Beat 'em Up With Furniture!

Well, I’ve had one of the busiest weekends on record. The TV is absolutely gorgeous. I tested out a few movies, anime, and hooked it to the media PC and so far, even from ridiculous angles where it washes out ever so slightly, it’s better than my 32" tube ever was.

And what about the media PC? I installed Ubuntu on it, installed all the Ubuntu Mythtv stuff, drivers, codecs, and tweaks, and now I have to say I should have done this years ago. There’s just something about putting in a DVD, ripping it to a series of AVI files (I tested it on Gilgamesh, an anime series), and watching literally anything in your entire collection without disc-swapping. It’ll take a while to rip everything, but I’ve got more than enough disk to make it worthwhile.

Saturday was my day to be a masochist. Tired of being unable to unpack, I rented a uHaul cargo van and went to Ikea. I purchased a foyer table, two full bookcases, two half-width media bookcases, an entertainment center, and a dresser. All of this was unceremoniously crammed into the truck, returned to my apartment, and then the real fun began. I didn’t have a hand-truck because they didn’t have any available at the uHaul rent center, so I hand-carried several boxes–none weighing less than 40 pounds, one which was over a hundred–up the single flight of stairs in the back ally, where I, like a battered spouse, acquired several ugly bruises. Anyone who knows me, understands it takes a heated paintball match, or assault with a baseball-bat for me to bruise at all, but I have two on each arm, one spread over a few of my ribs, and one on each calf; these are likely pressure bruises caused by box corners digging into my yielding flesh. But I only had to do it once.

Then on Sunday, the great endeavor of assembling this esoteric variety of materials! I managed to finish everything except a single media shelf, because I took a break to see the Simpsons with my mom, who kept me company while I mindlessly hammered, drilled, and screwed several hundred pounds of dark-stained wood. Finally, I can finish unpacking and live in an apartment, instead of a metropolis of boxes stacked precariously into unsteady towers verging on catastrophic collapse, burying me in a sea of chunky detritus beyond escape.

Now I just need to catch up on my writing, my laundry, finish the last shelf, connect the receiver to all the speakers, game systems, and computers I can find, and finish unpacking my books. Yeah, I’m almost done. Sure.

Until Tomorrow