..but sometimes I wish it would. Since I last wrote I haven’t had a quiet evening to myself. Always something going on.

Monday night was the FHE activity I wrote about last week. Tuesday night I went on a double-date with my roommate, to Value Village (think DI). His idea mostly. Thankfully my date was just as reticent as I was about accumulating more random stuff. I had to try very hard to keep my roommate from getting a large canvas print of the aurora borealis to put up in our living room, which is already getting pretty crowded from the other pictures he’s hung up. He eventually did get the print but just hung it up in his poster-covered room.

On Wednesday I was set up on a blind date by a friend, we just went out to eat. Date was done at 9, I was looking forward to a quiet evening, but my roommate had guests over so we just shot the breeze for a few hours.

On Thursday my team at work did an “off-site”, a fun team activity. We’d decided to go to a local shooting range. I was kind of bummed we couldn’t go skeet shooting with shotguns, but boy howdy there were some fun guns to shoot there. My boss even brought his AR-15.

That evening I had a dilemma. The Nintendo Switch was having its midnight release that night. I could’ve gone and stood in line for hours in the cold rain. On the other hand, a friend was having her going-away party, leaving for two years to join the Peace Corps in Albania. I ended up foregoing the Switch, hoping to be able to snag it later on the following week. The party was fun, I was able to run a game of Conspiracy – a cross between Mafia and Bang! that my former roommates have been developing for years. Can’t wait to play it at the next cabin get-together.

Friday night was round two of the Star Wars multi-week marathon. Episode V was up, considered by many to be the best of the original trilogy. The chief chatters of last week weren’t able to make it – pity. There was still some talking, but the major dialogue was understandable, so it was mostly all good.

Saturday morning I was flicking through some news websites on my phone, when on a whim I checked and a nearby Target had the Switch in stock! I hurriedly showered and shot out the door. Unfortunately the site was a lie. They wouldn’t get a new shipment in until Sunday. I’ll just hope they have left-over units by tomorrow.

I had no plans for the rest of the afternoon. I ended up just wandering aimlessly down a road, towards what looked like food. Had to wander a bit further than I thought, but I got to see some pretty cool stuff that I wouldn’t have been able to do had I been driving around.

When I got back I decided to do some prep work for the Switch. When I wired up my TV I didn’t bother with an HDMI cable. All my viewing is done via Ethernet. I had ordered an HDMI cable that was long enough, but the plastic conduit I picked up from Home Depot was not large enough to fit it along with power, an AUX cable, and two Ethernet cables – one for the TV, one for the sound bar. You wouldn’t think a sound bar needs network connectivity, but like the TV it has built-in ChromeCast support, so I could use it to wirelessly stream Pandora or whatever. While the bar does have built-in wifi, I didn’t want to clog up the airwaves. With the arrival of the Echo Dot last year though, I haven’t had a need for any streaming directly to the bar. And I’ve only ever once needed to actually use the AUX cable I ran.

At the time I set all this up I figured (hoped) I wouldn’t ever need a device that delivers HDMI to the TV. The Switch changes this up. And I really didn’t want to have a random cable running off the side of the TV, that’s the whole point of the conduit job. So out came the sound bar’s Ethernet cable and the AUX cable, in went the HDMI cable. At its worst it looked pretty bad.

These conduits really were not made to easily open back up after being clipped shut. (Nor were they made to come off of the wall without taking any of the wallpaper with it… but that’s a problem for later.) Thankfully the adhesives were able to fasten back to the wall without much difficulty. The only indication that anything’s different is an extra pipe running up between the sound bar and TV.

Now just to pounce on the Switch when I can. I hear amazing things about the new Zelda game, and I hear there’s enough content that I’ll probably still be playing it by the time the Europe trip comes around, so that’ll be something to do on the plane.

All in all this afternoon on my own did me good. It reminded me a lot of one of my favorite scenes from Monk.

 

That evening I attended a friend’s pre-birthday party – her actual birthday is today, which she’ll be celebrating with family. Today we’ve got church, then right afterwards a break-the-fast dinner at a friend-of-a-friend’s house. I was planning on making a dish, but my roommate wants me to make myself scarce this afternoon while he serenades a gal in our living room. So I think I’ll just pack up the components and prepare it in the church’s serving area. Fudging the rules a bit, but, ox in the mire. I hope for everyone’s sakes that things go well for my roommate.

Monday night will be FHE again, and we’ll see just how long this busyness goes.

Love ya!