I’ve purchased two home entertainment items in as many weeks. I bought a Nintendo Gamecube last week and a DVD player yesterday. (Finally! I opted against a full-featured video appliance in favor of a plain DVD player. We'll upgrade to something snazzier in a couple of years.) Can you tell it’s Christmas bonus season?

For more than a decade, our home theater system has comprised a Sony television (19 inches? 20 inches?) and a Sony super-deluxe VCR, both purchased from Incredible Universe (now Fry’s) in Wilsonville in the early nineties. When our TV room was at the other end of the house, we ran everything through our Panasonic stereo system so that we could have surround sound. (Our surround-sound setup was originally erected so that I could revel in the roar of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.)

For the past five years or more, the stereo and the television equipment have been separate: the stereo lives in the living room, the video stuff lives in the TV room. It’s always seemed like a temporary situation, but it’s a temporary situation that’s lasted half a decade.

As part of Kris’ Christmas present, I’m going to perform a minor remodel on the TV room. I’m going to paint the walls the same color — honey butter — as the library; I’m going to install a new light fixture; I’m going to get rid of the ugly old furniture and prep the room for ugly new furniture (coming from her grandmother’s estate); I'm going to hang a shelf or two, and put up a painting; I’m going to reconnect the sound system; I’m going to install either wireless speakers or remote wired speakers in the living room. (This was originally going to be a surprise: I was going to install laminate flooring, paint the walls blue, put in a new window and a new light fixture, etc. In the end I decided I’d better come clean so that I didn’t create a space that conflicted with her goals. Whew! It’s a good thing I did!)

During this project, the audio equipment and the video equipment will be reunited. I'm quite eager to get everything reconnected so that I can watch Crouching Tiger in all its surround sound glory.

Last night I spent about half an hour juggling the various wires and connections between the TV, the VCR, the DVD player, the Nintendo, and the cable box. Good grief! Bring on the wireless revolution! There must be some way to reduce the amount of clutter created by a home theater.Ultimately, I was able to get everything to play together happily. There's a complex series of switches to be learned in order to access each device, but they all work.

In the evening, Kris and I celebrated by watching a film on our new DVD player: the woeful Ladyhawke. Ugh. We ought to have picked something better.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — World of Warcraft   As you may have noticed, I haven't had much to write about lately. Why is that? World of Warcraft.

2002 — Best Gingerbread Cookies Ever   For Monday Night Football, Jenn Gingerich made the gingerbread cookies from Cooks Illustrated (November 1999).