I should be writing...

We have a new TV! After looking at the Circuit City in Boulder, the Circuit City in McHenry, and the Best Buy in Crystal Lake, reading a gazillion reviews on Amazon.com, checking Consumer Reports, and a great deal of dithering, we finally bought one Sunday. We may not be the most exciting people, but boy howdy, no one can say we're not well-researched and deliberate.

It's great so far - much bigger, and with a flat screen, so we can finally see all the stuff in the corners. I'm glad the payoff is worth it, because it was kind of a pain to get it. We went to Best Buy, bought it, took it out to the car, struggled with getting the box in the car for a bit, finally realized we were going to have to take it out of the box to get it to fit, opened the box, and discovered it was broken. Part of the case was not just cracked but actually crushed. So...back in the box, back on the cart, back inside to trade it out. This time, we gratefully accepted their offer of help getting it into the car and were impressed with the guy who easily picked it up all by himself and slid it (no problem) into the backseat. Wow.

Randy also had a birthday! He's 28 now, so it was his Golden Birthday (28 on the 28th). Sadly, he had a bit of a cold on his birthday and only wanted to go to bed early, so we didn't do much then. He was feeling much better by this weekend, though, so we went out to dinner to celebrate and had a great time.

Finally...writing. Since I last posted about my novel, I've written, um, almost nothing. At the rate I was going, I would have finished around, oh, say 2034. Luckily, while George was visiting, we were talking about writing, and I told him all about NaNoWriMo and loaned him my copy of No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High- Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. He was inspired, and we decided to have our own, unofficial version of NaNoWriMo this month, starting today. So, for the next thirty days, I'm sure we'd both appreciate any support any of you want to wing our ways. Any of you who are feeling particularly masochistic are welcome to join us!

Boomer! Sooner!

Now that the Tour de France is over (Go Lance!), the countdown to college football season can begin. The first slate of games begin Thursday, September 1st, which, by my calculations, is 5 weeks and 2 days away. Since we're no longer in Big 12 country, we'll be upgrading to digital cable soon so that we can get "ESPN GamePlan", a TV package that airs games not typically shown in your region. In addition, we're in dire need of a new TV. The set we currently have gets blurry on warm colors (yellow, orange, and red), and the remote stopped working some time ago. We've looked at Circuit City, but so far haven't come to any decision on what type of TV we'll get.

This past weekend we had a mini-reunion of sorts with friends from OU. George, Danny, and Rubén all travelled up to our place to hang out for a few days. It made for a full house, but it was a lot of fun. The weather was incredibly hot (Sunday we had a heat index of over 110 degrees), so we pretty much stayed inside all weekend and played board games, with Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and Taboo being our games of choice. There was much hilarity. Sunday we also went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which we all very much enjoyed.

Fortunately the weather cooled down remarkably today. Temperatures were in the low 70's, and it was gray and dreary with a light rain falling all day. It sounds dismal, but it was an incredibly refreshing change.

We Only Love Saturday!

This was a really nice weekend.

Saturday morning, I discovered some really excellent programs on our local access cable channel, apparently aimed at native Indians and Pakistanis. I came in toward the end of a program that seemed to involve the inhabitants of two apartments across the alley from each other arguing about whose music they were going to listen to, only exclusively in song (and Hindi). It was almost totally incomprehensible, but I couldn't look away.

That segued into a program that was ostensibly about the over-use of certain Hindi phrases in music videos, but which really seemed to be an excuse to show music videos. I mean, they were taking requests. And giving shout-outs. My favorite video (which they played twice!) was "Chak de Saturday" by the Balle Balle Boys. It was a Matrix-inspired, computer-animated video that showed the Balle Balle Boys' computerized alter egos running down a hallway, entering doors marked "Wednesday" or "Thursday" and doing battle with a buxom female version of Mr. Smith. It then cut to the real Balle Balle Boys dancing with a Trinity look-alike and singing the catchy chorus: "No Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday/No more Thursday or Friday/We only love Saturday!" It was the only part of the song that was in English. Anyway, the programs were excellent. You can, if you want, read more about them at Namaste TV and Chitrahar.

We also bought bikes this weekend! Honestly, this was more exciting than the South Asian tv programs, but I think there's less to say about it. There are a lot of parks with bike trails in them nearby that we're looking forward to exploring.

We also saw Batman Begins, which was very dark and very cool. We both really enjoyed it, and I would highly recommend it to everyone. (Except Mom, who won't like it.) We went for a late-night bike ride after we got back from the movie. It was really nice, with fireflies everywhere.