new circuit box to replace the old fusebox, so now our house is much less likely to burn down. There's still some chance, because the previous owners were your stereotypical do-it-yourselfers, and there is crazily wired shit all over the place. The place was too much of a dump to have anything more than the circuit box done though (like we could afford it right now anyway), so rewiring the whole house will have to wait. Now we have a humongous circuit box just waiting for the new furnace and air conditioner.

The current situation on that is still undecided. Our neighbor who does heating and cooling on the side was going to come give us an estimate, and we haven't set that up yet. He also said getting new windows would probably save us a helluva lot more money. Our windows barely qualify as windows. They have glass, and they sit in the openings. That's about it. I had to squeeze near a tube of caulking along one of them to keep from being able to see straight outside. They suck, and we knew we needed new ones, but we didn't realize they might be the better thing to go with, especially now that the AC and furnace are actually working again.

You'd never know I went on a vacation, would you?

I have pictures. Really good pictures. But I have to install some things in order to get those pictures from the camera to here, so it might be a week. And really, wouldn't it be better for me to talk about vacation with pictures? I thought so.

In the meantime, I'm cleaning and cleaning. Nothing like having strangers come in the house to spur a huge cleaning extravaganza in me. Embarassment is a great motivator. So I'm going to get back to it, and maybe I'll even have pictures of that when I'm done too.

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