So it’s been three months since we ditched comcast and our DSL line in favor of AT&T’s Uverse, the fiber cable– based internet/television connection bundle. Mostly it’s been good.

The good:
Lots more channels than we had with ComCast, a DVR that records 4 channels at once (or 2 HD channels, but since we don’t yet own an HD TV this isn’t crucial). Two other cable boxes bundled in the main price. A fourth for $5/month. And TiVo mostly works with the non-DVR boxes. Of course, when we do have one, all we have to do is call them and tell them to enable those channels. No additional installations. Also, we didn’t bother, but had we thought about it, the boxes could run on Cat 5 inside the house, instead of Co-Ax.

The not so good:
About once a month we have to manually re-sync the television boxes or they lock. And AT&T kind of sucks at telling people when there will be a planned outage (as there was around one this morning, when, granted, most people aren’t awake, but we don’t keep “normal” hours.).

The tricky:
Fuzzy found this out on day one. If you want upload/download speeds to scream, you set up an On Demand movie. Since it all uses the same lines and capacity has to be opened wide to download digital content, you reap the benefit of a faster-than-you’re-paying for connection at those times.

And the channels? I kind of like the Sleuth and Chill channels when I’m in the mood for mysteries or horror.

Inspired by CafeWriting.com, option One.

I’ve never been one to set specific goals, as I don’t think that way. I have a few milestones I wish to hit – sell my book, write for a living, be the best version of myself that I can – but I’ve never believed in nickel-and-diming my resolutions. Still, over the years, I’ve had aspirations that I’ve achieved. Here are a few.

1) Dyed my hair pink. It’s been a year now. I’m a little bored with the pink, but it will remain for another 90 days at least.
2) Been to France. Still need to spend a month writing in Paris, but at least I’ve spent time in France. Others may have left their hearts in San Francisco, mine is somewhere in Languedoc.
3) Earned a living as a writer. It’s not fiction, but yes, I’m doing this now.
4) Communicating with family. I’ve been better about this, about letter writing, but I need to expand my reach a bit.
5) Household Organization: We still haven’t painted the kitchen. But we did finally decide on a color. Progress is being made.
6) Performing on Stage: I did improv for more than a year, and then my energy changed, and I started dreading it instead of enjoying it, and I’m still on semi-permanent hiatus.
7) Cooking at home more: Ask me about the killer broccoli beef I made the other night.

I’m in that mood where I have nothing to say, no words to sling, and the very thought of blogging makes my head ache. I know it will pass, that it’s just January doldrums and cold medicine, but at the moment, none of that matters.

…and I’ve been telling Fuzzy I need one for months, and half-expected he’d buy one for Christmas, except that I said I wanted to pick it. Today, he called me over to an aisle in Target (of all places) that I hadn’t even planned to visit, and said, “Look at these.” And so I did.

Click to enlarge.

What I saw was a shelf full of jewelry armoires. The one he’d eyed was called “Abigail,” but it was a little to prissy and Colonial for me. (Coincidentally, my parents’ chihuahua is also called Abigail, and while she’s not Colonial, she is prissy.) A few options down the row was the “Paige” model, which sports the clean lines that I love in styles like Mission, Shaker, and Danish Modern (not that those are at all similar, mind you, because they all interpret clean lines in different ways). “Paige” is very square, with metal fittings that aren’t fussy, and even though she doesn’t match the wood of our bed and my dresser, she blends well enough. I don’t believe everything has to be matchy-matchy. Sometimes having something that doesn’t match can be a pleasant surprise.

Click to enlarge.

She was on sale for $49 (which, incidentally, is only $15 more than I paid for a more conventional, dresser-top jewelry box that I bought for my mother in 1980), and since she’s an armoire, she doesn’t clutter the dresser-top but occupies a section of wall near Fuzzy’s dresser (which we had to move down the wall some, but it’s all good.).

Despite balking about it initially, after he was plied with chips, queso, sweet tea and a chimichanga from Don Pablo’s, Fuzzy put her together for me, and I spent a pleasant hour hanging all my jewelry. The bottom drawer is filled with perfume samples. The second from the bottom holds my bandannas.

Click to enlarge.

…is that they sell everything, and then some, and even though you go in looking for something cheap and innocuous, you end up leaving having spent half a million dollars.

This evening, we did just that. I wanted to pop by Starbucks for coffee filters and and a latte, dash into Target to look at sports equipment (I’m shopping for a home gym) and juicers (the basic automated orange squeezing type) and sunglasses, and we ended up coming home with 2 pairs of sunglasses, a new bath pillow, a plastic bin specially designed to hold rolls of wrapping paper, another large purple storage tub, slippers, flip flops, underwear and socks for Fuzzy, a pepper mill, a juicer and a jewelry armoire.

Along the way, we also looked at battery operated raptor toys, floppy gardening hats, home theater popcorn machines (I wanted one), chocolate fondue fountains, a lovely dining table and console table in espresso colored wood, a coffee-and-cream microfiber office chair (that I should have bought, but didn’t), and wine.

Who knew Target even sold wine? And while some of it was gross, cheap, wine, some of it was actually pretty good, if you’re adventurous and like to try boutique wines from small, predominantly Californian vintners. (I do.)

It was a fun trip.

And at least we got the juicer.

I haven’t been to the library in years, and I’m itching for a trip to one, because free books are never a bad idea. Except of course that when it comes to me and libraries, the books are never free, because I’m not good about honoring The Date. You know the one. It’s either printed on a receipt, or stamped on a card, or, if you’re in a very old library in a very small town, handwritten on the manila card holder pasted into the back cover of a book. The due date. Only, I’ve always treated them more like…guidelines. Suggestions on when books should be returned.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t finish the books I check out. There were times in my life, as late as five years ago, when I’d come home from the library with a bag of books so thick I couldn’t carry them all, only to have read every last one by the end of the weekend, but then we’d have something come up, and we wouldn’t make it back to the library, and we’d find ourselves, six weeks later, approaching the after hours book depository slot under cover of darkness, clad in black, and hoping beyond hope no one would SEE us returning long overdue books in such a fashion.

I always pay my fines though. I like to think of them as “donations to the library” rather than a penalty for not observing The Date.

Written for Sunday Scribblings.

Taken from TechnoCowboy

Rules:

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote become the title of your album.

3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Click to embiggen

It may be nearly noon, and I may be swamped with work, but I took a moment to go check the mail, and I’m glad I did, because not only was there a letter from my mother, on the spiffy note cards I gave her for Christmas, but there were also two – TWO – free mail envelopes from soldiers.

One was from one of my officials, and included the questionnaire asking for stuff, and a thank you note and his email address, and the other was from one of the guys from my Christmas card list. Funny guy. Handwriting like an engineer – very precise, and done in foolscap.

In other news, a friend complained about her computer and that reminded me of laptop rental services, and I wondered if, now that you can’t bring electronics in-cabin on flights from the US to England, those sorts of services are booming overseas. With flash drives holding so much data now, it almost makes sense to rent whatever you need and have one less thing to carry.

(I offered to rent her one of mine; she declined.)

And finally, I just emailed myself the final structure for my Cafe book. Now I just need to finish writing it. Five short stories. Interconnected.

I need coffee now.