As you know, Amgen has a week off, paid vacation, starting today.  Here's how I'm spending it.

Friday, June 26: Went to Walmart to buy a TV stand.  My hutch accommodates my current 26 inch TV, but can't hold anything bigger.  It's also mega-heavy (maybe 120-150 lbs) and tall, with no good places to grip it, so it's a pain to move.  For my new TV, I contemplated getting a 26 in just to avoid having to move the hutch, but others convinced me otherwise.  So I wound up buying a 40-inch LCD ProScan 1080p for $500, which I'm picking up tomorrow (Saturday).  Anyway, I was at Walmart at around 9 pm.  The TV stand weighs 85 lbs, and it was a bit awkard getting it into the car, but I managed.  I started to put it together that night, but only got about a third of the way when I realized I needed another tool.

Saturday, June 27: After getting a required tool at Home Depot, I returned home to finish the TV stand.  Ben met me at Best Buy to help me load the TV, and followed me home.  Getting the old hutch up the stairs was a Herculean effort, like pushing a square boulder up a hill.  Here's the new TV and the new TV stand (pardon the glare.  That's not dust).  Oops, you'll see an unused cabinet door stored under the dvd player. That space is the only place I can put my minisystem, so for the moment, I'm not going to install that cabinet door.

6/27/09 The picture is good. But  I don't have HD (yet), but even without HD it's still sharper than my old TV.  At the time, I was using the yellow video jack for my dvd and the picture, quite frankly, looked grainy.  Though I might eventually upgrade my dvd player to an upconverting one or better yet, a Blu-Ray player, I took the easier way out and bought the component video cables, and in the progressive scan mode, the picture from the dvd player was much improved.  The sound from the TV is decent, but I get much better and deeper sounds by hooking it up to my minisystem, which has 5 speakers and a powered subwoofer (you can only see the center speaker in the picture).

6/28/09 I need to replace the shower tub spout in my guest bathroom.  I managed to unscrew the old spout, but it came out with the copper pipe attached to it.  So I need to replace the pipe and screw on a new tub spout, and then caulk it.  I've never done any of that, so hopefully I won't make a mess.