CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (194.4 / 400.0 km)

Yesterday was the first day of what is going to be a week of being really miserable. But, to understand yesterday, you must understand Friday. And for Friday, we have to go back to last week Wednesday. To understand that... just kidding. Last Wednesday, we have an electrical storm come bumbling through our little part of Illinois. Nothing was really affected, didn't even have the lights or clocks go out, but come Thursday morning, Fluffy's precious TiVo wouldn't turn on. She sat on the edge of the couch, helplessly punching the power button on the remote and whimpering with her bright blue eyes.

So, I had the Idea. I've been aching to actually watch TV myself. In my office because, because my movies typically drip with blood and the screams of people being killed (I'm fond of horror movies) or the sickly sweet sounds of a children's movie. So, I wanted to watch it in my office where I can shut the door and mute the squelching sounds. However, with TiVo, that wasn't really an option and we only had two satellite dishes, which Fluffy uses almost constantly to record two things at once. I get a few shreds of seconds somewhere between 02:00 and 02:15, or at least that is how it seems.

The TiVo dying came with a possibility. Setting up a MythTV setup. It won't be as polished or as pretty as TiVo, but it would let me watch TV in my office, give Fluffy a large set of storage, and maybe even set up something in the exercise room. A quick check of the credit card, and I had a budget. $2.3k to get what I need for a MythTV. A shopping trip to Fry's (almost an hour away), and I managed to cobble together something that actually worked.

Fluffy hated it.

Part of it is that MythTV isn't as polished as TiVo or even DirecTV's new setup, but she is trying to adjust to it, probably because it is important to me. However, this dovetailed right into our planned vacation of three days, two nights, in a fantasy suite in her love of loves, Lake Geneva. A lovely place, if you like B&B's and the Enchanted Treehouse, if a bit warm, was very lovely to stay in.

We got to swim and bike and argue and eat badly and have a fun time, but I had this shadow over me. In the first part, it was worry that Fluffy would always hate the MythTV setup that I spent four days putting in, the latter half dominated by the dread of our major project.

Which leads me to last night: retiling our living room. It sounds strange, that it would be so difficult, but Fluffy always paints when we redo a floor. We spent six hours last night, just the two of us, moving furniture out of the rooms (just under six hundred square feet, if you are curious), organizing, and basically getting ready for tonight. Tonight, we get to finish cleaning and then remove the carpet. If you have never removed carpet, it is tedious and hard on the knees. Knocking off the baseboard, taping everything in sight, and getting ready to paint isn't much better.

I'm tired but it is only day one of five on this plan. I'm looking forward to it, and yet I'm also dreading it with a passion. It is a lot of work, time when I could be working on a comic, a novel (started working on the outline for Lost in Space), or finishing the MythTV box. Or actually getting ready for GenCon, being that I have two adventures I haven't even set down on paper.

Oh well, this is life.