i’ve been going on a major shopping spree for the house. i’m buying all sorts of necessities and “necessities”.

for example, my wireless router is dying at the apartment. i don’t know why i go through so many of these things, but i ordered another one because this one is dying. so far, i’ve decided that wireless networking, though insanely convenient, is also very problematic for me. i don’t get why. really, i don’t.

with the purchase of a wireless router, i thought it would be time to start planning my media center needs, so i purchased a gaming adapter for the xbox so that i can have access to the network wireless. i am THIS close to purchasing a file server. THIS CLOSE. but i’m going to hold off for a little bit more until i can be convinced that i really need one. that i really, really need one. i do. really. i know i do.

i also got a PCI wireless NIC. i know, lame, but i can’t help it. i need it, it sucks. i’ve moved on. you should too.

i also bought the mediagate MG-350HD media center. wireless. neat. yeah, man…that’s a lot of wireless gear.

the greatest thing of all? they are all shipping from different places and all of them are arriving tomorrow. tomorrow is gonna be like christmas.

when you own your own home, lots of things start to matter that never mattered to you before. for example, i never cared about grout color. dark grout? light grout? never made a difference to me. so when i went to lay tile in my kitchen and was posed the question, “what color grout should i use?” i was dumbfounded. i had no idea. should it be red? black? brown? gray? white? off white? i don’t know!

or take the small hedge that i have outside in the front yard. it is very difficult for me to justify purchasing a motorized hedger to maintain a 3 foot by 3 foot by 5 foot hedge. i mean, it’s TINY. how can i justify spending over a hundred dollars to trim it every so often? so instead, i bought a little $8 pair of shears and trimming that hedge nearly killed me. i haven’t used shears in many years because my parents have motorized garden tools. i never knew how much of a difference it makes. let me tell you, though, after i cut the hedge, i had never felt more proud of any garden work i have ever done before. crazy, isn’t it?

and just last night, christi and i spent more time that you would think is reasonable installing a keyless entry system in our house. the biggest problem we had was that the hole in the frame for the locking mechanism was too small and we needed to make it a little bigger. of course, i don’t have a chisel or hammer which would have made this process easier. the big question i have every time i need to fix something around the house is, “should i go buy the tool to fix it?” the big question is how often will i really use a chisel? probably never. so, instead, i went to my trusty leatherman, got out a pocket saw, and proceeded to make the hole bigger with that instead. ghetto, i know! but it worked and saved me from having to go to the hardware store…again.

packing is both a chore and a joy. part of it is liberating to get rid of stuff that i haven’t looked at since i moved into the apartment nearly a year ago. part of it is just a pain trying to efficiently and intelligently pack things so that i can find it again. but now, time has become a factor. i need to get it done.

so now i’m just throwing stuff in boxes. whatever fits, goes. it’s actually not that bad, but there have been some questionable packing choices. why is my sleeping bag packed with my board games? good question. i don’t know myself.

i went to the house and it is still mostly empty. it looks sad. it needs furniture.

today marked the first day that i really tried to pack up some stuff. it’s overwhelming. i’ve lived in this apartment for about a year and i didn’t think that i accumulated a lot of stuff, but there really is quite a bit of stuff here. i just went through all of the books that i own and am deciding what comes with me, what goes to my parent’s house for permanent storage, what i’m going to try to sell, and what i’m going to donate.

i’m going to try and donate a fair number of items on my move out. last time, i didn’t try to sell anything, but this time, i think i’m going to try to sell things away and see how that works out. one of the things that i’m not looking forward to is moving my bed and tv. i still don’t know how i’m going to do it. i’ve packed about 5 boxes and i think i’m going to call it a night. i’m exhausted and sweating again. it doesn’t help that the weather here has been in the 90s and it’s midnight now and the apartment is still over 80 degrees. it’s crazy i tell you. wasn’t it just last week that it was RAINING??

after many years of service, my trusty canon s400 elph finally gave up and stopped working. it’s been through a lot with me and i have been contemplating whether or not to replace it. one of the chief complaints i had with the camera is that its low light performance was really sub-par. i also missed the lack of aperture priority or shutter priority controls. but now that the elph doesn’t work anymore, it was time to think about what kind of point and shoot camera i would replace it with.

i’ve always been a huge canon fan, so it was very tempting to pick up one of the new canon point and shoots. technology has evolved and canon digitals are better than ever. still, i wanted something that was a strong low light performer. then i started to think about what else i might use this camera for and it got me thinking.

i don’t want to invest in a huge setup for underwater photography, it’s not like i dive a lot, but i do dive every so often. on my last dive, i took pictures underwater for the first time and it was kind of neat to take pictures while diving. so i got to thinking that i should buy a digital camera that i could dive with. low light photography and underwater shooting…hmmm.

i looked around and eventually decided on the fujifilm f41fd with the manufacturer waterproof case. we’ll see how it performs when i get it.

this weekend was a pretty long and busy weekend. we went to vegas to play in the westside volleyball tournament. our team played in the lowest pool available. the first day we played reverse co-ed with the girls hitting and the guys setting. the first day results? we went 0-8 for the day.

the second day we modified our format and had the guys hitting and the girls setting. we ended up taking second place for the day. second place gave us shirts. speaking of shirts, i wonder where mine went…

while we were in vegas, christi and i went to check out mamma mia. neither of us had seen it and neither of us are huge abba fans. i think the only abba songs i know are the ones on the erasure album, abba-esque. we got tickets through some ticket broker online who gave us tickets for nearly half price. i was a little concerned that we might have bad tickets, but it all ended up just fine. we actually got great seats on the lower level in about the middle section.

the show was awesome! i had low expectations for the show, but i was pleasantly shocked. the music was great, the acting was great, and the show itself was very entertaining. if you haven’t seen it yet, i would recommend it.

on monday, i went to the city to buy wedding bands. christi and i went to the gift center to buy them and we saved quite a bit of money going there. i think that my ring was about 30% cheaper there than at other jewelry stores, so i was pretty happy.

after we bought the rings, we went to watch conan o’brien who is visiting all week. dana carvey was the guest and the show was taped at the orpheum. the line went down for blocks and blocks and i was afraid that we wouldn’t get in, but we were just able to sneak in and saw conan live. it was pretty cool.