19 June 2009

It has been a dreary June thus far, with only three days of full sunshine according to the weatherman last night. Stands in the way of much progress outdoors, but I suppose it's good for the lawn and garden. Today the skies don't know what they want to do. Woke up at about 2:30 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep with the rain on the roof and draining down the gutter on the side of the house just outside of my room. The hard rain stopped and it seemed to clear a bit this morning, but looking out the window a few minutes ago, it is drizzling. Looking out now and it's not.

For all that, yesterday was a good day for soup. So, I threw some potatoes, celery and baby carrots (all chopped) into the large saucepan, then added varying quantities of my staples --- Tone's sea salt, coarsely ground black pepper, dried garlic, dried onion, dried parsley and six chicken bouillon cubes. When the potatoes were nearing their readiness, in went some leftover rosemary chicken (diced) and some Manischewitz alphabet-shaped egg noodles. I had always gotten the straight thin noddles, but noticed the alphabet ones a while back and figured they'd be fun for my nephew and niece (as memory serves, they're slightly cheaper, to boot). We brought my nephew over to my brother's house down the road (we pick him up off the bus and watch him for a few hours until they get home from work. It saves them day-care costs), along with the soup. My nephew, Calvin minus Hobbes (name changed) is leaving Saturday to North Carolina for six weeks with his "far away dad." I'll miss the after-school time with checkers, Legos and homework, but it's also nice to have a break.

When we arrived at my brother's house, come to find out they got a 32" HDTV with a wall mount and a DVD with surround sound speakers. I'm a little miffed that he didn't ask me about the topic and what was the best set he could get for whatever he was looking to spend, but he's like that. He likes to do first (and do it fast, by gum!) and think later. Gave him a hand on the installation and set-up. They have cable TV without the HD package (yet), so the results for them weren't quite what he expected. Even compared to a basic-menu "hospitality" HDTV like ours, the set he got was very sparse. He also didn't seem to understand that he bought a DVD player (which is not Blu-ray, where everything is headed) that was packaged with the surround sound speakers. If it were me, I would have kept his previous up-converting DVD player and gotten an AF/FM/HD radio receiver that has surround sound, and the TV sound could also be routed through that. Oh well. I can't make his decisions for him. I can just be supportive of the decisions he does make, and hope that this attitude might be returned in kind.