Odds 'n' Ends

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you might recall that I had an unfortunate experience with buying an iPod on Ebay last summer. I've chalked that one up to experience; I waited too long to complain through formal channels, and the seller refuses to answer my queries, so I solved the problem by asking for an iPod for Christmas. Ben was kind enough to brave the mall traffic the weekend before Christmas, as he and Robyn went to the Apple Store and got me a shiny, new 80GB iPod classic, which I'm enjoying immensely. I have even figured out how to put photos on it, so I'm like a grandma carrying around a brag book with the babies' pictures in them. All of my music is loaded onto it, so I can listen in the car without having to carry around all those CD's. Thanks, Ben!

We finally solved our TV dilemma. We had looked a couple more places and had struck out, then on December 23, an ad in the paper caught my eye. We went to Bel Furniture and looked at the unit which was advertised and decided that we could live with it (at 1/3 the price of getting a custom unit from Bald Furniture), so it was delivered on the 27th, and I've been trying to dress it up a little bit since then. It definitely fits the room well, although it's a little darker than we would have preferred, but did I mention that the price was right?

We did finally manage to get our garage cleaned out enough to put two cars in it. We haven't been able to do that since 1990, when we bought the old Dart. We filled up three garbage cans and had a good-sized pile of lumber to put out for trash collection day.

Then we had to deal with the opener---the one that was there still opened and closed the door, grudgingly, but the remote controls had long ago bit the dust and been discarded. We had bought a replacement unit but never installed it, so Ben spent a couple of days in the garage doing the dirty work. The "new" remotes have the date of manufacture printed on them----07/1994!!!! That's how long the garage door opener, still in its box, has been sitting around our place waiting to be installed. Naturally, Ben ran into a couple of problems when he discovered that the laser unit wasn't functioning properly, and he had to get a replacement part. Then we were dismayed to realize that the batteries for the remotes had been IN the remotes without any barrier to the connection...but luckily they had not leaked and ruined the remotes. New batteries from WalMart did the trick, and we now have a garage that functions as a . . . GARAGE! Hooray (it takes so little to make me happy)!