A lighter blog

It seems that everybody has been posting up heavy blogs or has the blues (thank the stars that’s not a real AR Dan bought) or is generally in a serious frame of mind lately. I feel a little silly to be writing about topics as mundane as I have, but maybe it will bring a smile or two to the group.

First, a comment on the good/bad of Chromehounds. For me, it’s probably the best thing to happen to my gaming since I bought the 180 and Halo CE back whenever that was. I know CH won’t last as long as the Halo CE phase, but I’ve logged more hours playing with the OMM over the last three weeks than I did over the entire last year. It’s a drag that you can only get 20 in a squad, that the two squads filled with OMMers rarely meet, that you need a 360 to play and that some OMMers just don’t care for the game, but I’ve been online with the group essentially every night for the past 10 days. That has NEVER happened before. So for me, Chromehounds is pure goodness, and I can even kill netw3rk 1 time out of 3…sometimes…at least until he gets more practice. He actually accused me of cheating last night. ;-)

Most of you know, or can guess based on the Avatar, that I have a Dachshund. She is definitely spoiled and certainly doesn’t qualify as “well trained,” but she is a comical critter and great fun to have around. I know a lot of people don’t get the “pet crazy” mentality some of us have, but it works for us.

At some point many years ago when she was just a year or two old we were looking around for her, but couldn’t find her. She has occasionally ended up in a room or closet after we have left and closed the door, but we looked in all the rooms and had no idea where she was. Eventually I saw her, and it looked very similar to the picture below.

Dachshunds are known to like being under covers. She sleeps in her kennel under a blanket and when she is with us on the couch, she is normally covered as well. However, getting inside the pillowcase was not something I ever expected to see. She doesn’t do this as often as she used to, but it was a little cooler this weekend and she decided to crawl in for a nap, and I wanted to share our dogs’ goofiness with the group.

Sunday we had plans to drive in to the mountains and go hiking, but just before we were going to leave, Terry decides that she wants to rearrange some furniture. Do men ever get urges like that? Do we stop and say “ya know, I was thinking the loveseat would look much better if it was turned a little more to the left.” Anyway, rearranging furniture generally means one thing at our house…something new.

I rarely buy anything like a couch without pushing for us to wait a day to think about the purchase. Terry was thinking about a couch we had seen before at Scandinavian Design, and it was one that I had really liked when we first saw it, and Terry knew it. It is a contemporary looking triple recliner.

Now CapNHun tool/repair story from a few days back comes to mind as I recall our shopping trip.

Terry knows my 24 hour rule, and after we had looked at the couch, she wandered off to look around a little more and I did the same. We met up again after about 10 minutes and she sheepishly says “You’re going to kill me.”

Me: “Why?”
Her: “I found something else I want.”
Me: “What?”
Her: “A light fixture”
Me, incredulously: “For where?”
Her: “I already told you…the dining room”
Me, even more incredulously: “THE DINING ROOM…I just put a new fixture in the dining room 2 effin’ months ago!”
(Just so you know, the house was constructed less than 9 months ago)

She stares longingly at this sort of cool, sort of mod fabric wrapped fixture that is on closeout for $179. I didn’t really like it and it was a little dinged up and didn’t seem to hang straight. I have an issue with things being out of square or not hanging straight, plus it gave me a good excuse as to why I didn’t want it. What was really bothering me was that we had just replaced the original (6 mo old) fixture with a $200 fixture a couple months ago.

15 minutes later though, we had a new couch.

So was I simply outsmarted? Did my wife ever really want that fixture? Did I win the battle but lose the war?

I wish the couch wasn’t as expensive as it was, but it is a pretty nice piece and perfect for watching TV. I’ll post up a pic when it gets delivered next Sunday.

Since we didn’t make to the mountains Sunday, we went yesterday instead, and hiked (wheezed) 2.5 miles at 9000’ at Golden Gate State Park about 30 minutes from Golden.