VALIDATION...

I'm home from work today, feeling a little under the weather. Nasty sinus infection that I felt coming on a few days ago. I waited until my doctor's office opened this morning and called to see if I could get in today. The receptionist told me that my doctor had no openings today, but if I gave her my phone number she would talk to the doctor and see if he was willing to work through the lunch hour and see me. Within 10 minutes my phone rang. Yes, he would see me today at 12:15 if that worked for me. Wow! Did I just time warp back into the 1950's?? I've always liked my doctor. He's very personable, easy to talk to and never makes me feel uncomfortable talking about anything. I'm guessing part of that might be that he's actually younger than I am! He's probably in his mid-thirties and very cool. A doctor's visit always feels more like stopping in for a conversation with a friend than a trip to an assembly line in a medical factory.

Anyway, as I'm sitting here waiting to go to my appointment, I'm downloading stuff to put on my Zune. I ran across this Youtube short film and decided to watch it. I know, it's 16 minutes long, but trust me, you'll be a better person for watching it. It's really touching and made me forget about my pounding head, and sinus pressure...for about 16 minutes.

My favorite line in the film... "you PAID for parking?...for ME?"

FOR OUR VIEWING PLEASURE...

Andrew had the day off on Friday. When I got home from work I discovered this in the family room. A new 42" Vizio flat panel TV.

We'd been talking about upgrading the clunky 8 year old TV we had. It weighed what seemed like 100 pounds and took up so much space in the room. The picture was fine and it worked great, but, how nice it would be to have a new, big screen, flat panel that we could hang on the wall.
So, Saturday morning I got to work. I had all of the tools necessary to complete the job; flat panel TV mounting kit, screwdriver, socket wrench set, cordless drill, level, measuring tape and stud finder. (Hehe, how do you think I found Andrew?)

The first step was to attach the brackets to the back of the TV. This was amazingly simple. Four bolts and this step was completed.

We figured if we're going to go to the trouble of mounting it to the wall, we might as well put in the extra effort to hide the cables and power cord. In order to accomplish this I had to install an electrical outlet in the wall directly behind where the TV would be mounted. This was as simple as it possibly could have been since there was already an outlet in the wall near the floor just behind the TV stand. All I had to do was install an electrical box in the wall directly above the existing outlet where the TV would hang and then run the wires from there to the existing outlet. Then there was the cable TV cord and the cords that connected the TV to the TiVo and the DVD system. In order to hide those, I installed electrical boxes behind the TV and near the floor and fished the cables and wires inside the wall from the top down to the bottom where they could be connected to the components without being seen. This was probably the most difficult part and I was a little nervous cutting holes into our 6 month old drywall.

Next, was the wall bracket that the TV would hang from. I had to locate the studs behind the drywall and predrill into them to accept the four lag bolts that attached the bracket to the wall. The size of those bolts seemed to be a little overkill to me since the TV really doesn't weigh that much. But, better to be safe than sorry I guess. So after measuring, drilling and leveling the bracket, I screwed in the bolts and the TV was ready to mount.

We made all of the connections, turned the power back on and I kept my fingers crossed as I hit the power button on the remote.

I have to say, this was a much easier task than I had imagined it would be. And look Ma, no cords!

FLASHER!...