This evening, we were watching The Naked Gun — suddenly, there was a pop, and the picture vanished from the TV. Then it started making a clicking noise, which I couldn’t stop with the TV’s power button. I made a joke about the smoke coming out of the set, and then we realized that it wasn’t a joke — we could smell smoke. So I did what I should’ve done right away and unplugged the TV — that stopped the clicking, and the smoke stopped, too.

I guess we really are in the market for a new TV after all. Remind me not to joke about cars or houses!

[Update, 10:21pm PST…it doesn’t look like auroral activity is likely this far south, and it’s somewhat foggy outside anyway.]

Flu shots?

Al’s on a crusade to encourage all of us to go get
our flu shots. I became a believer two years ago, when Diane got a flu shot and I didn’t; sure enough, I spent a miserable week or so down with the flu, and she wasn’t affected at all. I’m just waiting for the vaccine to be available at work; they’ve postponed the immunization campaign to let high-risk people get it first.

It’s so easy to find useless information department

Jeffrey asked me when Rex Morgan, M. D. started, and thanks to the Web and Google, it took me less than a minute to answer his question (if I hadn’t had to wake up the computer, it would’ve been even faster). I’m still amazed how much trivia is available on the Web.